WEBVTT - Are Futuristic Floating Airports Already Beached? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:15.640 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome Jock Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.279 podcast that looks at the future. It says, right in 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:20.880 the long in this big old jet plane, I've been 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.720 thinking about my home. I'm job and Strick, and I'm 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.320 Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be starting off 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.360 with a little bit of wonderful retro futurism from the 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:36.239 nineteen thirties. Yeah, this was something so I read an 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.000 article in CNN that prompted me to look into this, 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.760 and it all started with an article that came out 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.920 in Popular Mechanics in January nineteen thirty. Now was that 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:51.400 Popular Science or Popular Popular Mechanics. You can actually read 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:55.800 the entire issue of January ninety Popular Mechanics on Google Books, 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.360 and the whole thing is physically scanned in. There's a 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:00.520 whole bunch of of those old back issues of that, 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:04.920 and it's really fascinating for the advertisements and for the articles. Well, 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:06.640 for one thing, you know that this was this was 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:12.200 a small piece about the future of commercial flight. Because 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:15.520 commercial flight was pretty young in n there hadn't been 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:17.760 a whole lot of it yeah, the right, brothers, that 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:21.360 was only like what three or yeah? And so there 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:23.880 were bits of in the articles such as will you 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:27.640 plummet from the sky? Uh? Will you, to which the 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:31.640 answer was maybe, to be fair, I wonder that every 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.520 time I get on an airplane. Yeah, I understand the physics, 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:38.399 and I'm still like, right, right the whole scenes, in 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:42.760 defiance of the laws of nature, we will take flight. Well, 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:46.760 this this article had a tiny paragraph in it that 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:50.640 was says aside for a specific uh subject, and that 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:57.320 was this idea of airport built over the surface of 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:02.160 the ocean, specifically, several airport built every four hundred miles 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.480 or so across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and North America. 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:10.400 And the idea was not that planes had to land 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.080 in order to refuel, although that would definitely be a 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:18.440 bonus because they could because they had already done long 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:22.400 long distance flights before, but more for the comfort of passengers. Uh. 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:26.800 The amenities aboard early commercial flights were let's say, even 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:31.840 less impressive than flying coach today. Anyway, unless you were rich, 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:34.800 in which case you might have all the comforts the 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:39.120 wealthy could afford. Yes, you would, you would, you weren't 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:43.320 so worried about speed, We're worried about luxury. But they 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:45.600 wanted to put an airport about every four dred miles 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.920 across the Atlantic. And it didn't go into a lot 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:53.359 of detail about the actual mechanics of such a thing. 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.160 It did essentially say that these airports wouldn't truly be 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.639 floating on the ocean. They would be so ported by 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.919 columns that reached all the way down to the sea floor, 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:08.200 and in fact the airport itself would remain eighty feet 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.840 suspended over the surface of the water, so would appear 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:17.280 to float over the ocean, but it wouldn't truly be floating. 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.120 But that's what we're gonna talk about today, are floating airports. 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.480 Uh these, by the way, the ones that we're talking about, 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:27.400 popular mechanics never happened. Uh, just no one wanted to 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:29.840 put down the money. I guess according to popular mechanics, 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:33.520 each floating airport would cost about twelve million dollars. So 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:38.160 twelve million dollars about a hundred and seventy million dollars 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.320 in today's money, which is actually a low estimate compared 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:44.840 to some of the other plans that actual humans have 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:47.600 actually cooked up. Right, right, well, it could very well 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:52.080 be that Popular Mechanics was being overly optimistic about the 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:56.720 construction costs of such an airport. So uh, it's it's 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:00.600 just one of a few early suggestions of this kind 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:02.800 of approach. There was actually another one that came along 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:06.120 just a couple of years later. Yeah, in February nineteen 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.680 thirty four issue of Popular Science that came across an 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:13.040 article called Uncle Sam asked to build floating ocean airports. 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:17.200 And it must be terrible when you're an icon and 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.560 you're not even a real person and people come to 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.640 you and like, hey, can you build a floating ocean 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.840 airport for Build it? Build it for me. Yeah. I 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:26.400 just asked Mr Peanut the other day if they would, 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:28.440 you know, co sign on a homeland and that was 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.360 probably unfair on me. Well, this was about a this 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:37.680 Canadian inventor and engineer named Edward Robert Armstrong's long running 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.240 idea for these things called seed romes, and these were 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:46.760 truly as proposed floating airports. So a seed rome would 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.520 be a one thousand, two hundred and twenty five foot 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:54.159 long landing area and refueling station floating a hundred feet 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:57.160 above the water on a series of twenty eight buoyancy 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:01.280 