How to render air travel obsolete?

[zmunkz]

Could you just eliminate all sources of fuel?

Either depleted it, contaminate it, make it non-combustible, or otherwise make it non-retrievable? Jet engines / turbofans won’t work, and there isn’t really any feasible electric alternative for commercial airliners at this point. This would still allow for small propeller planes however…

 

[Vertigo]

Forever

Okay, well that changes the dynamics a bit. Things like EMP and volcanic dust, hacking etc are not likely to affect it forever. The only way you can do that is to really have some handwavium magic and I would suggest that it therefore doesn't really need much explanation other than its affect.

You can get away with that even in hard SF. Cixin Liu effectively employs this sort of idea in his Three Body Problem novels, though he doesn't call it magic but rather it's Clarke's idea of technology so advanced it seems like magic, which he uses to stop any further research into quantum physics; all experiments simply fail.

 

[Vladd67]

Would something that stopped the variation in air pressure that causes lift in an aircraft also affect the downforce on high performance cars? After all isn't it is just the same thing only reversed?

 

[Vertigo]

Would something that stopped the variation in air pressure that causes lift in an aircraft also affect the downforce on high performance cars? After all isn't it is just the same thing only reversed?

Yes, exactly the same thing. As well as allowing birds and insects to fly and probably lots of other things as well!

 

[Null_Zone]

Atmospheric contamination.

Knocks 20 years of your life, a human wouldn't notice post apocalypse, but an engine?

 

[Mirannan]

BTW I remember reading that in most aircraft the Bernoulli effect lift is actually a minor component. The major component is lift caused by the angle of attack of the wings; commercial airliners have wings sloping slightly downwards towards the rear. Probably in military transport aircraft too, although maybe not in fighters - the fuselage sloping down by 9 or 10 degrees probably doesn't matter all that much in those.

 

[Vertigo]

I was under the impression that the angle of attack is what causes the pressure difference. it compresses the air below the wing and reduces the pressure above it.

 

[chrispenycate]

Air travel in general? So I have to eliminate lighter than air - zepplins, blimps - as well as airliners?

I was planning to increase the number of dimensions by a couple, so rather than a square/cube law between surface area (equivalent to lift in an aerofoil situation) and volume, translating to mass, and generally weight, so weight will increase with size much faster and bingo- small insects can still fly, small birds pehaps, big birds not - and jet planes, forget it. Perhaps, as in Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave', the Earth flies out of a damping field which masked us down to four dimensions rather than the universe's six. Unfortunately, lift from hot air or helium would not be affected, or not very much. Mind, I don't give much hope for the sanity of humans suddenly having light reaching them through six dimensions rather than four…

 

[Mirannan]

Air travel in general? So I have to eliminate lighter than air - zepplins, blimps - as well as airliners?

I was planning to increase the number of dimensions by a couple, so rather than a square/cube law between surface area (equivalent to lift in an aerofoil situation) and volume, translating to mass, and generally weight, so weight will increase with size much faster and bingo- small insects can still fly, small birds pehaps, big birds not - and jet planes, forget it. Perhaps, as in Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave', the Earth flies out of a damping field which masked us down to four dimensions rather than the universe's six. Unfortunately, lift from hot air or helium would not be affected, or not very much. Mind, I don't give much hope for the sanity of humans suddenly having light reaching them through six dimensions rather than four…

I don't think that works. Because the effects of an extra dimension or two would be far more far-reaching than making planes not work. With more than three space dimensions, planetary orbits are unstable; the planet either spirals into the sun or is thrown out of orbit altogether. Something roughly similar applies to atomic structure.

 

[Ursa major]

Richard Morgan's novel, Woken Furies, postulates one possible SF "solution":

Harlan's World is surrounded by "orbitals" that [...] are programmed to destroy any object of sufficient technological level flying above ~400 meters altitude and do so with high-energy beam weapons known as "Angelfire".

 

[DelActivisto]

I don't think EMP would do it because it would be almost impossible to maintain a continuous EMP (after all the P does stand for pulse) also it's perfectly possible to build electronics hardened against an EMP. Also an EMP would affect all electronics not just aircraft.

I quite like @goldhawk's suggestion except you would have to allow for the (grave) consequences of that at ground level as well.

@Andrew Lambert is right about the air pressure stuff but I'm at a loss as to how something so fundamental could be affected. Also, as @Biskit says such a thing would affect anything else that operated on the same basis; birds, windmills, wind turbines, propellers, car design, leaves fluttering to the ground etc.

I don't think that matters. The EMP knocks out all sensitive electronics, even though it's just a pulse. On some science fiction shows, maybe you've seen where someone uses a handheld EMP device to temporarily disable electronics. That's certainly possible, and to the best of my knowledge, only works for a certain period of time.

True EMPs would be caused by setting off nuclear bombs at the correct height over an area. This causes a massive electromagnetic spike in many electronics, especially sensitive ones, such as laptops, computers, etc.

The problem with the scenario for the OP is that cars and planes, when metal, have a slight Faraday Cage effect. That can shield them from the worst impacts of the EMP. And the less computers the plane or car has, the more likely it is to continue running after the pulse.

 

[Vladd67]

I don't think that matters. The EMP knocks out all sensitive electronics, even though it's just a pulse. On some science fiction shows, maybe you've seen where someone uses a handheld EMP device to temporarily disable electronics. That's certainly possible, and to the best of my knowledge, only works for a certain period of time.

True EMPs would be caused by setting off nuclear bombs at the correct height over an area. This causes a massive electromagnetic spike in many electronics, especially sensitive ones, such as laptops, computers, etc.

The problem with the scenario for the OP is that cars and planes, when metal, have a slight Faraday Cage effect. That can shield them from the worst impacts of the EMP. And the less computers the plane or car has, the more likely it is to continue running after the pulse.

I used to have the pc game Harpoon which was a naval warfare game. Tom Clancy was involved in it and in the manual he wrote about how a Russian warship was at an American harbour and he was invited on board. One thing he commented on was how most of the electronics were old school, he wasn't sure if this was because the Russian Navy wasn't as advanced as the Americans or if it was so in the case of a nuclear air burst the ship would still be able to function despite the EM pulse.

 

[Vertigo]

I don't think that matters. The EMP knocks out all sensitive electronics, even though it's just a pulse. On some science fiction shows, maybe you've seen where someone uses a handheld EMP device to temporarily disable electronics. That's certainly possible, and to the best of my knowledge, only works for a certain period of time.

True EMPs would be caused by setting off nuclear bombs at the correct height over an area. This causes a massive electromagnetic spike in many electronics, especially sensitive ones, such as laptops, computers, etc.

The problem with the scenario for the OP is that cars and planes, when metal, have a slight Faraday Cage effect. That can shield them from the worst impacts of the EMP. And the less computers the plane or car has, the more likely it is to continue running after the pulse.

The point here is that the OP doesn't want just a one off downing of aircraft but for them to be disabled 'forever.' I wasn't sure if that was the case when I made that post but suspected it was so this would not be an effective permanent disabling of aircraft.

Re the Faraday cage affect; yes and no. It is not very effective against an EMP unless properly grounded etc. I doubt any non military electronics that is running at the time would survive, but at least some military 'hardened' electronics probably would survive.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Have you seen slipstream? Some event not explained caused the atmospheric wind patterns to shift radically and changed the world in many ways including the removal of the ability to fly save in chasms and at very low altitudes.

Cheers, Greg.