Large, Slow Airships Could Move Buildings 184
Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."
Buildings falling from the sky (Score:4, Interesting)
Helium (Score:3, Interesting)
anyone care to do the crossref math and tell us how much helium it will take to lift 150 tons and how that relates to the dwindling supply?
Re:Buildings falling from the sky (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know, there have been incidents where a flatbed carrying a house has crashed into things and destroyed them, they haven't shutdown all flatbeds yet. I'm sure insurance on something like this would be astronomically expensive, at least until the method is proven, but I don't think a single incident would immediately shut them down.
Idea needs building industry support (Score:4, Interesting)
Skyscrapers may be vastly more affordable if built from interlocking modules on the ground that could be airlifted into place. Would such a structure be feasible (I'm not an architectural nor a mechanical engineer)?
As pointed out by somebody else, if anybody (these people aren't the first with this idea) could get this to market, it would be a boon for the growing wind turbine industry.
We don't learn fast, do we? (Score:2, Interesting)
Large airships have been a recurrent proposal for moving large and bulky items which exceed the routine capabilities of the transport system.
The problem is that the airship needed is huge. That makes it very difficult to operate in anything other than good weather, even before attaching a massive but somewhat frail payload.
The record is full of airship and air lifter crashes because of bad weather or unexpected turbulence. Until that problem is resolved, the proposal is not serious.
Re:Helium (Score:3, Interesting)
Helium is not the only lighter than air substance, large balloons are mostly hot air today. Also we know Hydrogen, methane, and ammonia will also work, each with at least one downside. Personally I think birthday parties would be way more fun with Hydrogen balloons anyway (then again, maybe that's why I never had any kids.)
Cargolifter, now bigger? (Score:1, Interesting)
There was a company in Germany trying to reintroduce air ships as transporters for heavy loads. They were called "Cargolifter". The only thing they ever built was a huge hangar. The company went bankrupt in 2002. The hangar has since been turned into a water park / resort [wikipedia.org].
Re:U.F.O. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or even someone playing a prank.
I remember a TV show (called "a very British UFO hoax") about a group of special effects guys trying to pull off a UFO hoax. They were pretty successful, the flying saucer they built wasn't very big (I don't remember the exact size but it could be broken down into segments that would fit in a SUV) but the eyewitnesses reported it as much larger.
Most people don't understand their own vision. An eye doesn't directly tell us the size of or distance to objects just the angle is subtends on the retina (which roughly corresponds to size/distance).
Binocular vision tells us distance but it only works effectively over short distances .
So our brains use various clues to judge the size and depth of objects. One of those clues is how big we expect the object to be. An object flying at night takes away the other clues so if people are expecting it to be big they will see it as big!
Re:Goodbye Building Industry (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought local builders were relatively safe from outsourcing
Easy enough to do with panelized construction, components, etc. When they were still building houses like crazy, most of them were probably framed by illegal immigrants, and fitted with imported appliances.
Now excuse me while I prop another 2x4 against my office wall...
In all seriousness, I've been told that when looking for a house you want to find one that was built during a recession. In theory, people were able to chose better contractors during hard times, whereas boom-time houses are more likely to be slapped together quickly to make a buck.
Re:Absolutely Terrible Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a market, just not necessarily in the skyscraper size class yet. Build them smaller, but big enough to move a house. My house was moved to its present location decades ago. Aside from permanent structures, consider modular homes (trailer houses). I see four or five of those a week pass through on trucks, and I live in a small town. I also see a lot of wind farm equipment like tower segments, generators, and blades. Instead of running a convoy of 8 trucks plus spotter cars, load it all onto one or two of these lifters. Less than half as many people involved, can fly direct, doesn't impact traffic, and can carry objects larger than 2 highway lanes. Similar benefits apply to things like power substations or rail switching shacks, if you can do it cheaper than a helicopter.
Fit one out with crane equipment like that found at a major port. Now if a freighter has a problem in the open ocean, you can fly one of these to it and offload the cargo to another ship (or ships, more likely). You could also haul out a complete replacement power train, and if new ships were designed with this in mind you would eventually be able to drop-in major components in most ships afloat. Same gear could be deployed to a train derailment, or to replace a malfunctioning locomotive on the track in the middle of nowhere. The way that scale affects LTA craft is very different from how it affects HTA craft like helicopters. If you can build one big enough and fast enough, you could anchor to a sinking ship and keep it afloat, or simply pick it up and haul it to a dry dock. This could be useful for deep-sea salvage, though the existing barge-style ships are quite effective already.
In short, there may not be much of a market right now for moving large buildings, but there are plenty of other markets that such a device could tap.
Re:Helium (Score:1, Interesting)
The helium stays in the airship, it doesn't use it up when lifting.
How exactly do you neutralize 150 tons of buoyancy in the air then? Unless the only load you carry is 150 ton tank and compressor system used to hold the re-compressed helium, that's going to be a problem, no?
Hydrogen on the other hand, you could divert, burn (carefully) and collect as water for ballast as needed.
Re:Goodbye Building Industry (Score:3, Interesting)
In all seriousness, I've been told that when looking for a house you want to find one that was built during a recession. In theory, people were able to chose better contractors during hard times, whereas boom-time houses are more likely to be slapped together quickly to make a buck.
I don't think that is a reliable indicator. Its true boom-time houses are often built as quickly as possible to get on to the next project; its true some developers cut corners get cut to save time.
But recession housing has a counter-indicator as well... the contractors are often on hard times themselves, and cut corners to bring costs down. I live in a multi home development, that was started during the boom, and was finished as the recession hit hard. There is a noticeable degradation in the quality as you move from the homes that were done first to the ones that were done last. Little details, for example: my unit, an early unit, can turn the lights at the bottom of the stairs using a switch at the top or at the bottom. Later units, only have the one switch at the bottom.
Even worse are projects where developers/contractors were bankrupted during construction. The last thing you want is a home that was half built, then went into limbo for 5 months with some plastic sheets keeping the weather out, and then finished up by another contractor/developer as inexpensively as possible so that they might still turn a profit on them.
Ultimately I think good and bad homes can be built in any economic climate. But a good reputable developer working in a healthy or better economy probably is probably the safest bet. A crappy developer is going to do crappy work in any economy, but even good developers will cut corners if they fall on hard times.