AirTroductions is an online service whereby you can create a profile, and search for other people who are traveling on your flights, so you can potentially sit next to them. I’ve met some really interesting people on airplanes, and I like the idea of choosing with whom I am going to be sharing an armrest!
The JR Hokkaido Company of Japan is testing a vehicle capable of traveling via rail and road, and expects to carry its first paying passengers by April. The $150k vehicle cost is a fraction of a diesel rail car, and has much cheaper maintenance and fuel costs.
[via Gizmodo]
Check out this advertisement for Mexico travel with live models inside a trailer with transparent walls! Inside there’s sand, palm trees and women in bikinis! The actors play beach volleyball, and give each other massages etc.! [thanks, Software Development Manager]
[UPDATE 12-31-06: Check out this YouTube video below.]
There are two underwater hotels scheduled to open in the next 18 months. [I’ve previously posted about Ithaa, an underwater restaurant in the Maldives.] The Hydropolis in Dubai will cost $550 million to build, and the Poseidon in Fiji will cost $80 million (Check out their websites). Nightly rates will start at $1,500. [Thanks, Erick Schonfeld]
[UPDATE: The winner will be determined Friday, September 15 at 12:00pm PT. If I win, I will donate the $50 to the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula.]
[UPDATE 2: Poll results: Noah - 2, Glenn - 6, WM - 12, congrats to BGC. Thanks for participating.]
Boeing is developing a hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft prototype. The plane will be a light-aircraft and have a top speed around 70 mph. The technology is in its infancy, but has tremendous potential, according to Boeing. Of course, battery disposal and even the production of hydrogen currently have a negative environmental impact. [via Treehugger]
[I will be traveling until Wednesday, September 6, so posting may be slow until then. Thanks, Matt]
Farecast, an online service that predicts whether airfares will go up or down, launched this week. The site uses a patented data algorithm technology to inform ticket purchasing timing. The Company has $8.5 million in VC funding from Greylock, Madrona Venture Group, and WRF Capital. [via TechCrunch]
Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI) has commissioned aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin to design a supersonic airplane: the Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST), a 12-seat supersonic civilian jet that could come to fruition by 2013. The QSST will travel 1.6 times the speed of sound (Mach 1.6), or 1,200 miles per hour. A patented design is expected to produce a sonic signature 1/100 that of the Concorde. [thanks, Paul Marks]
Jose Garcia of Meme Therapy, a future and science fiction blog, asked me to answer the following question: The world’s commercial airline fleet vanishes overnight. What do you replace it with?
If the entire fleet of commercial jet aircraft vanishes overnight, it would represent a huge opportunity to rethink aviation transportation in a broad context. Perhaps an investment in networks of high-speed, zero-emission trains, for example, would be viable. Of course, air travel would continue to be a preferred mode of transportation for overseas travel. However, the basic design of commercial jet aircraft hasn’t changed in 35+ years, and an opportunity would exist to entertain innovative ideas. A common design concept for future aircraft is a highly aerodynamic triangular design, which does nothing to address the basic human-centric inefficiencies of current aircraft travel, including airport transport, parking, check-in lines, security hassles, frequent delays, cattle-like boarding methods, and waiting for luggage.
There are people working on personal transport vehicles capable of driving on roads, and flying (see SUV with retractable wings here (link), but I have an additional, possibly complimentary, vision for the future of aircraft mass-transport. Futurists, for many years, have proposed personal rapid transport: a private, light-weight pod-car hybrid would travel on monorails within cities, and exit an elevated monorail network to travel on roads and freeways to suburban areas, or to other cities. My aircraft vision embraces this future. I would propose building jet aircraft that have the capability of holding hundreds of pod-cars per fuselage or body (think of a Swiss train or a Ferry that accommodates cars), so a person or a family could leisurely board their pod-car at home, travel to an airport, pass through security, and board an aircraft — without ever needing to leave the comfort of their pod-car!
Commercial aviation pioneer Juan Trippe audaciously pushed for larger and larger aircraft, in an effort to reduce the consumer cost of air travel. The future of aviation, however, will likely favor more numerous, smaller aircraft. Air taxis and relatively inexpensive personal business jets, which are currently being developed, will proliferate, in the near future. Perhaps the pod-car aircraft concept would require more aircraft bodies to accommodate the pod-cars, which require more space, for a comparable number of travelers, than current aircraft herd seating. These realities may cause more airport congestion and delays, if we maintain status quo thinking of aircraft physics, which requires a long runway for takeoff and landing. VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) technology for commercial aircraft will likely one day be a feasible reality, and this would alleviate current bottlenecks for takeoff and landing, which will become more of a problem, as aircraft proliferate.
When JetBlue Airways hired David Rockwell to design the interior experience of its new terminal at JFK, Rockport partnered with Broadway choreographer Jerry Mitchell to assist in imagining airport foot and vehicle traffic as a choreography challenge, and designing an efficient experience accordingly.
A choreographer may not be a typical participant in an architectural design process, but Rockwell likes unusual collaborations; he enlisted Todd Oldham, the fashion designer, to help develop the color scheme for the Kodak Theater in Hollywood and had the underground cartoonist Gary Panter working with him on a Disney cruise ship project.
The terminal is expected to open in 2008.
