{"id":17407,"date":"2012-10-21T11:32:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T16:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17407"},"modified":"2012-10-21T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T16:32:11","slug":"inducing-take-off-fireball-xl5-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/21\/inducing-take-off-fireball-xl5-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Inducing take-off, <em>Fireball XL5<\/em> style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/science-and-technology\/21564826-future-airliners-could-be-catapulted-sky-electric-motors\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Economist<\/em><\/a> looks at a back-of-the-envelope proposal from engineers at Airbus that adapts aircraft carrier technology to civil use:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mindful that many passengers are already nervous about the whole process of getting a plane airborne, the engineers prefer to call their proposal \u201cEco-climb\u201d. But the idea is straight out of \u201c<em>Fireball<\/em>\u201d. The aircraft to be launched would sit on a platform that ran along a track where the runway would otherwise be. The platform would accelerate to take-off speed, at which point the plane would lift into the air powered by its own engines.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Altogether, according to Airbus\u2019s back-of-the-envelope calculations, Eco-climb would reduce fuel consumption by 3% on a typical 900km (560-mile) flight, even with existing aircraft designs. But it would also allow for the design of lighter aircraft, with smaller engines, which would cut fuel consumption, noise and emissions further.<\/p>\n<p>Nor is the idea complete fantasy. General Atomics, an American military contractor, has already built and tested a linear-induction-motor-based system of this sort at an airbase at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The General Atomics system is now being scaled up to be fitted on a new generation of aircraft carriers for the American navy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist looks at a back-of-the-envelope proposal from engineers at Airbus that adapts aircraft carrier technology to civil use: Mindful that many passengers are already nervous about the whole process of getting a plane airborne, the engineers prefer to call their proposal \u201cEco-climb\u201d. But the idea is straight out of \u201cFireball\u201d. The aircraft to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[123,617,174,202],"class_list":["post-17407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-technology","tag-aircraft","tag-carriers","tag-innovation","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4wL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17410,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407\/revisions\/17410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}