Jaunted

Tags: Airplanes / Green Travel / Electricity / Tesla / Technology / → All Tags

All Tesla Wants for Christmas is an Electric Supersonic Airplane

Picture this: you're flying along at 35,000 feet, somewhere above Greenland on a direct to Europe, when your airplane short circuits and everything goes dark. What happens then? We have no idea, since an electric commercial airplane has not yet been invented, but electric car company Tesla is thinking about changing that.

Elon Musk, the founder of both SpaceX and of the revolutionary Tesla company, which made owning a sports car you plug into your wall acceptable if not stylish, sat down with TechCrunch to muse on the future of sustainable travel options, which for him includes the extremely awesome idea of an "electric super sonic airplane." He even states that if someone could get around to whittling out the details, since he's already got too much on his mind, this electrojet could be charging up soon:

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Tags: Airports / Electricity / Travel Hell / → All Tags

Airports Say No Electricity for You

Alex Saunders notes that airports throughout North America have begun putting caps over all their electrical outlets, keeping the laptop and cell-phone masses from powering up.

For Cory Doctorow, trying to get a charge at London's Luton airport was almost impossible:

I got into a huge fight  . . . when I was ordered to unplug my laptop because it presented a "fire hazard." All the devices plugged into the outlets in the airport had to be "certified." I asked about the laptop adapters for sale in the Dixon's electronics shop beside me and was informed that they were certified, and I could plug back in if I bought a new adapter from them (imagine that -- a £50 electricty tax in the form of a mandate to buy a new adapter!). I'd just spent £13 on WiFi, so I kept arguing, demanding that they give me a quote I could publish in a magazine column about their policy, and they relented -- finally -- when I pointed out that the people in the first-class lounge visible through the picture window had all plugged their laptops in.