RE: 'Bluefield' development: should we put our airports out to sea?
some interesting ideas...and valid good and bad points are raised. i too would be most concerned about pollution effects on the shore, or in the event of an accident/leak/crash/etc at/near the rigging.
as long as the platform/runways are on a rig and not using land reclamation within the harbours, it sounds like a good and workable idea. the rig can rise and fall with possible changes in sea level too, avoiding some problems with climate change issues. i dont want to see landfill dropped into the oceans the way tokyo or united arab emirates has done in the past to create land.
but now, if we could build high-speed rail lines in underwater tunnels to link to these platforms, we COULD spend that money directly for land-based high speed rail to los angeles, las vegas, phoenix, san francisco for the same or so BBBillions of $$ and then we would eliminate a lot of the flights in the first place and wont need the runways capacity.
and what about the inland cities? if you remember, in the 1920s many of the first air routes were coastal, and using the Pan Am special float planes to land and take off on water. the need to serve inland cities gave way to creating land-based airports and planes with rubber tires on them, resulting in eliminating those pan am flying boats.
