People can live in the air. We do not need to build boxes on the ground. Let's leave the Earth to what it does best: grow food and purify water. This blog has resources on how to live in the air, to grow a community of people who can set the regulations and bureaucracies needed for an international, free and fair Law of the Air.
Tomas Saraceno, the premiere artist teaching us all the art of phlight, shares now precise DIY instructions to create a hot air balloon from garbage bags that is powered by the sun.
The design was tested in a museum, photos below:
Tomas is distributing a PDF with the instructions, below is the opening text of the PDF. We like the closing four steps, they are at the end of this post:
The design is geodesic, based on the proper placement of pentagons and hexagons. Notice the pentagon 5 rows from the top of the balloon, where the lines converge:
The concept, described by Saraceno as "59 Steps To Be On Air By Sun Power," allows anyone to construct what he calls a "geodesic solar flying machine" using black polyethylene (the stuff used in garbage bags), a car radiator fan, a 12-volt battery, bicycle rims, tape, string, a child safety seat, and a bit of engineering savvy. The contraption is clearly not the safest idea for travel, but it appears that Saraceno's goal was to create a flying machine that puts environmental friendliness ahead of efficiency.
The monopoly of air space by large commercial heavier-than-air craft cracked a little this week, when the USA's FAA approved us of airspace up to 400 feet for drone use. These drones vary from military models costing $400K to home made rotors--more about the military models at the end of this post.
But first, an Atlantic Society of Radio Control Modellers meeting flying a
According to the N. Y. Times,
Under the new law, within 90 days, the F.A.A. must allow police and
first responders to fly drones under 4.4 pounds, as long as they keep
them under an altitude of 400 feet and meet other requirements. The
agency must also allow for “the safe integration” of all kinds of drones
into American airspace, including those for commercial uses, by Sept.
30, 2015. And it must come up with a plan for certifying operators and
handling airspace safety issues, among other rules.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups may protest the new law citing ever-increasing "routine
aerial surveillance of American life.” Yes, that is a concern, but innovation with small accelerometers, electric motors and cameras sounds like healthy innovation to me.
Here is a Microsoft Kinect sensor guided drone:
Passive flight enthusiasts should be greatly encouraged that hobbyist activity and small business activity can bring about a change in the FAA rules. Oh, wait, there is the military-industrial connection.
With the winding-down of the war in Afghanistan, where drones have been used to gather intelligence and fire missiles, these manufacturers have been awaiting lucrative new opportunities at home. The market for drones is valued at $5.9 billion and is expected to double in the next decade, according to industry figures. Drones can cost millions of dollars...
Many organizations are gearing up for this type of business; one sign is the opening of generic "spam" web portals such as UAVM.com, where they write
In the very near future, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will become Standard Tools for a wide variety of Civil Engineering, Precision Agricultural, Livestock and Land Management, Industrial, and Homeland Security, Industrial Security, Police-Fire as well as for many other Commercial Applications not currently serviced or serviced by manned aircraft.
The passive flight community may find such motorized drones to be pests some day, but it is encouraging that the airspace is being shared. I assume that the military use of lighter than air vehicles will also make an impact.
Flying people? Well, actually remote powered drones that look like people. it was a publicity stunt designed by Thinkmodo for the movie "Chronicle," about teenage superheroes, due to release Feb. 3 2012. Still, a beautiful image of life in the air.
The spirit of the Zeppelin recently inspired Tiago Barros, an architect from New York who also worked in Beirut and Abu Dhabi, to propose his "Passing Cloud" concept for a New york competition.
Mr. Barros wrote in his proposal:
This project envisions a distinct approach towards moving around the United States being also a revival of the act of traveling. Why traveling at high speed? Why having the final destiny always defined? And why always departing and arriving on a tight schedule? Nowadays, everything is set and everyone is always running around. It is time to reconsider the act of traveling and start enjoying it accordingly.
The Passing Cloud is an innovative and environmentally friendly method of transportation that doesn’t require expensive steel tracks or concrete highways. It is made of a series of spherical balloons that form the shape of a cloud. Its inner stainless steel structure is covered with heavy weight tensile nylon fabric. During the journey, It moves according to prevailing winds speed and direction at the time of travel. Since it moves with the wind, no wind is ever felt during the trip, offering the passengers a full “floating sensation”.
It’s an unique journey. The feeling of floating in the atmosphere – on top of a cloud – with an open schedule and unknown final destiny. All National Ground would be potentially covered at virtually no cost and the help of the wind. The journey becomes your destiny.
The competition was thinking along other lines. In its prospectus, the Van Alen Institute requested
...visions of the architectural design community, planners, graphic designers, artists—anyone who wants to contribute to the discussion surrounding high-speed rail.... projects and narratives picturing the wide-ranging impacts that a new transportation network will have on the nation’s communities, whether urban or rural, rail-riding or car-centric, heartland or borderland. By collecting these ideas and images of a transformed America—be they specific, pragmatic, or speculative—we’ll better understand the hopes and fears of our current moment and be better equipped to decide whether and how we build this new infrastructure.
