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Old 30th Dec 2018, 14:50
  #34 (permalink)  
pattern_is_full
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Denver
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Bend alot: I quite agree that there can be shortsightness. But that cuts both ways. One has to be longsighted enough to see the problems and solve them ahead of time.

A) Will there be new batteries? Very probably. Will they mean compressing more and more joules into smaller and smaller packages? Yep. Three numbers to keep in mind: 7-8-7. Cellphone and laptop batteries have already started small on-board fires, and then there is UPS 6 - brought down by autoignition of a cargo pallet of 81,000 lithium batteries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6

B) Good idea - in principle. But - voltage-carrying taxiways? "Third rails" alongside? Overhead wires? We'll assume linear accelerators can be tuned to be less violent than carrier launches.

How much power will "beamed power" beams have to transmit to hold up x-many kilos of aircraft, and x-many kilos of passengers? At what point do they become thousands of directed-energy weapons criss-crossing the skies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon

Good (longsighted) engineering is not just having a bright idea - it is poking all the holes in that idea yourself, and then figuring out how to plug them.
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