Buy your own bit of Heathrow

Airplot is a scheme dreamt up by Greenpeace to scupper plans for a third runway at Heathrow. They've bought up land on the planned site (not quite on the runway itself, but near) and will refuse to sell it. I think the idea is that everyone named as a co-tenant/owner of the land will have to be approached by the Government when it comes time to start buying up the land, making the job particularly hard.

Technorati tag: EcoHouse

Solar planes can stay in the air for days

The Zephyr is a prototype solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle which recently unofficially broke the world endurance record for unmanned flight. Obviously, it's being developed for military use, but the company behind it are predicting civilian implementations. It'll be a long time before the equipment is able to carry large payloads around the world, but high flying drones could be used for pollution monitoring and other forms of information gathering.

Technorati tag: EcoHouse

Branson's biofuelled jumbo

A Virgin 747 has flown from Heathrow to Schiphol with one of its fuel tanks filled with 20% biofuel. Richard Branson says that commercial flights will be powered by algal biofuel and is investing in alternative fuel development. However, there are questions about the effectiveness of teh systems Virgin will be using, the biggest of which is why aren't they working to cut flights?

Technorati tag: EcoHouse

The future of air travel?

A resurgence in airships has been predicted for years. Maybe if governments could start applying realistic taxes on airlines than super luxury airships would become more viable economically.

Technorati tag: Airship