From: Patrick Salsbury (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 08/07/02
Message-Id: <200208071318.g77DIiI30679@bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Re: Wetzone Engineering: Airships providing artificial rain for fighting fires. (fwd) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 06:18:44 -0700 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com>
Forwarded from Josh.
(Josh, I've also updated your subscription so it should now send and accept
from this address, rather than the old @best.com one.)
-- Pat ------- Forwarded Message Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 22:26:17 -0000 From: Josh Geller <dclxvi_at_dclxvi.best.vwh.net> Subject: Re: Wetzone Engineering: Airships providing artificial rain for fighti ng fires. (fwd) This idea is completely wacky. This guy hasn't apparently heard of Archimedes. He wants to take a buoyant aircraft over a forest fire. Then he wants to offload hundreds of tons of water. So now you have a buoyant aircraft that is flying hundreds of tons light. It's going to be a real adventure trying to land this aircraft. But no, he is going to refill it with water by flying helicopters over it and dumping water on the top, where it will be caught to redistribute it (or, presumably, so he will be heavy enough to land the ship). He wants to fly an airship over the fire, then refill it with water by flying helicopters over it and dumping the water on top of the airship. Why not just build great big helicopters and dump water out of them? Then there's the tiny matter of the air currents that are normally found over a fire. The only thing remarkable about this guy's plan is that he has managed to get some press attention for it. J. ------- End of Forwarded Message