| From: | Jeffrey Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Wandering |
| Date: | Wed, 16 Jul 1997 14:56:32 -0700 |
> *****PRIVATE: Ice
> >>>>>[Made it to S.F. on the tube with no problems. The new ID
Squatter
>>snip<<
> I will be here for a few days. I think I'm about ready for the teary
> reunion. After that, I've booked passage on a trans-pacific HLAV. It may
^^^^
Hmmm. I suppose I should have mentioned this here before I posted, but I
figured it was so small of a point that it wasn't worth making a big deal
about and can safely be ignored if people want to.
In ShadowRun literature, there seem to be three major ways of getting
around by air. In ascending order (all pun intended from the respective
altitudes as well as price) are SSTs, Semi-Ballistics, and Ballistics.
Something that they didn't consider, most likely because the concept
wasn't in the news yet, was a Heavy-lift Low Altitude Vehicle (HLAV).
There are a few flying models of this type of aircraft around, that rely
on what is called wing-in-ground-effect (which is an aerodynamic effect
where one can generate substantially enhanced lift near the ground if one
designs the aircraft to take advantage of this effect). What this means
for the aircraft is that they can become extreemly efficient despite being
really large. While it is not known whether or not they will go ahead
with it, one design from Boeing could potentially hold thousands of
passengers (and/or tons of cargo), flying for about the same cost as
shiping things by boat. It would be so large (utterly dwarfing a 747)
that it would need to take off from the water as a sea-plane, but could
easily fly across the Pacific. Which is just fine, because
wing-in-ground-effect only works well within one wing span of the ground
and over nearly flat and level terrain, so these kinds of planes would
best be used for trans-oceanic flights. Potentially, these aircraft could
become the 21st century equivalent of the 1930's China Clipper connecting
sea-ports of the world (including Seattle and the rest of the Pacific
Rim, or New York and the rest of the Atlantic for that matter).
So for the same cost of shipping things by boat, you can go across an
ocean at 300-400 miles per hour, or--to put it in perspective--in a matter
of a day or two as opposed to weeks. You can also share the journey with
a few hundred of your closest friends, as well as a few dozen cars, a
couple tons of electronics, and/or a few tons of fresh fruit. :) While
pathetically slow compared to ShadowRun's Mach 3 SSTs, it would also be a
fantastically cheap method of transport. That fit my character just fine,
especially in terms of his budget, so I just threw the idea in. I hope
nobody has a problem with this, and maybe some of you might want to use
the idea in the future.
Questions, comments, death threats?
--Catch you later
Jeff
