This is really cool! A bike based road train

I did that in a previous picture, not sure why I forgot here. I’ll probably update it for the book, thanks!

So for the use case, probably the best way to describe it is to think of an airship as a cargo helicopter with way more lift and a much longer range, which can fly a bit faster, and is cheaper to operate. They can carry way less than an onceangoing cargo ship but they’re faster, they can carry more than a plane but they’re slower, and they have the potential to be cheaper on fuel than both (setting aside the potential return of sailing ships). The startups seem to be pitching them mostly as a way to do overland transport of items like wind turbine blades that are too large for trains or highways. But in this setting where societal crumbles and a deprioritization on cars during rebuilding left most roads and bridges in no shape for 18-wheeler trucks, I also picture them filling the role of cargo trucks. This mirrors some research and planning by the Canadian government considering using airships to reach communities who are currently only linked seasonally by ice roads, who are being gradually stranded by climate change.

Airships like the one depicted are often described as Flying Cranes, with their own internal hoist system allowing them to raise and lower shipping containers, modular buildings (like aid stations) or to dangle larger cargoes below them.

In that case, mooring masts would fill a role similar to cargo ships dropping anchor outside a port while waiting for their turn at a dock, just a safe place to wait. In this case the crew could also disembark.

Some airships can land and would likely park on the ground during cargo operations.

The tricky part is that if they’re parked for any amount of time they need to be able to weathervane in the wind or be secured in a hangar. They’re basically big sails.

So any structure (like the top of the mooring mast) has to rotate freely. For little towers like this one which may not be open to the public, a rotating platform and gangplank are probably sufficient but for passenger liners I could picture a whole rotating terminal at the top of a tower though that might not be much fun in high winds.

Thank you! The designs, propulsion, electronics, control mechanisms, and materials available have improved tremendously but starting up a whole new method of aviation in the modern day is difficult so we don’t have a many good examples in use yet and that leaves us in a kind of odd speculative space. Modern aviation is rightly and respectably safety-focussed but it’s hard enough to get even a new airplane design through (which is how we end up with these weird start-with-something-grandfathered-in-and-kludge-on-modernizations) let alone a whole different kind of commercial craft. But there are a few designs I’m excited about which seem to have a lot of potential, especially in replacing cargo helicopters in their niche.

That might be too much authenticity

I’m honestly not against using Facebook to actually do some good if you already have an account - there’s something to be said for using the places people where people are already hanging out. But if you don’t have one, it’s definitely not worth making one.

Freecycle has local sites for different locations, there might be one for your community. And Buy Nothing has been trying to move off Facebook (to an app, unfortunately - I don’t like apps) so that might also be an option. Both host the right kind of community for this kind of project.

One other thing I’ve had some luck with is just putting up paper flyers. I try to look for the places where people already congregate or where lots of staples and thumbtacks indicate that other folks felt it was a good spot for flyers.

They’ve all been making bigger cars with ‘luxury’ features included by default so they can charge more per car for years now. They’re focused on finding ever-better margins. Selling tons of cheap cars seem to be a far lower priority than selling a few expensive ones. And researching new designs and EVs in general cuts into profits.

Have you looked at Reticulum at all? I know it’s not a drop-in replacement but it can also do messaging over LoRa and it sounds like it’s a bit more resilient than Meshtastic’s flood protocol. Also more complicated though.

I’m only just getting into this stuff, so I’m basically wondering how they compare for someone with more experience using LoRa devices. Does it seem workable?

I’ve read the least about Meshcore so far - it looked like a corporate alternative to Meshtastic but I might not have given it enough consideration.

Thank you!

The explanation I saw in another conversation was that certain settings (I think one-pedal driving?) for regenerative braking make it feel like you’re constantly switching between accelerating and braking with no in-between. Like as soon as you let off the accelerator the brakes come on, no ability to just glide along, so it feels very lurching. I love the idea of recovering power from regenerative braking so I guess if I get the chance to look for an electric car someday I’ll have to make sure it can be configured to just happen when I actually use the brake.

It’s also worth noting that while resellers can be annoying they can also fit a useful role in a network whose job is to keep stuff out of the landfill. When I’m giving away something nice through Buy Nothing I might prioritize people who also give stuff away, or at least seem to participate in good faith but there’s been times when I had acquired some niche ewaste normal people don’t need that I was happy to give it to a guy who would almost definitely sell it on ebay because that was the only likely way it’d find a home (and if it nets a retired guy in town $20 that seems okay).

At the Swap Shop where I sometimes help out, we can’t afford to be as choosey, but volunteers generally know who the resellers are and when they show up. We often put new or nice stuff out throughout the whole time we’re open rather than just upfront so other folks have a chance to get it, and often set things aside for specific people when we know they’re looking for something. We also have a limit on how many items people can take per week.

Generally it’s less of a problem than it probably sounds like. Some volunteers get annoyed by people taking tons of stuff, but I’ve seen the piles of stuff that still goes into the waste stream because we don’t have room for it.

In the end of the day I think it’s a bit of a headspace thing - the worry/anger that someone will game the system can make you miss the sheer amount of good it can do even with a few jerks in the mix.

Seems like local industry only wants to focus on ICE vehicles so there’s not much to protect

This sounds rad, which protocol/meshnet system are you using?

I’ve got two-ish projects that might count: I’ve been reading up on Reticulum mesh networking, particularly with LoRa nodes. I like the idea of that kind of network, but have no idea what amount of activity I’ll find nearby despite living in a pretty big city. I’m still at the stage of figuring out what to get and how I’d like to use it.

I’m also looking at setting up a Gemini server (the gopher-based web alternative protocol thing, not google’s dumb LLM) but I’m a bit skittish about anything that puts a hole into my home network, especially a service made by such a small group because I don’t know what kind of security holes might have been missed (I’m certainly not likely to spot them). Ideally I could set it up through Reticulum, so it’d be air gapped from my regular network, and it appears that someone has made that work, but I think it’d only be accessible to other folks on Reticulum and I’m not sure if that’d be worth it at first. We’ll see!

My active project at the moment probably barely counts because I’m going full analog. I’ve got two antique Leich 901 crank telephones (like an actual crank, not a dial. Turning it generates AC and rings all the phones on the network).

I plan to use them to rig an intercom between the kitchen and workshop. This’ll involve some woodworking as I’m making a nice box for the talk battery for one, and a display board with a voltmeter and two plexiglass-covered cutouts for displaying the wiring and batteries for the workshop end.

I got them all wired up with some really ugly splices and was impressed - they can ring each other and the sound quality is quite good when talking, no repairs needed! Attaching them together is rock simple, just a few wires, plug and play. But my plan is to wire in some old rj11 phone jacks to the display board and battery box so they can (mis)use standard phone cables to talk to each other. In fact I’m hoping to use some of the old wiring already in place in my apartment.

Yeah this seems like a good example of using privilege (in this case being famous) constructively.

Oh nice! Someone reached out awhile ago asking to use it, I bet it’s the same folks! Very cool!

Okay, that makes more sense, thanks

If they’re not generating enough to backfeed even at peak, and they can detect when the power cuts off and deactivate until it comes back, is there an actual safety/legal issue?

The poor C-suite at that utility company already needs to find ever-increasing profits on a basically stable business model and now consumers can just precipitate electricity out thin air? That’s moving things in the wrong direction! Thank goodness they basically own our local government and shareholder value can be maintained.

The webcomic Black Squires

https://m.tapas.io/series/black-squires/info