Designer's dream - CHEAP AIR TRAVEL

CHEAP AIR TRAVEL - Designer's dream
Why travel the conventional way, expensive, fast, hurried, full of hassels, and arrive at your destination, tired, behind time or ahead of your clock time ? 

The other way to travel is to CRUISE along in the air just like you criuse on the ocean waters in a gigantic ship. You guessed it right, I am hinting at the Air Ship. A helium filled gigantic air ship with modern technology to compress the gas at the press of a button to bring down the air ship on land, load her up, and to expand the helium gas for lift off and criuse away. 

The chambers for the passengers and crew would be totally seperate from the helium chambes, which could be located on the upper decks. The lower decks would house all the liveable quarters for the passengers, crew and their ammenities required for long travel times. 

If we can build and fly Dream liners weighing thousands of tonnes then slow moving feather light Air ships is a sure possibility too. 

It is proposed to accend to the height, just below the clouds to take advantage of the high winds in this region to move forward towards our destination. It is further suggested to take the help of the weather network to plan the flights / cruises so that we could take the maximum benefit from the freely blowing winds at no cost to us. 

Since the surface area of our Air ship is bound to be pretty large one, we must additionally plan for Solar power for on board needs & useage. 

Because the planet Earth is rotating in one particular direction - from west to east we must invariably plan for travel in the opposite direction and look for the winds which move from east to west to get additional advantage of the relative speeds: the Earth at 1000 km/hr. in one direction and the Air ship at maximum of 70km/hr in the other direction. We will get to our destination much faster and cheaper this way. I do realise that the power of gravity is always pushing us in the wrong direction, but at the cloud level its effect is mitigated to a large extent.

Rohit Khanna - Industrial Engineer.

FOREST FIRES & LOGGING PATTERNS - DEFINITIVE CORRELATION

FOREST FIRES & LOGGING PATTERNS – DEFINITIVE CORRELATION

How we cut down our forests determines the probability of forest fires & their scale? You can have your CAKE and eat it too only if you have a fool proof plan. It all boils down to having your forest for eternity and zero / minimum forest fires during summers specially. 

NO THOUGHT TO PLANS

Big companies buy up gigantic pieces of prime forests and then leave it up the small time forest Rangers & supervisors to cut down trees, haul them up into large trucks, & transport the cut logs to the point of sale/auction. The average level of intelligence yields average results.

THE AVERAGE PLAN

Start from one end which happens to be closest to the main road and proceed to the other end if luck is on your side. Unfortunately, you never get to see the other end of the forest. Three or four seasons, all goes well and then suddenly there is a forest fire which burns down the whole forest to the ground.  

Big companies do not loose much in this deal because they had the forest insured against such a predictable calamity. The big losers are the Insurance companies and the common public who had their homes in the vicinity of this forest.

Recently we experienced such a loss of the whole township in Alberta Canada. Every year we hear & see hundreds of forest fires in rich states of California & other cities.

INTELLIGENT MASTER PLAN FOR LOGGING PATTERN  

It is a common sense approach to logging patterns which makes the total scheme of devouring the forest last for a long time till it is completely finished. No loss plan/approach.

MULTI PRONG ATTACK

If I owned a forest whose dimensions were 10 km X 10 km square, then the logging pattern would be as follows. Five gangs of men & equipment would start cutting down trees on one side of the square and another set of five gangs of men and equipment operate on the adjacent side of square. Each gang would be positioned at a distance of ONE km from the other gang. Thus we would be covering Five km of forest on each side of the square.

As the two sets of gang’s approach inwards towards each other in straight WIDE ROWS, we will be dividing our forest into beautiful manageable grids of one km X one km.  In the very first season we would be achieving 25 grids of one km square, each separated from the other by at least 100-meter-wide alley / space / road. These very pathways / roads will allow us an easy access right into the interior of our forest for fire fighting equipment if needed in future and minimize the damage by containing the fire to one such square/grid. The 100-meter-wide space between two plots of forest trees will be our added advantage in case of fire in one plot, even with high winds blowing the hot cinders away.  

BORROWING FROM COAL MINING TECHNOLOGY.

I have worked in under ground and open cast coal mines and it is no shame to borrow some of their ideas for the benefit of our forests. Once the coal has been evacuated from an under ground mine, it is mandatory to fill up the gap left behind, with sand. This process is called SAND STOWING.  Water and sand are mixed together and pumped into the mine to achieve the end result. In the same way we can pump up sand & water on to the 100-meter-wide pathways in our forest grids to achieve a fire proof alley between two plots of trees to prevent the fire from spreading from one plot to the other in case of fire and high winds. If my forest is full of costly teak trees then the additional cost of sand covering is worth it. The return on investment is very attractive.  

Once the complete forest is divided up into 0ne hundred, neat smaller squares of one km X one km, then and then only we can take a sigh of relief. Now we go ahead with logging pattern of widening the existing pathways and gradually reducing the forest squares to 0.75 km X 0.75 km. This strategy ensures that our forest will last us for a long time with minimum chance of burning down.

FORESTS ON HILLY TERRAIN

Different strategy is needed for a hilly terrain forest. Trees tend to fall/roll down from a higher level towards the valley of the terrain. Here we have to make similar pathways, but this time, RADIALLY from top to bottom to achieve the no loss / minimum loss result.  

Rohit Khanna – Industrial Engineer

USING EVERY DROP OF WATER THREE TIMES

USING EVERY DROP OF WATER THREE TIMES

POLLUTING OUR RE- SOURCES:

We took our rivers for granted and misused them for dumping our domestic and industrial wastes. As a result of our carelessness the once pure river of Ganga has now become an eye sore and a national problem. This story has been repeated with almost all of our rivers.

