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.
If air travel is to have a future, then, it must be one in which air travel is affordable, and environmentally friendly. But is that really a possibility? Is it not a more sensible option to just rely on a technology we already know to be cheap and relatively low impact, like cycling or trains? And this brings us to the final pressure on the airline industry: the demands of modern life. Business and industry has become so integrated with air travel, because of its speed and convenience, so that abandoning it is not really an option.
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 plane, called the Zehst (zero emission hypersonic transportation) will fly at a staggering 20 miles above the earth's surface, and will be able to fly from London to Tokyo in just two-and-a-half hours, carrying up to 100 passengers. What's more is that it will produce no harmful pollution, using bio fuels made from seaweed and algae to take off, then clean rocket engines powered by liquid hydrogen and oxygen to get it into the stratosphere.
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.
If air travel is to have a future, then, it must be one in which air travel is affordable, and environmentally friendly. But is that really a possibility? Is it not a more sensible option to just rely on a technology we already know to be cheap and relatively low impact, like cycling or trains? And this brings us to the final pressure on the airline industry: the demands of modern life. Business and industry has become so integrated with air travel, because of its speed and convenience, so that abandoning it is not really an option.
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 plane, called the Zehst (zero emission hypersonic transportation) will fly at a staggering 20 miles above the earth's surface, and will be able to fly from London to Tokyo in just two-and-a-half hours, carrying up to 100 passengers. What's more is that it will produce no harmful pollution, using bio fuels made from seaweed and algae to take off, then clean rocket engines powered by liquid hydrogen and oxygen to get it into the stratosphere.
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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