Tag Archive for 'thefuture'

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A compendium of new airship projects

Published on 15 July 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

1918: View from a French dirigible approaching a boat

There has been a recent flurry, coming up here and there, of interest in dirigibles as a carbon-neutral stand in’s for the usual high-octane, bone-soup, fire-eating jetplanes. While this seems to be no more than a nostalgic, steam-punk, flight of the imagination, return to earlier fantasies of a domesticated airspace (see also: 1. Problems with Hellium sourcing (its an expensive strategic resource, suffering, like all other commodities, a 50% price increase in 2007), 2. the fact that airships can only travel about 100mph and despite there very large size, 3. hold only a small fraction of the passengers that commercialaircraft do, 4. Turbulent weather saftey issues yet to be resolved), some interesting military-industrial and plutocratic appropriations and reinventions of airship technology have been circulating in the recent weeks\months. For an overview, see below.

Tactical spy derrigibles for any occasion

BAE intends to test-fly a 22-meter-long airship designed by balloonist Per Lindstrom(((That is the same Per who flew around in a balloon with Richard Branson, with whom he briefly got stranded  when their balloon crashed in the Canadian tundra)))). Known as the GA22, it is scheduled to fly in September.The vehicle could become a regular feature of the skyline, providing civil and military surveillance and communications-relay capabilities.BAE started out looking for a platform that could provide communications relay for the military, Williams said, but quickly realized the airship could have a great future as a civil surveillance platform – policing events like the Olympics and shipping lanes like the English Channel. [via]

Hello Sky Hook, good-bye “Ice-Road Truckers”

The Boeing Company and SkyHook International have engaged in a joint venture to develop the JHL-40 (Jess Heavy Lifter), a new commercial heavy-lift rotorcraft designed to address the limitations and expense of transporting equipment and materials in remote regions. The neutrally buoyant feature allows SkyHook to safely carry payloads unmatched by any rotorcraft in existence today.

The helium-filled envelope is sized to support the weight of the vehicle and fuel without payload. With the empty weight of the aircraft supported by the envelope, the lift generated by four rotors is dedicated solely to lifting the payload, leaving the aircraft neutrally buoyant.

The SkyHook JHL-40 aircraft will be capable of lifting a 40-ton sling load and transporting it up to 200 miles without refueling in harsh environments such as the Canadian Arctic and Alaska (((see also the History Channel’s ethnography\demographic-pandering reality TV show, Ice Road Truckers))).  [via]

Blimp or Battlespace Command Center de Luxe?

The Lockheed Martin High Altitude Airship (HAATM), an un-tethered, unmanned lighter-than-air vehicle, will operate above the jet stream in a geostationary position to deliver persistent station keeping as a surveillance platform, telecommunications relay, or a  weather observer.  The HAA also provides the Warfighter (((thats with a capital W))) affordable (((yep, even warfighters got to watch the old AmEx… wait, no they dont))), ever-present Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and rapid communications connectivity over the entire battle space. The technology is available now and ready for integration and flight test ((((yippy?))).

This updated concept of a proven technology takes lighter-than-air vehicles into a realm that gives users capabilities on par with satellites at a fraction of the cost (1 to 2 orders of magnitude less).  The HAA will also integrate reconfigurable, multi-mission payload suites.  HAA is significantly less costly to deploy and operate and other airborne platforms, and supports critical missions for defense, homeland security, and other civil applications.  Its operational persistence eliminates the need for in-theater logistic support.  In position, an airship would survey a 600-mile diameter area and millions of cubic miles of airspace.

High-strength fabrics to minimize hull weight, thin-film solar arrays for the regenerative power supply, and lightweight propulsion units are key technologies ready to make a high-flying airship a reality.  The combination of photovoltaic and advanced energy storage systems delivers the necessary power to perform the airship functions.  Propulsion units will maintain the airship’s geostationary position above the jet stream, propel it aloft and guide its takeoff and landing during ascent and descent.  Lighter-than-air vehicles, operating at altitudes above controlled airspace under the control of a manned ground station, give users the flexibility to change payload equipment when the airship returns to its operational base to perform different tasks. [link] [brochure]

Prototype air-yacht for those ponderous sky cruises over the mercury filled skies of Shanghai

Set to be launched next month, the whale-like Aeros ML866 uses a combination of buoyancy (like a blimp) and lift (like a plane) to cruise comfortably through the air with over 5,000 square feet of interior room. It can take off vertically, without taking up runway time at crowded airports, which is perfect for your plutocrat on the run who cannot be bothered with the delays of mere millionaires. And although the Aeros ML866 is designed to fit a “business center” with video conferencing, perhaps it should rather perfer to have a swimming pool with adjoining hot tub, and a few of those 103-inch plasmas that Panasonic is so proud of.

Liquid crystal dreams of an asphalt frontier

Published on 9 July 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The “Digifiz” add-on, pictured above, was first introduced in the Volkswagen Golf in 1985 and was continually offered as a feature until 1992. Such product design emerged from the days when the future was being reborn, when electronic synthesizers pumped out 8-bit staccato and glistening liquid crystal offered the masculine promise of evading any nuclear nastiness that might arise (see Corvette ad below) all while simultaneously pushing forward a cutting edge, revealing the futures to come. It seems that immediately after LCD technology became commercially scalable a huge proliferation of it spread across all forms of consumer products, bringing with it an amulet of mystique and promise to the consumer device adorning it. A mystique and promise, mind you, unavailable to those lousy Soviets.

For your consideration, Motive Magazine has pulled together videos of 12 examples of 1980′s digital car instrumentation panels. Take note of the 1987 Buick Rivera, which was the first production car to include a touchscreen monitor.