We draw our raw water from these polluted rivers to treat it and make it fit for drinking. We also divert most of the water from these rivers to our dry lands for the purpose of irrigation. If the raw water is contaminated with lead, arsenic, mercury and other toxic elements the final products of potable water and food grains made from this water will be contaminated too. – Go figure it for yourself.

CLEANING UP THE POLLUTION:

The treatment of drinking water is a lengthy and costly process. The governments and big companies only, can spare the scarce capital for such large scale water treatment plants.  

Small towns are left out of this loop and suffer a great deal on this account with make shift arrangements. Poor villages have no option at all, but to dig wells for their consumption of clean drinking water if they are lucky to have a high water table below their lands.

WASTE CREATES SHORTAGE:

In short, clean drinking water is a scarce commodity now a days. So much in short supply that we have started bottling it in unhealthy plastic bottles and selling it at a price which is becoming beyond the reach of the common man.

On the other hand, our plumbing hardware designs and technology is so very out dated that we have no choice left but to flush our toilets with this clean drinking water too and pay the price of buying expensive water to drink. How can such an advanced society afford to over look this aspect?

 VICTIM OF OUR CIRCUMSTANCES:   

Majority of the public is in a big dilemma to go for the new toilets which use ultra low water amounts of water to flush or hang on to the old three / four-gallon water flushing toilets and off set the cost of not replacing them with high water bills every month. They choose the status quo and suffer with ever rising costs of clean water which is definitely becoming a scarce commodity.

SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE COMPLEX PROBLEM:

Use every drop of water three times before it is discarded into the sewage drains. Install portable plastic urinals in every home between the wash basins and the toilets. Divert the outlet of the wash basins into the urinals and the outlet of the urinals into the cistern tanks of the toilets. There are multiple bath rooms in every home, hence the emphases on plurals. These minor modifications can be done locally at very low costs, but the resultant savings will add up to huge numbers.

The new mantra is Pee, wash hands, & store up for flushing. Pee, wash hands, and store up.  Sacrifices have to be made, the earlier the better.

TOP PRIORITY FOR PUBLIC TOILETS:

In public toilets the same arrangement of locating the wash basins at an elevated level, next lower level the urinals and finally at lowest levels the toilets and interconnecting them for a smooth flow, will work out to be extremely economical and successful. It is a win – win solution.

  

GREY WATER COLLECTION AND REUSE:

It is additionally suggested to collect all the grey water from the kitchen and bath houses in a large plastic container with filtering facility for solids and reuse it for flushing, gardening, floor washing, car washing or other purposes. When this grey water is left overnight undisturbed the sediments will settle down and clear water can be pumped up with the help of a small Tulu pump. We are in a do or die situation, therefore choose consciously to CHANGE otherwise PERISH.

Rohit Khanna – Industrial engineer.

MINI VERTICAL SHAFT WIND TURBINES FOR ULTIMATE FREE POWER

 MINI VERTICAL SHAFT WIND TURBINES FOR ULTIMATE FREE POWER

Giant horizontal shaft wind turbines have their disadvantages which are as massive as they themselves are. Exorbitant initial manufacturing costs, high noise pollution, massive free hold space for installation in remote areas, substantial loss of power during transmission to the usage point, which defeats their purpose of putting them up. The costs of maintenance / repairs and installation are a separate chapter by itself.

Financing such herculean projects becomes risky for the institutions with all the above factors on the negative side. Additionally, the insurance companies have to take big hits when the high winds & tornadoes topple these STEEL FANS like match sticks.  

THINK MICRO & LOCAL

If you want to eradicate poverty, then we have to go the micro financing route and empower the common / poorest man.

If you want to succeed in the garbage removal & disposable area then we have to go the localized route, of handling & disposal of garbage at the very source of its generation.   

If we want free power from the wind, then we have to go the easy route of MINI VERTICAL SHAFT WIND TURBINES. These wind mills will be installed on every pole that the power company owns and uses for power transmission to each household/group of houses. They will supply the power directly into the POWER GRID, when they do turn & twist at unbelievable low wind speeds of 5 kilometers per hour.

Such low velocity winds are always blowing all along the coastline and in-lands on islands like Nova Scotia & Prince Edward. This is how we ensure that there are zero transmission losses because the consumer is using the generated power right there.   

It is proposed to manufacture slender 12 / 15 inches’ diameter mini wind turbines about three feet tall. They will have double plated bases which would be spring loaded to minimize the vibrations caused on account of high revolutions per minute at high wind speeds. They will be locked into positions at the pole tops with innovative low cost arrangements.

SUCCESS OF THE PROPOSAL


This innovative idea uses, the under utilized existing infrastructure of poles & their tops, the managerial setup of big power companies, their ability to out source the manufacture of such mini wind turbines, and finally install them in bulk is the key selling point for this otherwise not so profitable proposal, when done on a piecemeal basis.

Each mini turbine will be of no more the 1 kw capacity or maximum of 2 kw, to keep the cost of manufacture low and standardize the item. It will come in multiple colors to lure the local customer, homeowner to buy or finance it in easy installments. The customer, the consumer of power will be given a standard rebate in his power bill depending upon the RUNNING TIME of the wind mill which should be pretty easy to measure up and record.  50 thousand wind turbines running at full speed will generate 50,000 x 1 kw = 50,000 kw of power.

In a township of 400,000 it should not be very difficult to get 50,000 customers who would love to own their own mini wind turbine, specially when the arrangement between the power company is very TRANSPARENT. The author would definitely like to own one if not more such efficient wind turbines.

The tourism industry would additionally benefit from such an attractive looking site of spinning blades and colorful shades on thousands of POLE TOPS.

Rohit Khanna – Industrial Engineer.