Reply To: Richard Branson – Virgin Pledge

[Aeronaut]

Duke Leto wrote: Favor 2 tons, Lead is not a light metal.

I assume that the airliner tonnage max was more predicated on the density of the payload than the weight, or that he was talking about using the reactors as power supplys for propellor driven airliners and despaired of doing so.

You’d have to be pretty daft to want to transport a non-active FF reactor by plane though, there’s no benefit to not doing so by rail and sea.

Yeah, I guess we’re stuck with that weight. Still, outfits like F.E.M.A. wouldn’t necessarily be daft in the air freight scenario. What my examples above vividly illustrate is 2 modes of shipping that would look almost empty, even when loaded near their weight limits.

Jolly Roger was talking about keeping just the fan and replacing the jet turbine with a FF and electric motor. FF changes everything. In this case, it changed power to weight ratio into weight to power ratio, lol.