Economy of Airtravel « Alternative Technology Assn Forums

Alternative Technology Assn Forums » Transport

Economy of Airtravel

(119 posts) (9 voices)

Started 11 years ago by Greenozi
Latest reply from Jeffbloggs

Tags:

12…4 Next »

Greenozi
Member

The Big day for Boeing as they reveled new Dream liner 747-8.

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/boeing-unveils-new-747-jumbo-20110214-1asjx.html

For me that is one step forward and two back with this design. Super efficient , new materials , everything to achieve better fuel economy and then luxury on board.
Gym, maybe spa, tennis court inside, pool table.
Can anybody withstand a few hours flying without all this whistles that blow away any progress in fuel efficiency of air travel? This is just not ethical take all this luxurious staff to the air, on taxpayer or corporate expense - since nobody is paying super business class tickets for their own pocket money.
I would like to see bunk lying sleeping configurations in economy class instead , but that is already discarded as humiliating, I wish to be degraded in such way...
Can I see in my lifetime ticket to Europe below $1000 mark? Still don;t have to be cattle wagon but smart usage of 3D space inside the plane.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 6:27:56 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

You mean like this one:
http://www.gizmag.com/aircraft-seat-bed-design-offers-a-comfortable-journey-for-all-travelers/10068/picture/53617/
or:
http://www.gizmag.com/airline-seating-innovation/13535/
or this in NZ:
http://www.gizmag.com/air-new-zealand-skycouch/13983/

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 6:41:14 am from IP #
Diver
Member

or this.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197799/Ryanair-make-passengers-stand-bid-cram-board.html

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 6:47:58 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

I suppose that would be quite comfortable if they offer free tranquilizers at the door...don't think the current planes will be able to carry the extra weight though without getting rid of luggage allowance.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 6:53:06 am from IP #
Diver
Member

Maybe have special discount flights for skinny people!

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:02:47 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

How about compulsory offsetting of CO2?

Must have certificate before you can board the aircraft?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:09:03 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Yeah I think the skinny should pay less, them and the vertically challenged...just means that I'll be paying extra at 2m tall....but seriously why not tranq them all, no inflight meals, movies or complaints, and hang them in vertical body bags, like racks of meat at the butchers, until you can get them off the plane....no terrorists or unfriendly neighbors to sit next to, whom you have to talk to, about their seriously unhealthy perspective on life....lol...;0

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:13:48 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Buzz
Planting a tree doesn't put the fossil emissions in the ground again so why bother? Unless they offer underground sequestration of CO2 certificates it's a hoax.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:18:05 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

Possibly solution will come from Ryaniar or China Airliner when available.

I imagine that sits should be placed 3 dimensionally to maximize usage of the space inside, like a grid of semi lying sits at 30-45 degree angle.
The main selling point should be such effective planing that total passenger capacity should be same or better then existing economy class, comfort comparable to bed, and weight no more that existing setup.
If future astronaut for a trip lasting 1000 years (hibernated) is packed into capsule not bigger the coffin I could withstand 10 hours flight laying on the hammock if needed.

I don't need swimming pool on board plane when going on fabulous luxurious holiday.
To be fair I prefer to spend that two thousand dollars saved on air ticket for extra attractions at destination.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:23:55 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Hey Grenozi
The link I gave you at the top has exactly that what you described. Why are you not lookin at my links mate? Or are you secretly? :s

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:30:06 am from IP #
Diver
Member

My post re skinny flights was somewhat tongue in cheek as there has been talk of charging 'bigger' persons extra to sit in larger seats.

JB, Are you really 2 metres tall? No problems with the Prius?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 7:59:48 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

I did, but it looks more like amphitheater then airplane.
Take a notice how many duplicating , unnecessary, elements, stair, balustrades.
All this weight a lot and take space. I want to fit people as dense as bees in the hive. Maybe sits like hanging cocoons?
Lets organize 3D space inside the cylindrical tube get the human density in
Humans/m3 to the max. Instead or 1 or 2 make 3-4 -5 levels.
Instead of air waiter have electric robotic buggy dispensing food end drinks from vending machine that you operate from your sit on the touch screen, anytime not only at feeding time.
Money and weight saved on air crew then.
NO forget the touch screen.
Lets have 3D video goggles for every passenger.
Only toilet visits are unavoidable I am afraid unless total change in morality will happen.
Will you every though why filling the top opening is understood as ennobling in human civilization evolution and emptying the body disgusting.
Shouldn't we all be eating in hidden , isolated place in secret and disgrace?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 8:11:03 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Diver yep...well 198cm to be exact. The Prius works fine, even with the solar & sunroof, that is as long as I sit in the front, which I normally do as I like drive it. My boys are getting bigger by the day, but still easily fit in the back, and will do so for the next few years. Beds are a different problem though, especially ones with footboards...