tanks that are partially submerged and also had ballasts there 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.440 to help, you know, prevent it from rocking too much 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.039 in the waves and stuff like that. And these things 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.960 would have overnight accommodations and they'd essentially be run like 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.280 a ship. Also like a ship, the seed drome would 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:16.360 have propellers for self guided navigation if necessary. They're under 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:19.920 most circumstances. They would remain anchored in place by steel 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:22.360 cables which are attached to a buoy which is in 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.279 turn attached to a heavy sunken anchor. And if you 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:26.960 all want to see what a picture of it looks like, 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:28.640 I've got a little link here you can take a 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.560 look at it. It looks like those great old retrofuturist 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.479 illustrations of the you know, the future. It has great 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:39.359 girders and beams and and all of that sort of 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:44.039 industrial magic. That's wonderful. But so what it called for 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.000 was sort of like you were talking about a series 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:48.719 of stations throughout the Atlantic Ocean. It called for five 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:52.840 seed dromes between the United States and Spain. It's at 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.039 about at the latitude of Washington, d C. That would 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.080 work as refueling stations for transatlantic flights, and the the 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.600 sea drums would each be about three hours flight apart 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.120 from each other. And one of the rational is given 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.120 in the article. I don't know if there's really all 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.840 that much to this, but what the article claimed was 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:15.559 that planes could transport heavy payloads with greater speed since 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.880 the refueling stations would require the planes to carry less 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.200 fuel in addition to their payloads, so you wouldn't have 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.400 to put all the fuel on board that it takes 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.800 sticking across the ocean. You could just sort of, you know, 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.440 fill up one fifth of the tank each time. But 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.279 according to this article, the US government was quote interested 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.120 in the proposal, and Armstrong was currently seeking federal funding 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.160 for the project, and somehow it just didn't work out. 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.320 I don't know. I'm guessing they should have asked someone 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:48.400 besides just uncle Sam, right if I found at least 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:52.080 Santa and the Easter Bunny to right it. Arguing arguing 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.400 with a poster just doesn't trust me, I've been there, 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.720 doesn't really get you anywhere. Oh. I imagine that there 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.480 were several other things going on in this country other 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.479 than like a pressing need to get more stops between 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.279 US and certain parts of Europe. Well, Sam had this 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.480 bizarre plan to build landing strips out of people. He 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.400 was a saying, I want you to land planes on, 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.800 and just a few years later there'll be plenty of 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:22.200 unemployed to use them as ballast. Uh yeah, moving on 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:26.560 from gallows humor. So these projects didn't work out, but 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:31.080 it didn't stop people from thinking about the floating airport 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:35.520 concept in general, and in fact it has There's gonna 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.120 be so many puns in this, and I apologize resurfaced 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:43.120 many decades later, and uh you might wanna know, like, well, 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:45.840 why would anyone be interested in a floating airport in 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.200 the first place, Like what's why not build a regular airport? Yeah, 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.400 what's the appeal? Well, I mean, part of this is 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.520 to think about what is the purpose of an airport. 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.360 Obviously it's to land planes. But you can't land a 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:01.800 plane just anywhere you're want to land it closer to 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.840 the destinations where people want to go. So, uh so 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:10.240 land scarcity and local land scarcity matters. And it's not 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:13.640 that there's not enough land on Earth to land airplanes on. 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.640 That in many cases there's not enough flat stable real 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.280 estate near the big population center where people are trying 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:23.680 to get to write. Yeah. No one is saying that 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:26.240 New York State does not have enough land in it, 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:31.520 but the isle of Manhattan specifically not large. It's pretty 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.320 it's pretty jampacked with stuff already. Yeah. Yeah, there's There 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.439 are a lot of places around the world where the 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:45.880 populations are either coming close to reaching the capacity that 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:50.400 their airport can provide or are beyond that capacity. And 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:52.360 it's not as simple as saying, well, why don't you 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.000 just build another runway, because sometimes there's just not any 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:58.679 space to do that. You can't really add on to 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.640 some existing airports. And then the other, the other alternative, 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.240 is to build an additional airport. There may not be 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.040 any flat land near the city that's available for that. 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.080 I mean, think about Japan. That's a great example. Japan 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:15.880 has extremely densely populated cities, and it also there's not 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:19.000 a lot of flat land. Sure, yeah, and well and 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.559 and furthermore, when you start talking about building a second airport, 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.080 then you're getting into that problem that we've discussed before 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:29.640 on this show about adding um uh more infrastructure problems. 