We at Law of the Air applaud Mr. Barros for his submission. While his contribution did not win, it reminds all of us to slow down, contemplate, and savor life and, as he writes, "sensation." Not sensational speed--sensation when it is most pregnant with reality, when we are calm, present, and floating in the air.
Béatrice Coron is a papercutter artist who produces elaborate, multi-layered stories.
In her TED talk she displayed a paper cut with flying houses and said,
What if we were living in balloon houses? It would make a very uplifting world. And we would leave a very low footprint on the planet. It would be so light.
I love her focus on storytelling. Look closely, you will see people farming the free earth, while the houses raise and lower elevators, drop anchors, and other people parachute down. Coron also produced a paper cut called "Floating Islands."
Of course, real airsteading houses would not look like this, but her art is so beautiful and relevant.
Stephanie of WebEcoist.com collected a dozen inspiring flying and hovering dwellings from the architectural and science-fiction literature. My favorite, of course, is Fuller's Cloud Nine.
Buckminster Fuller always had big ideas, including a massive floating city that would have housed 6,000 residents off the coast of Tokyo. The inventor of the geodesic dome imagined taking his spherical creations into the sky with ‘Cloud Nine’, an airborne habitat composed of free-floating or tethered spheres, each one mile in diameter and housing thousands of people. These spheres would function as hot air balloons, and residents would get back and forth with solar-powered aircraft.
Fuller's idea, of course, is passively floated on renewable streams of solar-driven heat differentials. The below is not as clear:
As green space has gone from ground level to rooftops in urban areas, at least one architect believes they’re due to go higher still. Rael San Fratello imagines ‘Migrating Floating Gardens’, trailing from large remotely controlled floating aircraft that would move around the city and even migrate seasonally to warmer locales.
How many balloons would it really take to lift a house? In Pixar’s ‘Up’, a huge bunch of balloons was simply tied to the fireplace grate through the chimney. Keeping in mind that this is a fictional animated film, Wired did the calculations to determine whether balloons could really lift a house. Their conclusion: it would take 105,854 balloons, each measuring three feet in diameter, to make a 100,000 pound house buoyant.
In another post, Stephanie wrote about wandering cities such as:
Another entry in the CG Society NVArt artspace competition is ‘Water Station’ by Steve Bjorck, who says of his creation: “The planet is hot and dry. The only water left is hidden deep under the dead crust. This nomadic colony tap into ancient wells scattered across the planets surface with a large, floating station similar to Earths oil and gas platforms. This well has a healthy supply of fresh water, they will be able to stay here for many months, maybe years.”
Chinese architecture firm MAD isn’t exactly pleased with New York’s Chinatown, calling it a sloppy, kitschy, outdated tourist trap. What could bring it up to date? Oh, maybe making it a bizarre star-shaped mobile city that can take the latest and greatest of Chinese food, inventions and culture to other cities around the world. ‘The Superstar’ is a self-sustaining city that grows its own food and recycles all of its waste so as never to be a burden on its host cities.
This one would be more interesting as a tensegrity:
A different kind of ‘portable city’ makes it easy to create a home no matter where you go. The Stacked City camping tower by Import.Export is a long way from primitive tent camping, giving travelers an otherwise unattainable view of their surroundings and making them anything but low-profile. As Dornob points out, there are security issues to be addressed, but designs like these could be the turning point for real-life mobile dwellings that go far beyond recreational vehicles.
The website also reported extensively on floating cities here, here and here. A shame Michael Burt's floating Olympic city was not reviewed by them" just published, it is a serious proposal for floating stadia to enable poorer countries to host the Olympics.
The world's only passive flight museum is taking phlight once again. From the festival website:
Help build a huge hot air balloon
We are going to build an hot air balloon of used plastic bags. The balloon goes in the air at this year's Roskilde Festival.
At this year's festival you can look forward to Museo aero solar, a flying museum in the shape of a huge solar-heated balloon made entirely of recycled plastic bags. It is a do-it-together project that explores new ways of thinking energy and space. In three simple maneuvers plastic bags are cut, pasted and decorated into a giant balloon that can float only with help from the heat of the sun.
The construction of the big balloon starts at the National Gallery of Denmark on 21-22 May when all Roskilde-goers are invited to a workshop. The event is free. Just bring all your used plastic bags.
The project was initiated by Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno. In the cross field of art, science and architecture, Saraceno presents visions of the solution to humanity's social and environmental problems using alternative, sustainable patterns of living in the skies above us.
The balloon goes up during the festival
During the festival's warm-up days (June 26-29) you are invited to Art City at Agora M where the balloon will be finished. The balloon is launched during the festival every morning at sunrise from 30 June to 3 July. One hour before sunrise the balloon is spread out on the ground and filled with air from large ventilators. When the sun rises, the air inside the balloon is heated and it goes upwards.
Museo aero solar is presented by the National Gallery of Denmark.
create a flying machine that puts environmental friendliness ahead of efficiency.