GO
One of them had offset double story seating arrangements. The young and fit upstairs, the old an frail downstairs. This works well and allows everyone to have an isle seat, apart from the window seat, and adds another 10-20% seat capacity. Everyone can fully recline or sit, cross-hatch structure from the seat frames could even be integrated into aircraft fuselage to reduce weight further, and increasing structural integrity, of the hollow flying cigar. As for calls of nature, I don't think there is a easy solution for that yet...unless the planes started to run off biogas....yes I know...I went there! lol

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 8:26:27 am from IP #
dymonite69
Member

Here are some interesting questions:

What proportion of oil production goes to air travel?
What is the relationship between air miles and ecological footprint?
What is the annual air passenger volume?
How much land would be needed to produce the biofuel to fill up an Airbus 380?
How many airships would you need to move this amount of people?
Could you move 500 people at 900 km/hr with lighter than air craft?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 8:55:17 am from IP #
rockabye
Member

When planting a tree we just need to make sure there is a body under it. Less people, more trees.

That will get the CO2 down.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 9:29:15 am from IP #
Diver
Member

Where's Jimmy?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 9:49:59 am from IP #
Catopsilia
Member

"It’s one thing to point out that a planeload of tourists flying from Los Angeles to Cairo to see the Great Pyramid, back when political conditions in Egypt allowed for that, used more energy in that one flight than it took to build the Great Pyramid in the first place. It’s quite another to understand exactly what that means – to get some sense of the effort it took for gangs of laborers to haul all those blocks of stone from the quarries to the Nile, load them on boats, then haul them up from the Nile’s edge east of Giza and get them into place in the slowly rising mass of the Pyramid, and then to equate all that effort with the fantastic outpouring of force that flows through the turbines of a modern jet engine and keeps an airliner poised in the thin air 40,000 feet above the ground for the long flight from LA to Cairo."

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/02/energy-funds-energy-flows.html

The blogger says he has lost the reference for that first statement. I think it is plausible enough to quote. The energy used in air travel is enormous, but comparable with other extravagant activities we regard as normal.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:00:38 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

Jeff" increasing structural " that is what I like , creative,solving and improving approach.
Jeff we should design and build EA (electric airplane) before we build even my ET (electric tractor).
We should start selling tickets $1000 online one way to Europe to have some funds for 1000 seater/ should say bedder airplane.
100 0x $1000 = 1.000.000 income in one day ! less some fuel and 4 persons crew expenses.
You are right again. If seat-o-beds cells are integrated into structure like honeycomb the structural integrity is enormous in comparison to existing open single wall cylinder.
In such scenario even if a part of the fuselage is blown off by explosive the honeycomb structure keeps the shape intact. So our cheapest airliner is not only economical but the safest device on Earth.
I think that alternative configuration also could be considered - seat-o-beds going in perpendicular to plane axis - like corn cob.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:01:16 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

Will be interesting to know.
what is the mass or empty (structural/unfurnished empty) Boeing 747 ?
Then weight of seats and floor structure?
Passengers weight allowance?
Cargo allowance?
The big question is how many passengers + 20 kg cargo we can fit into 747 body abstracting of existing cannon in interior design?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:12:31 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

Cato "used more energy in that one flight than it took to build the Great Pyramid in the first place."
I think it is great understatement of afford this hard working Egyptians nation.
Similarly we can ask - how many calories Einstein's brain spent on inventing his relativity theory? say 50 seconds or domestic vacuum cleaner energy or 10 minutes of lawn mower?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:21:28 am from IP #
Catopsilia
Member

Greenozi, I have been doodling with the figures involved in comparing the 747 flight with building the Great Pyramid.
I think the 747 flight (including administration) uses about 10 million man-hours of energy. Did more than 10 million man-hours go into building the Great Pyramid?

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:32:49 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

D69 " How much land would be needed to produce the biofuel to fill up an Airbus 380?"
I wouldn't worry about that.
Airplane is just that a blimp on the screen.
In near future ( 100 years from now) we will be moving peoples:
- with the speed of excess 20.000 km/h
- across the globe
- at the cost of $1 a seat
- without the need for long airport procedure
in vaccum pipelines magnetic levitating vehicle (VPMLV)

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:40:35 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

D69
Airbus uses 21 L/km or 5L/sec or best case (855people in economy only) 0.0251 L per person per km (thats only 2.5L per 100km per person but at 900kmh!!)

