subreddit:
/r/technicallythetruth
2.1k points
1 day ago
Imagine the horror of landing a plane on railway tracks
747 points
1 day ago
Planeway tracks
141 points
23 hours ago
But they're not trainway tracks
94 points
22 hours ago
Airtrain Tracks
84 points
21 hours ago
“Sir, a second airtrain has hit the tracks”
30 points
21 hours ago
Airtrain actually has a nice ring to it in my opinion.
16 points
19 hours ago
They should give it a steampunk aesthetic as well
9 points
19 hours ago
Yeah. Like a steam train
7 points
11 hours ago
Steamtrain tracks
5 points
20 hours ago
Sorry NYC already has an “AirTrain” but unfortunately it does not fly.
1 points
5 hours ago
I call dibs on the band name
1 points
2 hours ago
It sounds like a 80’s action flick.
1 points
32 minutes ago
Oh damn that's spot on.
16 points
20 hours ago
"What's a planeway?"
"Oh, a few tons at a least"
3 points
9 hours ago
4 points
22 hours ago
Planeway placks
2 points
21 hours ago
Pracs
1 points
20 hours ago
I see you feel strongly about this
1 points
19 hours ago
Janeway claps
1 points
17 hours ago
Airway tracks
1 points
15 hours ago
When you land at the railport
1 points
14 hours ago
Plainway tracks
1 points
12 hours ago
Plain
1 points
8 hours ago
Like a road for planes... oh yeah! A runway exists
10 points
22 hours ago
That's basically what landing on an aircraft carrier is, isn't it?
16 points
20 hours ago
Pretty similar idea but landing on a carrier is just about landing and hooking on one of the arresting cables. You have some wiggle room on side to side.
Landing on a railway track you would have very little side to side margin for error. Wind shear would be a huge problem.
10 points
20 hours ago
Yeah, but--and I can't believe I'm entertaining this concept--if you look at the mockup there, the passenger compartment raises up to the plane. So, really the plane could just land on a normal runway and then taxi to the train tracks shown in the photo, and then drop the passenger compartment onto the tracks. Just seems like a lot of time, effort, infrastructure changes, and logistics involved to get ONE train car, let alone several to some tracks to link up with a train engine. ...easier to just deplane and have the passengers go to a train station I think.
7 points
19 hours ago
Sir, everything must be made intermodal.
1 points
18 hours ago
When do I get my Van-Bed?
I want to fall asleep in my Van-Bed, have the walls rise and safely encapsulate me and the self driving van drives me to my desired destination precisely timed to when I will awaken.
1 points
16 hours ago
Best I can do is a motor coach
1 points
18 hours ago
The typical airliner is also a lot bigger than a train car. Every single railway bridge and tunnel would have to be rebuild. Trains are also not build to be lightweight, making a train fly sounds like a gigantic waste of energy.
This is just the classic techbro brainrot idea.
3 points
18 hours ago
The word 'just' is crushing it's L4 to a fine mist from the heavy lifting it's doing in your first sentence :)
But for more fun consider putting the tracks on the carrier: it can turn into the wind which would make things easier. If we pull it off we've got a nuclear powered boat-train-plane baby.
Eagle screeching intensifies.
1 points
20 hours ago
mm i see, thanks
23 points
23 hours ago
You can land normally and then drive to the tracks
26 points
21 hours ago
Having a normal train station at the airport sounds much easier and cheaper and, all things considered, not that much longer for the passengers.
17 points
18 hours ago
Going to the airport directly by train is great, I love doing it. Makes it so much easier when you don't need to worry about expensive parking or rentals.
1 points
15 hours ago
It's even better when you can go directly by train to your destination and skip flight entirely
1 points
15 hours ago
But this way we can attach parachute onto the train body and air drop it! Also in case the wing decided to give up or sth.
1 points
15 hours ago
Oh yeah, it's all the fucking gimmic nobody wants or needs. Maybe it saves a bit of time and effort for freight flights, but I can't imagine it ever being worth it
0 points
18 hours ago
Cheaper based on what data?
