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Unusual Transportation Concept: Flying Trains
"It's crazy--but it's so crazy that it just, might, work"
The always-imaginative Russian concept designer Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich is at it again. This time he's conceived of a mass transit system that combines aspects of an airplane and a train.
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Enter a caption (optional)Obviously the craft is meant to draw power from the monorail. A monorail system, and the idea of getting the craft up into the air, were presumably chosen as they require less infrastructure-laying than proper train tracks or massive asphalt runways.
Independent of the fact that this will probably never be built, what do you guys and gals think? What do you see as the benefits and drawbacks?
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One of the worst parts of a certain type of train, (electrified rail) mixed with the worst parts of air travel (The turbulent nature of air close to the ground) means that this can only be bad at best.
How is this better than a regular train? Or a plane?
You might not know this but you don't actually have to put out an article for every design this guy puts out.
The only pro I can see for this is removing the weight of the energy source (batteries or fuel tanks). The cons vastly outweigh this with the biggest issue being that the vehicle is on a collision course with the 'airport' building only to land on the roof. If anything went wrong this would mean that all the passengers in the terminal are in direct line of the vehicle.
They said this to Richard Trevithick in 1802 just before his first test run " Its crazy but its just so crazy it just might work ! But I bet you a 100 Guineas it wont work!"
I think it could be more comfortable, faster and more safety transport.
Transportation engineer here with multiple years of R&D and implementation experience for transit systems.
and............. it fell over.
This project as any other monorail, Hyperloop, Mag-Lev or whatever is doomed by the fact that it won't take advanatge of the existing rail infrastructure. Part of the success of the high-speed networks in Europe is not the purely the fast connection between two main cities, but the ability to reach smaller towns with the same train or by switching to a local train at the same station.
It is a new concept. How about giving it a little credit for being novel in your critiques? I notice so many comments on this site that read like some know-it-all type designer who is unconsciously masking their frustration that they did not themselves conceive of the new idea in question by overstating whatever flaws they can find and then disregarding the rest.
lol. Just because it's a new concept doesn't mean it deserves praise. this project sounds like a student's project where they didn't really think it through fully. i'll bring up a few issues, and there are many. what happens when the power goes out? on a train, it will just stop, this however will crash and burn. planes turn by banking, with wings that large and that low they will hit the tree line very easily. i suspect the track would be more difficult to build compared to a train, it would have to be a completely foolproof connection in case of a derailment. and what about vehicles going the opposite direction? there would need a tremendous amount of space between tracks. VTOL's (vertical take off and landing, feel like i may have to use laymans terms with you) are incredibly inefficient at hovering and forward flight, a train would be significantly better for the environment. I could point out more issues but i honestly don't want to spend more energy thinking about this terrible idea.
Fair enough. Some of those points I had considered and some I had not. I was more taking the tact of setting aside the problems to see what was left, but I was too generous I'll admit. I can't think of a realistic use case for this either as it is shown, but like John says below, maybe it ought to be a glider. Or maybe there could be some tangential application as a toy, or like a flying tethered elevator or something for firemen but my point is that especially "concept" work can have artistic value when it can surprise and then gets you to think about other new possibilities. Picking out the good parts and the bad parts can both facilitate that, not just the bad ones.
Not to mention the loads pulling the track up.
If you are tethering to the ground, why bother adding the weight of the motors etc to the lift weight? Why wouldn't you design something equivalent to a light weight glider/parasail connected by wire? Still lots of problems with this over trandtional mass transport.
Wondering how it would work arriving in a city. Since most commuters who take trains, take them from the suburbs to a city I think that's rather an important thing!
But I also agree with Paul that the real question is: why?!?!
you ever hear how loud one of those little quad copters are flying over your apartment at night? that times 1000 traveling across the entire population that lives near a track? how is this better, or safer, than a electric train? Seems way more dangerous having a tethered weight with people inside it zooming along a ground rail, what if it snags? That would be way less survivable than a train derailment.
Well I want to see how the people flies while the plane leaves, the good thing about these concepts is that they make us think if they are possible to achive, and to think how we can improve them to make them work.
Well I want to see how the people flies while the plane leaves, the good thing about this concepts is that make us think if they are possible to achive,and to think how we can improve them to make them work.