There are many pressures acting on the air travel industry at the moment. There are the economic pressures from the fact that people are feeling like they can't afford as many holidays as they had previously. Then there's the environmental pressures that is pushing plane companies to invest in greener technology, or governments to implement harsher fuel taxes to discourage the use of budget airlines.
So whatever the future for air travel holds, it will need to be inexpensive and non-polluting. But is this just a fantasy, and one that we cannot reasonably hope will come to be? Perhaps, then, we should just abandon air travel and adopt forms of transport that we already know meet these criteria, such as cycling. And here comes in the final pressure: the demands of modern life. Business and industry has become dependent on the speed and convenience of air travel, so abandoning it would be disastrous.
The only option available to us, then, is to develop a technology for flying that is superior in all these respects. Thankfully, there are companies that have picked up the gauntlet on this challenge, and their ideas on the matter are starting to take form. EADS, the company, for example, has recently uncovered their plans for a new hypersonic, stratospheric rocket place.
The project is called Zehst, which stands for zero emission hypersonic transportation, and will carry 100 passengers from London to Tokyo in just two and a half hours, at a height of around 20 miles high. The best part is that because it will run on the combination of bio fuels made from algae and seaweed, and hydrogen and oxygen to get into the stratosphere, the plane will be totally environmentally clean.
So it seems the dream of a clean, fast and convenient plane is one that could be realised; but it remains to be seen as to whether it will be affordable. Boeing are also developing a form of supersonic airliner, and have actually performed tests on a pilotless model. EADS claims, however, that there is nothing to suggest that Boeings model will be environmentally clean like their own.
So whatever the future for air travel holds, it will need to be inexpensive and non-polluting. But is this just a fantasy, and one that we cannot reasonably hope will come to be? Perhaps, then, we should just abandon air travel and adopt forms of transport that we already know meet these criteria, such as cycling. And here comes in the final pressure: the demands of modern life. Business and industry has become dependent on the speed and convenience of air travel, so abandoning it would be disastrous.
The only option available to us, then, is to develop a technology for flying that is superior in all these respects. Thankfully, there are companies that have picked up the gauntlet on this challenge, and their ideas on the matter are starting to take form. EADS, the company, for example, has recently uncovered their plans for a new hypersonic, stratospheric rocket place.
The project is called Zehst, which stands for zero emission hypersonic transportation, and will carry 100 passengers from London to Tokyo in just two and a half hours, at a height of around 20 miles high. The best part is that because it will run on the combination of bio fuels made from algae and seaweed, and hydrogen and oxygen to get into the stratosphere, the plane will be totally environmentally clean.
So it seems the dream of a clean, fast and convenient plane is one that could be realised; but it remains to be seen as to whether it will be affordable. Boeing are also developing a form of supersonic airliner, and have actually performed tests on a pilotless model. EADS claims, however, that there is nothing to suggest that Boeings model will be environmentally clean like their own.
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