During the late ’90s and early 2000s, there was an unlikely technological revival: airships.
The Hindenburg disaster sunk commercial airships for most of the twentieth century, leaving pretty much only the Goodyear blimps.
During the great economy of the ’90s, investors lined up to toss money at anything that popped up its head, which ended up turning out pretty badly for many of them. There were several airship startups among them.
The Aerium
Cargolifter AG, which opened its doors in ’96 was a German company with a plan to build truly colossal airship freight lifters. The initial plan was to build one with a 160 ton lifting capacity, but there was talk of constructing airships several times that large. The company spent a nutty amount of money constructing a hangar, called the Aerium, for the airships at an old airfield. The Aerium is, to this day, the fourth largest building in the world. You could fit an aircraft carrier inside with room to spare. (I don’t know why you’d want to, though).
Before Cargolifter AG couldn’t get anything other than a small test balloon built, though; they ran out of money and had to fold in 2002. The building was sold to a resort company, who turned it into a gargantuan indoor tropical park, featuring a swimming pool the size of a lake with waves and beaches, miles of jungle paths, spas, and so on and so forth. (Now there’s somewhere I can convince Maggie to go).
The Ukrainian company Aeros is a slightly more cheerful story. They already had a line of products to keep them in business, manufacturing hang-gliders and other ultra light craft. They’re sinking their budget into R&D for the Aeroscraft, a huge, sleek, rigid airship that looks like something out of Star Wars. It’s not a strictly lighter-than-air vehicle, and it also features huge vertical thrusters. They actually flew their prototype this year, after a decade of development.
Maggie and I love hot air balloons, so here’s keeping my fingers crossed we’ll get to start taking commercial airship flights soon enough.
One of my favorite movies from the last decade or two was that King Kong remake. The big ape himself is done pretty spectacularly by a fellow named Andy Serkis, using motion capture.
There are a lot more dots on the face, too; that part is harder to animate, so it needs a lot more detail. It still takes a ton of work. Movies are just crazy expensive for a good reason, and not just because of the huge paychecks the actors get. There is a ton of work and expense put into it.
Unfortunately, it sometimes isn’t possible to construct a shallow ramp, usually due to terrain. You’ve still got to be able to get up to the top, though, which is where funiculars come into the picture.
Depending on the amount of space available, the carts might have separate tracks, or they may share tracks. When they share track, there’s generally a split rail in the middle of the run that diverts the carts around each other.
The first use was actually pre-medieval, though it was used on occasion in medieval times. Siege ramps are huge earthen ramps built right up a castle or city wall, a cliff face, or other positions of strength. They’re about as absurd as you’d think: the builders are going to come under constant attack by the people above, resulting in a wasteful loss of life. It was really only used when the besiegers grossly outnumbered the besieged, were otherwise unable to break through the enemy defenses, and had little care for loss of life on their side. The Romans used it a few times, as did a few of the smaller empires before them, and a few of the smaller kingdoms they conquered.
The other use was in siege towers. These, at least, were constructed with a bit more safety in mind for the troops on your side: not that sending them over an enemy castle wall is, particularly, a safer idea. Siege towers, depending on the whim of the builder, were generally a bizarre hybrid of ramp, staircase, ladder, and watchtower, all built out of wood and canvas and stuck on wheels to roll right up to the castle walls, where troops could exit the tower directly onto those walls.
The ancient Greeks recognized three simple machines to start with: the lever, the screw, and the pulley. The man who came up with the idea, Archimedes, was a brilliant but crazy guy. Built crazy ancient super weapons to sink entire enemy fleets one day, then jury rigged an ancient precursor to calculus the next. He’s considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time for a good reason. He’s the kind of dude who could have moved the world, if you gave him a long-enough lever.