That would be 3031MWh per flight, 3.5MWh per person, about 3 tons of CO2 equiv. per person.

Or in biofuel ie biogas, it would take my biogas plant 50 days to fill (!!!), at 80 tons of grass per day, or 21t bakery scraps per day, or 110t of waste milk a day, or 18t of waste fryer fat per day, or about 65t of corn silage per day. Corn would need about 65t div. 12t/hectare, so 5.4 hectare harvested per day or 3250t per flight or 270 hectares of corn per flight, or a strip the length of the runway and a kilometer wide!! (remember Biogas is 30-40% better than other biofuels because it uses the whole plant)

Technically possible, the Airbus 380 has already flown on a natural gas (methane) mix, which is the same as CO2 free biogas.

Some pretty awesome numbers though, but don't forget thats 850 people with luggage delivered anywhere on the planet, from anywhere, and any way you want inside 16 hours.

Rockabye
Plant a tree and your husband, reward: free flight to bali!!

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:43:01 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

Cato, You are right, I hate waste and excess too, to but when you live in Australia and think that you can get to Sydney in 2 hours on plane or 20 hours driving super efficient solar powered EV at zero emission there is no alternative at this moment...sorry

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 10:48:36 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

For those thrill seeking 12 cylinder turbo holden crap charged super car folks.

Now you are looking for tires burn out excitement at green light changeover to get 0.5G acceleration ??

But my question is : How many G-ees you are willing to accept when packed into VPMPLV ?? and the only limit is your fragile meat and brain structure not technical that can get you 1 to 100km/h in less then a second?
If my vehicle could go 20.000 km/h I need really take a care of your physical limits....
i need slow down my VPMLV to to take care about your slimy meaty body not to be crushed...

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 11:05:59 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Greenozi
Bugs have that same problem every day changing direction with to many Gees!!!... on my front windscreen...and thats only at 100kmh...;)

BTW make the honeycomb structure out of CNT...what else?? And then please only use lifter technology as propulsion aka ion-drive, even possible to go VTOL then...
see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF8otSSPgdA or: http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm
(And to all skeptics of this tech, I have played with the one at the Perth Gravity Lab, and it works fine!)

plus no engines stuffing up aerodynamics and you can run it off internal methane fuel cells, that are integrated into the seats, and include "extraction" mechanism for passengers!! lol

Inflight menu: make sure passengers eat lots of beans otherwise you might come down in the pacific!!

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 11:21:22 am from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Cato
I calculated human output to around 150W for 12 hours a day and 300days a year so about 540kWh a year per person, give or take. So in comparison to what I calculated above that would be 3,031,000kWh per flight thru 540kWh = 67355 man years of labour.

This link estimates 25,000 labourers for 23 years to build one pyramid, thats about 575,000 man years or 310,500,000kWh, so about 100x the half way around the world flights, in the Airbus A380 as described above. In fact these flights could deliver about half the required workforce. Other sites suggest 300,000 people, but I doubt it, those rockpiles aren't that big.

(http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/pyramidworkforce.htm)

I think that guy is off a bit.
BTW How did you get to 10 million man hours? Thats only 2777 man years at 3600hrs year work, 5160 hours to rest and eat.

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 11:51:06 am from IP #
Greenozi
Member

Jeff, This is not fair.
I will give you free of charge one of my stones 500 kg, and you using this archaic tools will try to shape to fit into pyramid conglomerate.
I will give you oldest, blunt chisel and wooden hammer and calculate your time at 100$ an hour ( that seems fair for me) then divide by $1.3 per petrol liters expenditure.

I guess it will took you 10 years to prepare this stone to fit into pyramid

10years x 365days x 12 hours a day x $100 per hour = $4.380.000 to make this one piece to fit
then I can proove that Egyptian laborers were 10x ? 100 ? 1000x ? more efficient then you....and your airbus/ Boeing jet plane.
cut the crap please ....

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 12:59:40 pm from IP #
Jeffbloggs
Member

Huh Greenozi?? What do you mean? What did I do now? I just went off what a few of the websites said. It's only made from limestone and filled with a lot of sand. Tell me why it needs more people? Besides they didn't carve each stone with a chisel, they used timber wedges and water to split the block. Not that hard. But whatever...I wasn't trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes....

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 1:11:12 pm from IP #
dymonite69
Member

http://en.wikipedia.org/wikiå/Coral_Castle

Posted Monday 14 Feb 2011 @ 1:19:41 pm from IP #

RSS feed for this topic

12…4 Next »