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.559 Rather than kind of doubling up with the infrastructure that 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:34.760 you've already built. Yeah. Well, and actually in there's some 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:38.800 cases where there's been discussion of creating a floating airport 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:41.960 to completely replace an existing airport, so it's not even 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:44.800 to just supplement what is already there. And maybe that 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.440 we could raise that parking lot and put up some 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:51.880 more high rise condos. Yeah. Yeah, boy, market has really 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.760 opened our eyes to the future, hasn't it? Okay anyway, 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:58.840 So land scarcity is obviously a big issue. That's probably 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.520 a reason number one why people have looked at floating airports. 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.960 The idea that if you can't really find flat ground 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.840 that is not already taken up by something else, what 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:11.360 about any water that's nearby. You don't have to worry 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.720 about flat ground there you can if you can build 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.400 something on water and make sure it's steady enough, then 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:19.120 that could solve a lot of issues depending on where 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:20.920 the city is. Obviously you kind of had to be 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.160 near water, but a lot of our major population areas 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:26.480 happened to be because well, I don't know if you notice, 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:29.680 but water is something that we need. Also, trade routes 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.400 having been what they were for a long time. Yes, 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.000 seaports were kind of a thing. Our city of Atlanta 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.040 is kind of an exception because we were sort of 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.360 a a stop for a lot of different land routes 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:46.319 along the Eastern Seaboard rails. Yeah, yeah, I mean Atlanta 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.520 used to be terminus. It was the place where all 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:52.160 these rail lines terminated. And uh so it's a little different. 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.160 But but most cities tend to be not too far 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.400 from a coastal region and that's where you could put 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.440 something like a floating airport. Honestly, be a lot harder 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:04.920 to do it in the mountains. So that's reason number one. 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.160 Another reason, though, is the idea of cutting back on 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:11.160 noise pollution. And it's not that an airport over the 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:14.840 water would magically be more quiet. It's that there aren't 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:19.120 as many people living on open water. So air airplanes 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.240 coming down and landing at an airport that's on open water, 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.679 you wouldn't have as much noise pollution there because it 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:27.920 wouldn't be affecting anybody. I mean, the noise would be there, 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.560 it just wouldn't be affecting people right right, And and 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:33.040 that's more than just an annoyance. If you live in 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:36.680 an area with heavy continual noise pollution, like an airport 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:40.480 that puts adults at possible risk for hypertension and thus 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.120 cardigio vascular disease, and kids in that situation could be 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:47.400 at risk for stuff like impaired reading, comprehension and long 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.439 term memory plus higher blood pressure. Again. Um, so getting 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.880 that kind of industry out of our neighborhoods could do 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:57.720 real good for people. Yeah. So there's there's some actual 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.800 like positives that you can point at right way and say, 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:03.400 all right, all right, I can see why you would 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.920 consider this, But there's there's some also potential negative impacts 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.000 as well. Doesn't sound cheap, super not cheap, I'm guessing 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.840 un cheap, But there's an opposite cheap there is, it's expensive, 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.240 and that's what this would be. Yes, But aside from 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:22.080 the monetary thing, there's also environmental concerns because you know, 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.600 it is taking a source of noise, pollution and heat 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.560 sink due to all that pavement and you know local 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:33.439 land environment destruction and putting all that bad stuff smack 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.920 into the middle of an ocean. Uh? Is that good? Times? 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.160 Is that worth it? Yeah? And when we get into 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:44.839 talking about specifics, I'll mention some of the the uh, 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.920 the stuff that various groups have said like, oh, the 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:57.040 invinmal impact would be minimal. Um, I'm somewhat skeptical of that, 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.800 at least in a few cases. I'm I'm pretty highly skeptical. 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.360 I think that in general, when you're covering a few 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.800 square miles of ocean space with something that didn't used 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:08.760 to be there before, there's probably going to be an 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.760 environmental impact, some kind of impact. And oceans, as we 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.440 have said before, are tricky. There's more ocean than truck. 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:19.839 So negative negative, Um, no, absolutely, you're absolutely right. Hey, 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.120 but wait a minute, I've got a question. Sure, Okay, 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.280 don't we already have floating airports because I've seen pictures 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:28.800 of aircraft carriers. It looks kind of like that's sort 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:32.280 of what they are, so kind of if you fly 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:37.520 a fighter jet, and I do want I was about 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:39.880 to say it was learning so much more about Lauren today. 