Used cars - for design statement, not transportation
Car parts provide great ideas for interior design. When your old rusty four-wheel monster finally kicks the bucket, you can still salvage some parts for pretty cool furniture pieces. Car Couches is an obvious design combination, which can be quite attractive when used with collectible vehicle parts. At Route66 store you can get many more.
Now, if you are such a couch potato, but still need to get around for groceries, you can use some of the motorized furniture, which is all the rage today:
Airplane parts provide even better design statement, more intricate looks and more high-tech feel. In fact, air bombs are the a perfect fit for a bar, for example, which you visit to "get bombed" anyway. Motoart company makes a good use of old collectible parts, see many examples at the site's gallery.
Bomber wing tables:
Radial Engine Table:
WWII Navy practice bomb and B-52 jet engine turbine fan:
Douglas DC-6 Cowling Desk:
Conference table:
And perhaps, best of all - Ejection Office Chair:
"Don't like what you're hearing in the office? Pull the lever and abort with Motoart's B-52 Ejection Chair"
These concerns surprisingly gained a lot of weight in the government...
"Surprisingly"..? Have you actually looked at the results of the sonic boom testing done at Oklahoma City in early 1964, and at White Sands later that year? We're not talking fuzzy green Luddite environmentalism here... we're talking what the FAA and Boeing concluded would be millions in payments for physical damages per overland flight.
The article misses the fact that Concorde did indeed fly successfully and accident free for a great many years. The TU144 was a great triumph both of soviet ingenuity, and soviet espionage, incorporating much of concorde's design. Whilst a Concorde is in a museum in Seattle it is far from being the only one preserved. One is at Filton, near Bristol, England, from where the first proving flights took off. Truth is, Concorde was a triumph that worked, first flying in 1969, in service 1976, and continuing until late 2003. An airliner that flew higher and faster than any other, ever. Whereas the Boeing SST was a pipedream that never materialised.
The interest of the governments may not have been as benign as the article implies. There is a story that - as a test - they once flew a Concorde out over the Norwegian Sea then had it cruise back over Britain at its normal height and speed, just to see how easy it would be to intercept. The answer was that it wasn't. It flew too high and too fast for anything in the UK to get to it before it had flown right across the country.
The noise problem was BAD. I used to work at Heathrow and many the time I stood outside Hatton Cross (tube) station as Concorde climbed into the sky. There was a longterm carpark between the station and the runway, which meant that Concorde passed over that even lower, and as the rumble of the plane died away you could always hear the blaring of the horns of the cars - their theft alarms triggered by the vibration. I often used to wonder how many travellers parked in there and got back to find that - for some unknown, to them, reason - their car batteries were flat.
soubriquet said: "The TU144 was a great triumph both of soviet ingenuity, and soviet espionage, incorporating much of concorde's design."
May be Concordes' design was stolen from USSR? Tu-144 has it's first flight 2 months earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144
"However, even if this were to be confirmed, the documents were early development plans and would not have permitted the USSR's engineers to come up with their own aircraft; the plans could only serve as a general indication of the work of the Concorde design team. Moreover, Soviet aircraft designers in the 1960s had significant experience building delta-shaped aircraft, which proved an efficient means of achieving Mach 2, and TsAGI, of which Andrei Tupolev was a graduate, had developed extensive data about such designs."
Yeah, yeah. I'll believe the US can build a craft comparable to Concorde when I see it build a V/STOL plane that isn't 100% craptacular (especially when compared to my country's brilliant AV-8B Harrier). Until then, forgive me for thinking that you're way out of your league here.
Dear friends: I uploaded some pictures of the SST Museum that my father took during our trip to Florida the summer of 1976. Hope you enjoy them, the link is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8767849@N07/sets/72157618299890370/
I will be uploading more pictures of the SST Museum soon !!!!!
I love cars, and I love Plan 59. This has been one of my favorite posts of yours, ever. I have a '59 fairlane galaxie 500...you just cant beat the styling of the 50's and 60's! Thanks!
"their outrageous size and engine's unbridled power give off a statement of pure excess"
True, but many of today's automobiles rival their weight and easily exceed their power. Modern mid-luxury sport sedans are quicker, faster, handle immeasurably better, and are scads safer than their counterparts of yore. We're truly living in a new Golden Age of the Automobile!
Darn! And I used to think you were so on the ball! Seriously, before mocking other politicians, have you checked out your George Bush recently? There's no question he considers himself King and his expressions are 1000 times stupider than Putin's!
Let me assure you, the thought has crossed my mind. Alas, Good Old Bush's faces can be found in every bookstore; there are wall calendars issued every year. Too obvious. But still... check out "Presidents and Babies" post from December 2006 :)
"QUANTUM SHOT" #190
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