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Hello @May and @Jezim,
The jury’s meeting minutes can help you understand a little bit better what they jury valued about this project.
Technically speaking the project is challenging, no doubt about that, but there’s nothing in this solution that’s so far from reality that one could not imagine how it might work.
The cells themselves can be seen as small hot-air balloons, or zeppelins. The exact diameter of the cells and the composition of the gas to make them float would have to be carefully studied, but the idea of being able to elevate from the ground without the need of a propeller is not new.
The cables themselves could be just that, a cable that could be rolled or unrolled with the push of a button, very much like the systems you see on tow trucks.
The cells would not tangle with one another for the same reason kites can be flown very close to one another. The wind is the same for all of them, and so when the wind changes direction they all move at once without crashing into each other.
Of course those are just the main ideas that make this project work “in theory”, and there are still many other challenges that would need to be solved, but every daring structure humanity has ever built, including landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge or the Sydney Opera, were initially only ideas that could work “in theory” with tons of challenges that needed to be solved, and they were, even though they might have looked like science fiction at the time.
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Hi @May,
It’s easy for us to look at any standing structure and think that their physics are obvious. After all, they are standing there before our eyes. But if you do a bit of historic research you’ll find that people were actually scared of them when they were first proposed. In their minds such structures could and would not stand. They too thought that such designs were ignoring the laws of physics.
Take a look at this quote published by the Popular Sciences Monthly in March 1904 regarding the idea of commercial airplanes:
“…The machines will eventually be fast, they will be used in sport, but they are not to be thought of as commercial carriers. To say nothing of the danger, the sizes must remain small and the passengers few, because the weight will, for the same design, increase as the cube of the dimensions, while the supporting surfaces will only increase as the square. It is true that when higher speeds become safe it will require fewer square feet of surface to carry a man, and that dimensions will actually decrease, but this will not be enough to carry much greater extraneous loads, such as a store of explosives or big guns to shoot them. The power required will always be great, say something like one horse power to every hundred pounds of weight, and hence fuel can not be carried for long single journeys.”
Or even this one other one on the same matter, published by Harper and Row in 1962 (remember that the Wright brothers had already made their first successful flight in 1903, 59 years earlier!):
“…The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic and carrying innumerable passengers in a way analogous to our modern steamships…It seems safe to say that such ideas must be wholly visionary, and even if a machine could get across with one or two passengers the expense would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who could own his own yacht. Another popular fallacy is to expect enormous speed to be obtained. It must be remembered that the resistance of the air increases as the square of the speed and the work as the cube…If with 30 h.p. we can now attain a speed of 40 m.p.h., then in order to reach a speed of 100 m.p.h., we must use a motor capable of 470 h.p…it is clear that with our present devices there is no hope of competing for racing speed with either our locomotives or our automobiles.”
These statements were made by reputable people with knowledge in the field, and yet today we fly people and cargo across the world all the time.
If you are looking for an example of a house suspended in midair, there probably isn’t one. But you can definitely book a romantic dinner on a hot air balloon. Could we call that a dining room? Could we imagine a nice bath after that dinner sometime in the future? Probably. Would that be called a dining room and a bathroom? Will it be comfortable? Probably not, at least not at first, but neither where the first airplanes, and today you can travel on a full flat bed watching cable TV and take a nice hot shower before landing. Innovation needs to be approached with an open mind and taken one step at a time. Groundbreaking ideas rarely go from not existing to fully working, ready to use, comfortable products or solutions.
Anyone else would like to join the debate and share their thoughts? We would love to hear them! 😊
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