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.120 So yeah. It wasn't long after the invention of heavier 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:47.920 than air aircraft that people started saying, huh, I wonder 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.040 if you could put it on a boat. Brave pilots 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:58.160 some might say crazy, began to experiment with trying landing 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.400 on and taking off from oats. In fact, that the 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:06.720 earliest aircraft carriers were converted merchant vessels, where they built 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.960 a flat deck on top of the existing boat's deck 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:12.240 and then asked people to kind of try and take 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:15.200 off from it or land on it. The earliest attempts, 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:20.440 by the way, not a successful but this developed over 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.560 time and you began to see actual ships dedicated from 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.120 the design process all the way through construction to be 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:33.400 an aircraft carrier. And so before World War Two we 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.560 had dedicated aircraft carriers sailing around the ocean. In fact, 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:40.400 I think the British had the earliest ones. Now they 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:45.600 tend to be relatively small compared to a commercial airport runway. 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.120 The runways on aircraft carriers maybe might be about three 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.640 feet long, and they often use catapult systems. In fact, 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.160 they all have some form of catapult system to propel 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.600 a jet forward so that it gets the speed necessary 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.760 to take off. So to catch them kind of, they've 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:06.800 got a cabling system where that when the jet is landing, 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.840 a hook catches a cable and that helps the jet 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.800 come to a stop instead of just rolling right off 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.320 the other end of the aircraft carrier and into the ocean. 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.320 So that's a very short runway three feet is incredibly short. 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:24.000 A medium sized commercial aircraft requires a runway of six 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.920 thousand feet. It was a way bigger times twenty times longer, 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.040 and larger jets need even longer runways like eight thousand feet. 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:36.960 So what are you gonna do? The obvious solution here 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:41.040 is to have passengers flying Harrier jets. Yeah, that that 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:46.240 sounds great. It might be a little expensive, and you 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:48.240 might be you might be tying your luggage to the 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.840 outside of the jet, but it would definitely be an 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:57.000 exciting trip. Biscoff cookies and I don't know that you'd 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.800 be holding onto your cookies and a Harrier jet honestly. Uh. 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:03.960 Although I've always wanted to fly in a like, I 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:05.720 have an experience of being able to fly in one 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:07.560 of those, either a stunt plane or a fighter jet 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:11.360 type of thing that's anyone out their college. Yeah, I'm 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.480 still waiting on my hook up for a helicopter. But 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.119 you mean a shorter, vertical takeoff jet or just any 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.680 fighters Really, any fighter jet vertical takeoff and landing jet 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.760 would be super cool. But really, any jet is what 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:26.920 I'm talking about. But no, that's not really a practical solution. Obviously, 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.520 So if we wanted to build a floating airport, it 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.320 would have to be of a significant length in order 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:38.280 to meet the requirements of commercial aircraft. Um and then 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.800 also with the aircraft carriers, the traditional kind, they have 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:45.720 some problems with pitch and roll. I mean, obviously if 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.760 it's if the if the swells are really really big 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.160 and the aircraft carrier is in fact moving, it makes 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.840 it much more difficult to have a safe landing on 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.680 that that surface, and that might be a level of 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:05.000 risk that could be acceptable in some military applications, but 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:09.960 it wouldn't be acceptable in a commercial flight. So you 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.600 have to have a surface that is going to be 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.640 as steady as you can possibly make it, and that 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:19.720 means you have to come up with an alternative to 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.720 your classic aircraft carrier. But people have done this, like 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:25.879 we were saying before, like this is a thing that 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.480 people have gotten through a number of planning stages for. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:33.400 we've even had a model made of this and had 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:37.199 aircraft land and take off from such a model. That 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.040 model would be one that was constructed in the mid 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.879 ninety nineties. That's when a group of companies, mostly shipbuilders, 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:46.919 got together in Tokyo to discuss the possibility of constructing 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:51.920 what we now call very large floating structures or vl 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.320 F s is I love I love it when the 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:57.919 word large is in any kind of acronym. I like 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:03.200 it with the word very Consider their very large floating structures, 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.960 thank you very much. Uh. And it was specifically for 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.160 the purposes of an offshore airport, although they proposed other 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.440 uses for such a structure as well, and they wanted 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:15.919 it to float in Tokyo Bay, and so they formed 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.040 what they called the Technological Research Association of Mega Float. 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:27.920 Mega Float. It's not a transformer, sadly, uh they Yeah. Well, 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.520 I mean I guess it transformed from lots of smaller 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:33.680 segments into a very big segment. Yeah, because they built 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.720 it out in sections exactly tiles almost. Yeah. I think 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.440 of I think of like like like old hot wheels 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.560 tracks where they snapped together. It's kind of the same 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.800 sort of idea. So so each segment was pretty huge, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.840 as by sixty uh. And the overall length of the 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.760 full airport. If they were to build the big thing, 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:58.440 it would have been five thousand meters long, and four 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:03.280 thousand meters would be runways. Five thousand meters long for 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.200 for our non meter readers is about three point one miles. 