Reading Hattie's post on air travel and global warming has led me to start this one on travel, aviation in particular, in the age of peak oil and climate change. This is a post in progress, and I'll add new links and writing as I refine it.
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-articles/read.main?id=81
Showing posts with label airships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label airships. Show all posts
Friday, November 02, 2012
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Airships Over Manhattan
http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/2008/06/dinosaurs-of-new-york-skyline.html
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
From Planes to Trains
October 1, 2007
Two Clues for the Clueless
The first clue came during a routine NPR news broadcast on Friday, which had presidential candidate Mitt Romney retailing the shopworn idea that our nation "is dependent on foreign oil." We've heard this a million times, of course, and we accept it without thinking. But if you venture forward mentally one baby step, you will quickly come to see that, no, this dependence on foreign oil is not itself the problem. The problem is that we have adopted a living arrangement so hopelessly centered around cars and incessant motoring and one of the consequences is an addiction to oil, which we happen to have a declining supply of in our own land.
...The second clue for the clueless came over the weekend when President Bush declared that the chaos reigning in America's airports had reached such an intolerable level that the federal government might have to step in and whip the airlines into shape by regulating routes and apportioning flights. Again, the inability of the public and its leaders to extend a thought one inch beyond the horizon of a given problem is really striking. It's as if the entire nation had suffered a lobotomy -- and perhaps we have, through the agency of excessive TV-watching. Has it occurred to anybody that if we could run choo-choo trains between cities a few hundred miles apart -- say from Cleveland to Columbus Ohio -- we could decongest the airports overnight? That, by so doing, Americans could travel much more pleasurably and affordably between the places they travel to most often? It certainly hasn't occurred to anybody running for president, or any of the editors-in-chief in the news media, or even any executive in what remains of the the railroad industry. But I'll try to boil it down to a digestible sound byte for them: the best way to relieve the current agony of air travel is to get the passenger trains running again. Let the airlines do what they do best: really long-range trips. Let trains do the rest. We will consume less foreign oil. The jobs now hemorrhaging out of the US auto industry could move into the passenger rail and rolling stock sectors. Everybody will be much happier. ...
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Rail could also be revived in Hawaii, which had many railways in the early twentieth century. Here is a description of the Hilo Railroad. Though Kunstler doesn't mention them, airships should also be used in cargo and personal transport.
More on airships here. An excellent account of airships being used for passenger travel is this book, The Golden Age of the Passenger Airships: Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg, by Harold G. Dick with Douglas H. Robinson (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) .
Two Clues for the Clueless
The first clue came during a routine NPR news broadcast on Friday, which had presidential candidate Mitt Romney retailing the shopworn idea that our nation "is dependent on foreign oil." We've heard this a million times, of course, and we accept it without thinking. But if you venture forward mentally one baby step, you will quickly come to see that, no, this dependence on foreign oil is not itself the problem. The problem is that we have adopted a living arrangement so hopelessly centered around cars and incessant motoring and one of the consequences is an addiction to oil, which we happen to have a declining supply of in our own land.
...The second clue for the clueless came over the weekend when President Bush declared that the chaos reigning in America's airports had reached such an intolerable level that the federal government might have to step in and whip the airlines into shape by regulating routes and apportioning flights. Again, the inability of the public and its leaders to extend a thought one inch beyond the horizon of a given problem is really striking. It's as if the entire nation had suffered a lobotomy -- and perhaps we have, through the agency of excessive TV-watching. Has it occurred to anybody that if we could run choo-choo trains between cities a few hundred miles apart -- say from Cleveland to Columbus Ohio -- we could decongest the airports overnight? That, by so doing, Americans could travel much more pleasurably and affordably between the places they travel to most often? It certainly hasn't occurred to anybody running for president, or any of the editors-in-chief in the news media, or even any executive in what remains of the the railroad industry. But I'll try to boil it down to a digestible sound byte for them: the best way to relieve the current agony of air travel is to get the passenger trains running again. Let the airlines do what they do best: really long-range trips. Let trains do the rest. We will consume less foreign oil. The jobs now hemorrhaging out of the US auto industry could move into the passenger rail and rolling stock sectors. Everybody will be much happier. ...
---
Rail could also be revived in Hawaii, which had many railways in the early twentieth century. Here is a description of the Hilo Railroad. Though Kunstler doesn't mention them, airships should also be used in cargo and personal transport.
More on airships here. An excellent account of airships being used for passenger travel is this book, The Golden Age of the Passenger Airships: Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg, by Harold G. Dick with Douglas H. Robinson (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) .
Monday, February 12, 2007
Airships
http://www.aerosml.com/news-press.asp
From high-altitude surveillance to a hybrid luxury cruise liner, our skies may soon be home to the next generation of multi-purpose airship....
Here is a fun blog on airships by animator Sean Hayden.
From high-altitude surveillance to a hybrid luxury cruise liner, our skies may soon be home to the next generation of multi-purpose airship....
Here is a fun blog on airships by animator Sean Hayden.
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