A West Texas company says it's found a remarkably simple way to slash air cargo costs as much as 65% – by having planes tow autonomous, cargo-carrying gliders behind them, big enough to double, or potentially triple their payload capacity.

Like a train

More like a trailer, good luck to those pilots in turbulence have you ever tried driving a car with a trailer that catches a strong wind?

I think the real shipping breakthrough most people are looking for is low power neutral buoyancy without having to travel at hundreds of miles per hour.

Anti gravity drive wen?

Directly measuring gravity waves first happened pretty recently in 2016 using LIGO, there’s a possibility through future observations at different frequencies someone might identify a means of manipulation. When humans first discovered electricity & electromagnetic fields it took awhile before batteries and generators, etc. It’s not guaranteed but isn’t impossible either.

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probably never.

Speaking of air cargo. Why exatcly there are no moder zeppelins? They seem like a perfect way to transport cargo

Captain Aggravated
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They’re perfect except for the part where they basically don’t work. They’re not much faster than a seagoing vessel, carry a lot less, are way more expensive, and are basically guaranteed to crash. Intermodal water + rail freight is more practical.

They will do literally anything that’s not on rails to reinvent the train…

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Tbf, the NIMBY fuckwads make it difficult to build new train routes

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NIMBY applies to stuff like urban housing development and certain kinds of healthcare clinics. Not wanting loud-ass fucking trains rolling through 24/7 is perfectly reasonable. Too many people don’t care enough about noise pollution.

Captain Aggravated
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I live two blocks from a set of active train tracks, the irritating bit isn’t the train itself, it’s the horn. As they pass through downtown and pass the multiple level crossings, they just blare the damn thing.

So the problem isn’t trains near houses, it’s train crossings near houses where horns are required. Fix the crossings to not require horns and you’re golden.

We have a commuter rail that used to sound its horns all the time, so they fixed the interactions and most if not all intersections no longer require horns.

Because they’re required to.

Strange. Trains don’t even have horns in my country as far as I know. At least I have literally never heard one, and I take the train quite often.

They all do, here. The6 blow them when coming up to road crossings to give warning that you better not be on the tracks.

The government really needs to grow some balls and get better with this stuff.

Just draw some lines on a map. Offer everyone 1.3x the value of their house (or however much) and take it off them. For the greater good.

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Often you don’t even need more property. Just utilize existing rail systems. So much unused or barely used rail in this country.

Whoops, reinvented trains again.

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