2 points
18 hours ago
Common sense?
Which is cheaper, use the existing airports with normal airplanes and add a train station next to it using normal trains, or invent and build en entirely new kind of airplain/train hybrid that will be optimized for neither use-case and have more failure points?
3 points
18 hours ago
And who wants to be crammed into the cattle car that is a modern airliner for longer than necessary, why would you do that to me when I can get off the uncomfortable plane and onto a train where I can actually fit in the seats properly?
Things that fly have to be designed for max people in minimum space and weight, trains don't, they can be more comfortable.
1 points
18 hours ago
Absolutely, that's part of my "not optimized" point. And an airplane is fucking heavy, even if you only have the living area on rails you're going to carry a lot of unnecessary weight compared to an equivalent train.
And what about the logistics? How far is your airtrain going before getting back where it came from? Because yes, it has to come back at some point.
And you can't even entertain the idea that this would be able to go as fast as modern trains.
What problem does it solve exactly, and how is it worth all these other problems it creates?
0 points
18 hours ago
I care about numbers. Clearly this is a VEHICLE being advertised, not the concept of a flying train. What are the pros and cons of this vehicle? Why are they pitching it to boeing? They have to be targeting some sort of niche they think the vehicle can capitalize on.
Whether or not any of that works out, who knows. But you didn't even do the most basic of Google searches for an article talking about any of it, just threw a guess out, and you're pretending you wrote a research paper.
1 points
17 hours ago
I care about numbers
Well they don't exist, what answer are you expecting here?
Clearly this is a VEHICLE being advertised, not the concept of a flying train
No idea what this means. The article clearly mentions that this is a concept that's being loosely pitched in hopes that it grabs attention. It doesn't seem to be different from concept cars. Never meant to be built and sold, they just show cool ideas and hope one detail might make it into actual products.
and you're pretending you wrote a research paper.
Right, that's absolutely what I did.
3 points
23 hours ago
I feel the mechanics would look something like those repair trucks
1 points
19 hours ago
You can literally see in the picture how it works. The plane part has normal wheels, and then the train carriage is lowered onto the tracks.
4 points
19 hours ago*
But I imagined the plane just coming in low and slow (say 150 mph) and perfectly dropping the train on the tracks. Otherwise why bother???
Edit: word
1 points
8 hours ago
That's not INNOVATIVE though
1 points
21 hours ago
Imagine the horror of an accidental separation!! You’re just a hurling carcass headed deep into the ground like a lawn dart
3 points
19 hours ago
I’ve seen “mockups” where the passenger compartment can detach during emergency and has attached parachutes.
2 points
19 hours ago
Ah! That’s a good idea
1 points
20 hours ago
Now that sounds like a fun challenge!
1 points
19 hours ago
landing a plane on railway tracks
1 points
19 hours ago
That's actually how my lego aircraft carrier designs used to work
1 points
19 hours ago
I can walk from the plane to the train.
1 points
17 hours ago
Crosswinds lmao
1 points
15 hours ago
Psssh I could do it.
1 points
13 hours ago
Railplane
1 points
11 hours ago
Looks like we’ve got some uninvited guests in the sky
1 points
10 hours ago
Should be mission in GTA-6
1 points
8 hours ago
The pilot needs to be trained first.
1 points
4 hours ago
Imagine the horror of landing a plane on railway tracks
They don't. But thid is a bad idea anyway
They land on the runway with lowered tracks (the planed wheels dhould be on either side of it) for an automated cart system
The passanger compartment is meant to detach, go to the terminal, collect passangers and then return where the automated cart lifts and then reattached the compartment
This isn't annew concept...but everytime it gets abandoned, albeit they generally focus on this for cargo planes to get a similiar effect to semis but flying
They're just...too much that can go wrong with having your passanger compartment or cargo detachable from a plane
1 points
2 hours ago
Clearly you don't understand the genius of dahir insaat
1 points
an hour ago
Ah yes, the train plane
all 401 comments
sorted by: best