Inner City Airport for 2050

Oh,I like that stuff,thank you Davereeekie.
 
the concept is sophisticated
but for i see two problem in current concept

first limited space for moving the airplanes in the servis area
second Safety, if fire brake out or refueling goes wrong, you got burning Kerosine pour down into passenger terminal and train station !
 
Thanks for the comments.

There is sprinkler system designed to run the length of the apron for fire.

Dave
 
Orionblamblam said:
How many rail hubs like this are aligned with the prevailing winds?
Click to expand...

The system wouldn't work in every city due to space and winds. But every city has a number of rail yards further from the city centre. Hopefully one of these sites could be suitable.
 
The only issue I could see is that it doesn't appear that there is sufficient clearance between the "runway" (indicated by the centerline markings) and the area used for taxiing, since it is a continuous flat surface. I would say the airport needs to be wider. This would have the additional benefit on the "hangar deck", of allowing two aircraft to pass in opposite directions when needed, avoiding a below deck ballet, as well as avoiding total girdlock if an aircraft was disabled in transit. You might also consider a third, midfield deck edge elevator, ala aircraft carriers to minimize taxi distance.
 
There were a lot of concepts for this kind of thing during the Golden Age. Say 1920s - late 1930s.
 
Rather than city-center airports for jetliners, a long-term better approach would be city-center Orion nuclear pulse launch vehicle ports. Because gathering more and more of humanity into smaller and smaller spaces just ain't a good idea.

Are Cities Evolving Into Hive Organisms?

Which of course leads to "Behavioral Sink."

Let's have an age of a VTOL in every garage, rather than a jetport servicing Borg nodes.
 
Orionblamblam said:
How many rail hubs like this are aligned with the prevailing winds?
Click to expand...

I just spent most of the day flying in and out of one of Canada's busiest commercial airports on a series of short hops. Runway selection over the course of the day was based on community noise levels, cross winds be damned.
 
I somehow suspect that "community noise levels" would not be aided by not only locating a jetport downtown, but one where the jet have to go balls-out to get outta Dodge lickety-split.

Also: locating a fixed runway within an urban heat island would make crosswinds interesting. Additionally, where the runway is actually *lower* than the skyscrapers around it, winds rattling around in the concrete canyons are going to be chaotic.
 
Orionblamblam said:
I somehow suspect that "community noise levels" would not be aided by not only locating a jetport downtown, but one where the jet have to go balls-out to get outta Dodge lickety-split.

Also: locating a fixed runway within an urban heat island would make crosswinds interesting. Additionally, where the runway is actually *lower* than the skyscrapers around it, winds rattling around in the concrete canyons are going to be chaotic.
Click to expand...
It has been done before....

island_airport.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg
 
It appears I snagged the picture from a Luddite web page, one of several pages crying that the Toronto Island Airport can only result in terrible things happening (no details provided). The airport has been operating scheduled commercial air service since 1940, we're still waiting for the terrible things to happen.

However, the long twisted history of the airport brings up what may be the real problem with any any urban airport - getting approvals from multiple levels of governments. At Toronto Island you have the Feds handling aviation and international waterways, the province handling inland waterways, and multiple municipal governments handling all sorts of issues. Getting that gang of bureaucrats and idiots (and often idiotic bureaucrats) to agree on anything makes all the technical issues look very minor.
 
More than the Feds and the politicians to worry about is the citizens groups that oppose anything "in their backyard." In 1968-1969 Eastern and American Airlines conducted STOL airline trials in some of the NE Corridors busiest airports. Technically the idea was sound, and short-haul STOL was inching towards reality. An inner city STOLport in the Chelsea area was undergoing design studies by American Airlines Rob Ranson, discussed in his book "More than an "Engineer," and the challenge presented by citizen groups where the most formidable. The politicians were on board with their constituents, which ever side of the debate they were on. Convincing the public required attracting the most vocal members of the opposition and bringing them in on the design and planning committees to make the STOLport a win-win.
 

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