A new article by Air & Space Magazine hints at a return to airships, with a focus on their potential use for heavy lifting in military and commercial applications, as well as a use as a spy platform. That’s the idea, anyway. It remains to be seen if the necessary advances in technology will make these behemoths economically viable. One interesting feature would be that they might not come back in the familiar cigar shape – evidently a sphere is better for balancing out the helium. Another cool thing would be hover pads that could push or pull on the surface, either to keep the airship above the ground/ice/sea, or hold it down while cargo is being offloaded so it doesn’t shoot up into the air like a, well, balloon.
Devilstower on Daily Kos wrote an excellent piece yesterday about how quickly cars in the US have changed. Following the Oil Crisis in the seventies lower speed limits encouraged smaller, more efficient cars. Over the last twenty years what had been a massive increase in MPG by the eighties has slowed and stalled with the advent of the SUV and bigger vehicles all round. Now a few manufacturers are producing incredibly efficient small city cars and hypercar such as the VentureOne and the Aptera. Having had a break from the trend towards smaller cars, is public thinking returning to the idea again?
Last week, to combat this documentation of their transgressions, the Burmese government shut down many of their internet servers, closing off the pipeline for information to escape the country’s borders. Phones and cameras were smashed on the streets by the military. Although some internet functionality has returned, it’s becoming harder for people to get information out to us looking in, with most journalists refused entry to Burma. One enterprising ABC reporter snuck in to use his mobile phone for reports.
This for me is one of the key battlegrounds of the 21st century. The internet has made information and news freer than ever before. For some governments, companies and services this trends towards too much free information, presenting us with a classic conflict of interest between the user that wants content and those that do not. This week for example, AT&T changed its policy to allow users who criticise the company to be banned. The debate over Network Neutrality is a vital one to keep channels of communication open and help prevent future internet users having less functionality than we do today.
"10 – Beaming in: I get confused when characters, gear, and important features suddenly appear mid-scene. It’s one thing for Sam Spade to reach into his bottom desk drawer and pull out a cached bottle of whiskey, you’re showing where the object came from. It’s quite another for you to suddenly mention that there was a German bayonet war trophy in plain view atop the filing cabinet in the middle of a fist fight."
The special effects that produced this vision were amazing for their day. Created with miniature models, optics and double exposures, they seemed less artificial than many computer effects of a decade later. But like film stock, they faded with time.
For the new director’s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.
Presenting the fact and fiction of tomorrow since 2001
A new article by Air & Space Magazine hints at a return to airships, with a focus on their potential use for heavy lifting in military and commercial applications, as well as a use as a spy platform. That’s the idea, anyway. It remains to be seen if the necessary advances in technology will make these behemoths economically viable. One interesting feature would be that they might not come back in the familiar cigar shape – evidently a sphere is better for balancing out the helium. Another cool thing would be hover pads that could push or pull on the surface, either to keep the airship above the ground/ice/sea, or hold it down while cargo is being offloaded so it doesn’t shoot up into the air like a, well, balloon.
