London floating airport

Too expensive to build.
Too expensive to maintain.
Too expensive to move passengers on and off platform.
Too much risk for fuel leaks.
Too vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Too expensive to insure.
 
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If you don't cast/spray the concrete hulls for the runways in one piece they will be a maintenance nightmare.
 
It would be an engineering masterpiece, one that would be worth visiting just for the experience of seeing it. The only down side is that when you arrive, you're in England. :D
 
The U.S. Air Force has a floating airport...

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A lot of engineering problems there, and the toughest one I can think of would be getting people and vehicles from the proposed underground railway to this tethered floating platform. Seems more trouble than it's worth. No ferry boat mentioned in the article, but that would be a lot more practical, except for docking the ferry to this thing for every load.

I think they'll build something like this there, eventually... but it'll be closer to shore and built on landfill or columns.
 
rottydaddy said:
A lot of engineering problems there, and the toughest one I can think of would be getting people and vehicles from the proposed underground railway to this tethered floating platform. Seems more trouble than it's worth. No ferry boat mentioned in the article, but that would be a lot more practical, except for docking the ferry to this thing for every load.

I think they'll build something like this there, eventually... but it'll be closer to shore and built on landfill or columns.
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My thoughts as well. A floating causeway for rail/road traffic would be much more practical for the water portion. The downside to that is the expense of building a road base across the tidal marshes adjacent to the estuary. I don't know the tidal range in that bit of water, but given the latitude is is probably considerable. (EDIT from a paper submmited to the Royal Society )The estuary is dynamic with a tidal range of up to 7 m, Making the flexible connection from underground to the floating modules would be "problematic" to say the least. Pipe dream.
 
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Wonder if it can be turned to keep the runways pointed in to the wind. ;)
 
EppyGA said:
Wonder if it can be turned to keep the runways pointed in to the wind. ;)
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I want to see the GPS that can handle the approach...Constantly moving waypoints. An ILS, or a NDB would be much much more practical.
 
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