Weird Aircraft Concept Designs

Perhaps our great grandchildren will complain about being stuffed like sardines in the Green Airways Economy Class sometime in the future. But for now, this is a concept design of CleanEra, engineer Etnel Straatsma's idea of the future of eco-friendly, made-from-light-material aircraft at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. CleanEra also happens to be an abbreviation for Cost-effective Low Emissions and Noise Efficient Regional Aircraft.

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If the Green Airways is for us ordinaries, the Strato Cruiser will be for the celebrities of the future. Designed by Tino Schaedler and Michael Brown, this "new doughnut concept" zeppelin is an airship filled with helium, featuring everything expected of opulence: gourmet restaurant, swimming pool, spa, library, private suites, and even a bungee jumping platform - for the ultimate 'throw 'em outta the plane' jibe at an annoying passenger, I'm sure.

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A super fast plane concept by Reaction Engines for a European project called the LAPCAT which stands for Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies, this sleek and slender aircraft aims "to reduce long-distance flights, e.g. From Brussels to Sydney, to less than 2 to 4 hours." Their website describes it as "Configuration A2 Mach 5 Civil Transport". I'd want to call it the Concorde's Daddy.

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Let's spare the cliches: It is both a bird and a plane and it's (get ready to introduce a new word to your vocabulary) an Ornithopter! If we thought great aircraft designs only included thick solid hunks of metal, we were wrong. Designed by NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, the idea is to morph the shape of the wing like a bird flapping. The wing material is called electroactive polymers (EAPs) which will make the aircraft flap and glide: flapping to gain altitude and gliding while using the sun's power.

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Behold the Flying Bog Seat. A 'closed wing' type concept for an aircraft. The particular one above was reportedly designed by Lockheed in the '80s, and which reportedly didn't quite make it to the skies. However, for the sake of our post here, it provides a rather weird addition alright.

Labels: aircraft

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Amazon Kindle with Whispernet

Amazon Kindle is one of my favourite new gadget devices to come out last year. I've long been an e-bookworm on my iPAQ Pocket PC and am really excited to follow Kindle's progress, and eventually hope to buy one. The device has been a sold-out already (as of today, January 1st, 2008) on Amazon, so it means the initial response has been great.

One of the best things about Kindle is not so much the concept of electronic book reading (which is really old) but the great proprietary Whispernet method of delivering content to the device, without any need of having a computer.

Amazon Whispernet is a cool cellphone carrier-like network (an EV-DO service) that has primarily been deployed for the delivery of Amazon.com's Kindle e-book content - wirelessly. Whispernet can also convert and deliver your PC documents to your Kindle device. According to the Kindle video, all you need is just to email your documents to Amazon and they will do the conversion and delivery to your device automatically. Whispernet does not require any subscription from Kindle owners, as the device itself comes with a lifetime subscription. As I said, Whispernet is like a cellphone network: you don't need a computer to use Kindle on it. You can use Whispernet without having to look for any hotspots, as you would do for WiFi. Though I am not sure what is the penetration of this network, and how widely available it is.

If you're an avid reader like myself, and have bought a Kindle, do share your experience using the comments. If you've ever used a Pocket PC to read books and have switched to Kindle, I'd be most interested!

Labels: gadgets

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