Clippings from the future of energy

Published on 6 July 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

There is a belief that we have reached a new paradigm in the cost of energy [see also: historical us gas prices]. Whether or not this outlook is, in large part, a consequence of a hysterical assessment of political instability in the Middle East and a nonstop flood of images and words heralding the end of oil, it has certainly embedded itself within the world’s imagination. Combining with the reinvigorated consciousness and concern about the planet’s ecological future that emerged around Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (May 2006), there has been a  5x increase in sustainable energy investments, from USD 33B in 2004 to USD 148B in 2007. (Aside: Do global capital flows correlate to the underlying currents of the zeitgeist or just to the lunatic fringe of a handful of tightly wound technocrats? )

These investments have led to an array of artifacts that all seem to imagine some different type of energy and cultural future for the world. They would have to, in some ways, do this. They are the products not only of the lives of the engineers whose time is consumed in their design and implementation, but as part of a grand strategy for the fund managers who provide the capital for their development. Each party has some claim to the future; a future towards which all their efforts are directed to unfold. But what do they dream along the way to the future?

Hulking Iron-Nineteenth Century-Chic

(See also a view from the Pelamis Nose Camera)

A Scottish company, Pelamis Wave Power, is launching the first commercial ocean energy project this summer off of the coast of Portugal. A single snake, which is 120m long and 3.5m in diameter, must get rolled and buffeted by the waves for the internal pistons to compress and generate electricity. It is an interesting frontier upon which this device is deployed. A creature so much so of human construction placed and asked to integrate into the torrent of the ocean, bobbing up and down. It is a violent frontier that we scarce recall, the explosions inside our engine’s pistons, the rolling of the iron snake as the light bulb comes on. We have in truth forgotten the moments of energy creation.


Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh’s Pelamis Wave Power will deliver 2.25 megawatts through an undersea cable to the Portuguese coastal town of Aguçadoura. Within a year, another 28 generators should come online there, boosting the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may be a trickle of power, but the project represents a new push into wave and tidal power as governments eye the oceans as a way to meet their renewable energy targets.

On the other side of the globe, New Zealand already gets 60 percent of its electric power from renewables but wants to raise that figure to an amazing 90 percent by 2025. Among the ocean-power projects under consideration is an array of 200 tidal turbines that would be anchored to the seafloor across the mouth of the 900‑square-kilometer Kaipara Harbor near Auckland. Crest Energy, the project’s Auckland-based backer, estimates that the turbines would yield 200 MW, or 3 percent of the country’s energy demand. Getting ocean-power projects going in New Zealand was made easier thanks to an initiative introduced in October 2007, says Anthony J. Hopkins, codirector of Crest Energy. It places a 10-year moratorium on the construction of new fossil fuel power plants by state-owned utilities and creates an emissions-trading scheme. “This levels the playing field quite a bit,” says Hopkins.
[link]

Tracing circles, its only divine right

The Crown Estate of England has decided to acquire the prototype of the world’s biggest wind turbine, Clipper’s 7.5 megawatt MBE turbine. The turbine, known as the Britannia, will be located in deep waters near the UK. The marine interests of The Crown Estate include almost the entire UK territorial seabed out to 12 nautical miles, about 55% of the UK’s coastal foreshore. The blades on these mills extend at least 50m in the radius they draw pulling the current from the air.

Crystalline obelisques

The above pictured solar tower in Seville is illuminated by an array of 600 reflectors used to concentrate the sun’s energy. This second sun emerges from the landscape atop a forty story collecting tower where fluids are turned to steam in order to power a generator. The mirrors appear almost as supplicants to the tower, keeping a daily vigil of perfect alignment betwixt the two suns, transferring one to the other. The pictures make it out to be quite an impressive and beautiful artifact. The sort of thing that would make one proud were they to dig it up after we all kill ourselves.

The 11MW PS10 solar power plant will generate 24.3GW/hr per year of clean energy. It will have 624 heliostats that track the sun, each with a 120m² surface area parabolic mirror. The mirrors are focused on a 115m tower, heating water pipes that provide 200m² of water-cooled energy exchange surface area. The thermal energy produces steam which drives a turbine to generate electricity. During the day, the power drives the air conditioners that cool buildings in the city of Seville.

Heat is also stored as steam to allow generation at half load for an hour or longer after dark. This is a relatively short storage time, partially because the tower uses water rather than molten salt for heat storage. The water is held in thermally clad tanks and reaches temperatures of 250°C – 255°C (instead of around 600°C for systems using salt). Solucar has opted for water to reduce fatigue on the system components and to ensure simplicity and robustness for the project. [link]

Skimming along the current with a thunder-bang dam

There is a sort of elegant absence to this project. Located in a scene of deep wilderness, to come upon it with no one around, to see such a grand alignment of human will with the environment in the midst of a frightening human absence, would be rather sublime.

The dam, which would be located over a gorge at Lake Lagoda in north-west Russia, includes a cup-shaped spinnaker sail, believed to be the first of its kind, which will generate renewable energy by funnelling the wind through an attached turbine.

The spinnaker shape is similar to the mainsail of a yacht, and is thought to be particularly effective in capturing wind.

Project architect Laurie Chetwood, said that the shape of the sail was influenced by functionality and a desire to produce something “sculptural”.

He added: “The sail looks like a bird dipping its beak into the water, which will be much less of a blot on this beautiful and unblemished landscape.

“But it is also highly effective at capturing the wind because it replicates the work of a dam and doesn’t let the wind escape in the way it does using traditional propellers.” [link]