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.159 That's a big floating structure. Yeah, yeah, And so the 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.080 actual individual segments, I just had a question. I never 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:17.479 thought of this before. I don't know what the answer is. Well, 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.880 what is the largest floating structure ever created by humans? 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:23.360 That's an excellent question. And I don't know the answer either, 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.320 because I didn't think about it before we did this, 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.440 but I would imagine it couldn't be much larger than 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:30.960 that for a floating structure. Most of the floating structures 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.080 I know about that are big or things like oil rigs, 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.560 and they're they're large, but they're not three point one 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:39.920 miles in size large, at least not the ones I'm 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:43.880 aware of. Um. In this case, the actual individual tiles 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.760 themselves were big. Three hundred meters by sixty Now that 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:52.360 means that's more than three d yards, which means that 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:58.000 these individual tiles were longer than three football fields laid down, 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.160 you know, end to end. And they each of these 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:05.639 segments were built on on tanks that you know, sealed 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:08.119 tanks that allowed it to float. That's what created the buoyancy. 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:11.240 And so you had these floating segments that then were 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:17.480 towed into Tokyo Bay snapped together. Uh, they had a 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:23.879 series of clamps Joe, and then welded together. They actually 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.240 talked about how they had to you know, there might 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:27.760 be water in some chambers that would have to be 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:31.040 pumped out. They'd then be welld and sealed together, welded 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.360 and sealed together, and then ultimately you got this one 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.560 thousand meter long runway that was kind of the scale 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:44.119 model for the overall airport. Um they hypothesized that due 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:46.680 to the size of the structure, it would be so 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:52.119 large that would span multiple wave cycles. So you know, 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.160 ocean waves are physical waves, but they behave the same 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:57.840 as other types of waves. And in fact, the idea 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:00.040 was that the structure would be so large, then the 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:03.520 waves that would encounter the mega float would cancel each 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.920 other out so that you would you would not get 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:11.520 a net movement with the actual airport. You would only 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:16.359 get a tiny, little little deflection, like a little deflective 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.719 movement due to the waves. And it was referred to 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:24.439 as the hydro elastic response or just elastic response, although 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:28.640 in the report they said it was quote hardly noticeable 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:33.200 in quote but to be fair they said, even though 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:36.439 it was a minute amount of movement, they wanted to 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:40.879 do extensive testing to make sure that this was not 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:44.440 gonna end up causing any you know, issues, any safety 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.240 concerns for aircraft. Obviously, that would be a flaw so 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.199 great to cause them to completely abandon the project entirely. 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:55.919 So they determined, this probably isn't gonna be a problem. 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:59.440 We will test it to be absolutely sure. And they 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.680 began to test this and said that everything seemed to 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:10.240 go pretty well. Um, however, uh, they it's not there anymore. 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:14.480 What happened, Well, they tested it and then the experiment 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:16.679 was over. Then they dismantled it. I mean again, it 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:18.760 was only meant to be a model, like a thousand 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:22.360 meter long model. Um. They were able to show that 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:26.000 there were some interesting safety features here. Uh. They showed 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:30.280 that the overall structure could remain bulliant even if one 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:36.280 section suffered damage. They said, if there were a catastrophic crash, 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:38.520 and of course you hope that never happens, but if 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:43.040 there were, then depending upon the level of damage, the 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.160 structure should still remain fine. For one thing, if there 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:50.240 was a fiery accident, most of that heat would dissipate 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:53.880 into the air, it wouldn't transfer into the structure itself. 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.280 The structure is made out of steel, which is pretty 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:01.000 resilient stuff. Uh. The if it crat the top of 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:05.640 the tanks, it should still remain fine. Uh. And if 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:08.200 it even caused cracks all the way through the tanks 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.359 to the bottom, it still would remain bulliant, assuming that 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:14.720 it's damaged just one section, because the other sections would 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:17.600 keep it floating, and so then you could send in 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:20.640 repair crews to repair whatever the damage was and keep 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.760 the whole structure safe as a result. Um. They also 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:26.480 talked about how with it being segmented, if you're talking 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:29.160 about like a massive damage where you need to replace 0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:32.280 a segment, it's more or less modular, so you could 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:35.280 in theory do that. It would still you know, the 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:37.680 airport would have to go offline for a significant amount 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:41.879 of time, but you could remove a segment and replace 0:23:41.960 --> 0:23:45.960 it with a new one if that was absolutely necessary. Now, 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:48.280 with a structure like this, I would be kind of 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:51.440