Nuclear-powered flying airports would never have to land

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Nuclear-powered flying airports would never have to land

Air travel is awesome, but one of the things that slows it down is that the damn plane has to land eventually and that can add hours and hours to the overall trip and it’s not the most fuel-efficient way to do it. In the future, you could take a passenger plane so far, land on a perpetually aloft airport in the sky, swap planes in mid-air and keep going.

The “Airborne Metro” concept is just that: it’s like an express train in the sky. As part of a general metro or train system, though, you don’t get to take the express line directly from start to finish. Instead, you take a smaller bus or train to get to the express train, and then probably another smaller bus or train to get to your final destination once you get off the express. In the case of the Airborne Metro, you’d catch a regular aircraft at a regional airport, zip up to a giant flying airport, and then ride that for a couple thousand miles before taking another regular aircraft back down.

This giant flying airport would be able to carry some 3,000 passengers at once, and would either allow conventional aircraft to land directly on its back, or would employ some sort of docking procedure to transfer passengers on and off. Having one of these things take off and land all the time would be extremely inefficient; instead, a nuclear reactor of some kind would provide in-flight power.

The concept envisions fleets of these huge airplanes flying continuous circuits from LA to Chicago to New York to London, over Europe, and back again. To fly a long distance, you’d simply hop a ferry flight up to the next giant express plane, transfer, and then chill out until you got close to your destination. Then you’d grab another little commercial craft to wherever you’re going. This would be faster and more efficient for passengers, and would contribute to an overall fuel savings of 40% for a 600-mile trip, all the way up to 80% for a 6,000-mile trip.

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