EckerNet.Com

My employer provides a sort of a daily summary of the news from around our industry each morning. Today I saw this:

U.S., Japan Consider Floating Runway: Japan and the United States are considering building a floating runway off southwestern Japan to ease noise pollution caused by night practice landings of U.S. military planes, an Aug. 28 report said. The runway would be sited about 2.5 miles away from Iwakune Marine Corps Air Station, Japan, in Yamaguchi prefecture, 440 miles southwest of Tokyo, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. The two governments plan to include the proposal in their interim report on the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan to be drafted in October, the newspaper said. (Agence France-Presse)

Yeah, I had the same reaction. What a dumb idea. For all sorts of reasons. What happens if you miss the runway?? How do you defend it from terrorists?? How do you refuel?? You’d have to have basic maintenance facilities…how do you put those out there?? Who does the air traffic control?? How do you generate power? Things like that. I doubt it’s to practice carrier landings either, because from what I’ve read they are a drastically different concept.

But probably the biggest one question, how do you keep it stable?? These are land based planes…they don’t have a tailhook to catch any arresting wires. Plus this is being done at night. And whatever you use it has to be able to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes and other not good things like that.

One of my co-workers theorized you could apply the same methods an oil rig uses. After all, oil rigs don’t break free right??

It seems Katrina settled that for us, by providing us at least 20 examples that yes, in fact, oil rigs can break free.

At least 20 oil rigs and platforms are missing in the Gulf of Mexico and a ruptured gas pipeline is on fire after Hurricane Katrina tore through the region, a US Coast Guard official said.

“We have confirmed at least 20 rigs or platforms missing, either sunk or adrift, and one confirmed fire where a rig was,” Petty Officer Robert Reed of the Louisiana Coast Guard told AFP.

Ok so back to the basics….how do you secure a runway, if you can’t even secure a oil rig. At least you don’t have to try to land on an oil rig.