Strange Things in the Sky Department: Floating Airports

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1119

I've written several posts here about floating an airport in the NYC narrows, as well as airports constructed over hundreds of acres of Midtown rooftops, hundreds of small landing strips crossing the Atlantic, innumerable planes and dirigibles with lad fields on/in them, and covering the Thames at Big Ben. (See here for some of these stories.) But I've not seen a floating or hovering anti-gravity airport until now. 

The question for me would be--why, if you have somehow mastered gravity enough to float a large piece of concrete tonnage like an airport in the sky, why, oh why, are you still using airplanes? 

The answer doesn't matter, here, only the art does.Actually, the writing doesn't matter, either; just check out the excerpt below.)   This again a piece of delicious imagination by Frank R. Pauil created  for the July 1929 issue of Air Wonder Stories.   The drawing below must be among the first of its kind to depict a collision between two anti-gravity floating/hovering airports. (!)

Notes:

The excerpt:

"The Professor stared blankly a moment, then rushed away to the office. We followed breathlessly.

The outer door had been forced, its lock being broken, but beyond this no damage had been done so far as we could discover. Anxiously we ran over the papers--not a print was missing...."

It might have been more interesting if the thief had stolen all of the "e's" from those papers.  There are 9,500 more words in this story, but I can't make ir any further than this...

And also this:

Comments

[Jeff Donlan]

Of COURSE there will still be planes. Just as Captain Kirk enjoyed a leather-bound book via his reading glasses, so will anti-gravity-age folk enjoy the thrill of piloting a fallible craft onto an insufficient runway. The fear of death will be the motivation for many recreational pursuits. I wonder if it was hunters in that second picture that brought the airport down into the park. "Betcha can't hit that ..."

[John F. Ptak]

Oh dear Jeff. Did Capt Kirk read in an episode of ST? I though that it was Jean-Luc Picard who was/is/will be the cerebral one, dusty leather etc. Jim struck me as thinking that "cerebral" was something you had with milk in the mornings. I could of course be waaay wrong, just like with DOn Sutton not belonging in the HOF. I think I'd like to write a My Own Big Book of Wrong.

[Jeff Donlan]

I thought an old, bloated Kirk was seen reading in one of the films. It may be a specious memory, constructed to rid the image of a disagreeable male pressuring women all the time. One WANTS to like Capt. Kirk.

I would like to read your My Own Big Book of Wrong, just to see what else you were wrong about. I mean, what's wrong with Don Sutton being in the HOF? Are you just angry from his years as a sportscaster? I mean, he had lots of strikeouts and stuff.

[John F. Ptak]

Don Sutton makes me cranky. He did win 320-some games, but he dragged himself across the line, also losing 250-odd games in the process. And that was with good teams for the most part. I think he had 1 20-win season. He did have a good era for his time, but not spectacular. He is also an annoying broadcaster. As I said: cranky.

I think you're 100% right about Puffy Jim--you *did* want to like him, but he was always the kid that did something stupid right at the point of becoming his friend. And you're also right about him not getting thru our own modern times and sexual discrimination and general Elite/Stubby/Bloated Turgidness around anything warm.