From: <lafrance@xxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 2:06 PM > Slopping runway only works if the wind is going in the right direction. When its not, can you still use it? > > <snip> > [Starry's] been trotting the globe trying to sell his alternative design, an airport with runways that gently slope at a 2 percent grade to the roof of a 12-story terminal. He calls it the StarPort. <snip> > Starry envisions two end-to-end 6,000-foot runways ending above the terminal, rather than the current 10,000-foot landing strips. > <snip> Plenty of airports get along with long runways at a single bearing. If CMH, Port Columbus International seems too minor, how about LAX, Los Angeles International? The more discouraging question is what happens with small errors? I suspect that there are a fair number of planes that go off on the grass without making headlines, but falling off a 12 story building is a little different, even if the slope is made fairly small. An extension of Starry's idea is a conical airport, a flat truncated cone. The top better be fairly big, if many planes are going to be on the "ground" at the same time. A 737 or A320 occupies about 10,000 square feet, and a 747 about 30,000 (at a guess). That makes about 4 737's per acre, or about 1-1/3 747's per acre, just sitting there. If you give them twice that to maneuver in, then 10 747's plus 40 737's runs around 30 acres, which is a circle about a quarter mile diameter. The 6000 feet on the sloping part of the cone gets you a circular airport about 2-1/2 miles in diameter, and then some space for glide paths and so on. Congratulate me, I'm an inventor! Gerry http://foley.ultinet.net/~gerry/aerial/aerial.html http://home.columbus.rr.com/gfoley http://members.fortunecity.com/gfoley/egypt/egypt.html