Note by @jeder

this is the future of air travel

@jeder Like this? Maybe we still need to work on the general shape and capacity of the fuselage.

@jeder @theory I wanna see the pilot have to get out and put one of the pantographs arms back on its line with those long poles the bus drivers have

@jeder looks great, but still a bit old-fashioned, what if we remove the wings and put it on two long pieces of metal

@jeder Yes Airbus introduced those in 2019 or so:
www.der-postillon.com/2019/04/e-flugzeug.html

@jeder @cstross fly-by-wire

@jeder isnt that just a cable car with extra steps

(although i imagine the current collectors would frequently produce some cool-looking electrical arcs)

@jeder well it's not a boeing, that's fortunate!

@jeder
And as near to flying cars as we'll ever get.

@jeder Ah, are those the new cable cars?

@jeder why no laser energy transfer??

@kaia @jeder I am not sure, if the airframe will be in one piece afterwards :neocat_woozy:

@kaia @jeder I was curious as to how unrealistic both options are.

I will be using a flight from KJFK (New York City) to KBOS (Boston) on a Embraer 175LR fueled with A1 jet fuel (commonly used in America), departing on 9:00 today (24-03-08) as an example, I'm using aviapages.com for numbers, though I'm converting some units.

Just some quick numbers:
the peek power usage is about 34 MW
the total power usage is about 37 GJ or 10 MW h
the distance is 303 km

Overhead plane lines

Very hard to achieve. Some issues:
the pilot would have to keep the plane attached to the cable , which presumably is difficult
assuming CuMg0.5 150mm2 is used for the wires , as it commonly is for overhead lines , which weighs 1.334 Gg/km , the entire cable would weigh 404.051 Gg
the height the cable is at is over 3 magnitudes higher than any currently existing power pylons , thus requiring they be kept in the air in some floating structure , which is also hard[citation needed]

anyway lets ignore that idea

Laser energy transfer

this seems like such a better idea right?

Well um yeah we need to transfer at least 34 MW . for reference , the laser shown is the Tactical High Energy Laser prototype , which was in fact a prototype anti-air laser . Unfortunately I could not find its power output , however another anti-air prototype laser , the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser was able to output over a megawatt for 70s . so yeah you need like 30 of those per firing group

so yeah the aircraft will likely not survive

@jeder What I imagine tho is having a solar panel on the plane and charging it with a super strong laser. I have no idea if it makes any sense.

@jeder Was pretty wild seeing the footage yesterday of the 777 departing San Francisco for Japan have a tire literally fall off after takeoff, and get rerouted to LAX. 😳 🛞

@jeder ah yes, this is that fly-by-wire technology I've heard so much about.

@kboyd @jeder AirTrolleyBus

@jeder Take the wings off and put its wheels on tracks and we got an idea there.

@jeder please head towards the nearest exit

Thank you for your cooperation

@jeder well that puts a new meaning to fly by wire 😹

It would be more efficient if we chained a few of these planes up in a line. Like a... convoy of ships! Maybe you wouldn't even need the engines on the extra ones, the one in front could pull them all! Like a
...n 18 wheeler truck

@jeder I doubt it. Those winglets look outdated.

@jeder new meaning for "Skynet"

@jeder Why have the plane? Let's just build a trans-Atlantic zipline

@jeder

Years ago, I wrote a story for a small-press SF anthology about that. "That wasn't turbulence, that was the points at the Greenland Junction..."

Also robots with VLIW CPUs and no program-counter running off paper tape.

@jeder "April And The Extraordinary World" energy tbh

@jeder
Hey, why not? We'll do literally anything except fund passenger rail.

@jeder www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HfvS68aMIc Unironically a "proposal" that I've no idea how serious it is XD

@KolaMagpie @jeder Dahir Insaat strikes again

@KolaMagpie @jeder > flying train

SO AN AIRPLANE???

@jeder This would be perfect for Arnhem. You on this, @hack42 ?

@jeder how are the power lines being held up?!

@ilobmirt @jeder

Epoxyed to the celestial dome, obviously.

@jeder Oh, good. Then the chem trails would be closer to the ground so they can work better. 😉

@jeder 100% yes. Hang the pantograph off the bottom, now you have a renewables powered land ekranoplan that doesn't have to carry 200T explosive petrochemicals. Bonus: infra now cheaper to build than high speed rail, with intrinsic vertical separation.

@jeder funiculars in the stratosphere