I was sitting and talking to someone the other day and he brought up the fact that some investors are talking about making a 5000 passenger, nuclear powered sky hotel that has shopping malls, guestrooms, pools, and an observation deck. I'm not an aerospace engineer or anything but this all seems like a really terrible idea.
For one thing: Who really enjoys flying? Also, even though I am not a nervous passenger and don't worry about the planes crashing because I look at statistics I think I would be very reluctant to get on board an untested NUCLEAR flying hotel.
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These are not images of an existing thing. Nothing has been built and this is just a concept CGI video that was made in an attempt to showcase what it could be like if it was ever built. The videos have gone viral and a lot of people are talking about it.
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There are a lot of issues that I have with this that extend beyond the fact that if it were to crash that it would not just destroy the plane but could destroy entire cities in the process. For one, who really enjoys flying? I would imagine that the people in first class have a much better trip than I do back in economy class but honestly - given the choice of sitting somewhere luxurious or being 30,000 feet above the earth looking into the sky would you really choose the latter?
Plus, other things haven't been addressed such as the fact that having potable water for 5000 customers and probably a ton of crew would be a nightmare. What are you going to do with the wastewater? Dump it out of the side of the plane? Where are you going to get new water from?
The story is that this plane wouldn't ever need to refuel and I guess that is an interesting concept but they would need to get new supplies if they had any customers. Food and water would run out and sewage deposits would fill up. I have been a cruise ship once in my life and we were actually going to exotic places where you could see things off the balconies that were interesting to look at and that got boring to me after a couple of days. I found myself just drinking all day long for the last 3 days of the cruise.
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Even though it is just some sketches and a single video at this point aerospace engineers have weighed in with almost comical statements about the proposed plane calling is preposterous. They make statements like "there is no way that a structure of this sort would be able to take off, let alone stay in the air" and "the external elevators would be almost immediately ripped off the plane and crash to the earth."
I kind of wonder how it is that anyone can just get their hands on uranium too. I was under the impression that this tech was something that was a carefully guarded secret. If this ever comes to fruition, and I don't think it will, I wouldn't go on this journey even if it was offered to me for free.
What do you think?