On 7/11/2014 12:12 AM, LizR wrote:
On 11 July 2014 17:26, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 7/10/2014 10:16 PM, LizR wrote:On 11 July 2014 06:22, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 7/10/2014 12:59 AM, LizR wrote: Without claiming to be a wiser head, I will still say that you don't use 747s in a green economy! You use airships... And you reduce air traffic by getting almost everyone to telecommute. The trouble with airships is that they slow and they can't handle bad weather. The Shenandoah and the Akron were destroyed stormy weather within 3yrs of being built. The Macon suffered a structural failure mainly due to a design fault. Only the Los Angeles, of the Navy's big airships, served eight years and was decommissioned. The Los Angeles was built by Zepplin and it took 81 hrs to fly from Germany to New Jersey. The Hindenburg, which was the same size but used hydrogen instead of helium for buoyancy, had a crew of 61 and carried 36 passengers. So a ticket was very expensive. Is this still true of airships built using modern technology?I'm sure there are improvements, but I think those two problems remain. It's obvious that large airship will be hard to control in a storm and they can't fly over them like airliners. They're not going to be much faster, so long distance flights will still require a lot of food and water and passenger support with lot fewer turn arounds per week - so the cost much go up proportionately.This is true, however I think a "green economy" should not involve a lot of passenger air travel by any method.
Right. And it's moved that way a lot. In the '70s and '80s I used to fly to conferences and business meetings five to ten times a year. In the late '90s we got video conferencing and cut back on travel. With the ubiquity of computers it turned out that the video wasn't that useful and we started to do almost all meetings by phone+computer. Now about the only air travel I do is to visit my mother in Texas once or twice a year. A fast train would probably do as well for me.
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