Long distance travel has been revolutionized in the past one hundred years. On the ground, we no longer rely on walking or animal-based transportation, but shoot from place to place in ever speedier cars and bullet trains. We no longer need to take a slow moving boat across the expanse of oceans, instead we skip from London to New York in less than eight hours on an airplane. The old expression, “the journey is the destination” has lost its meaning as we struggle to find the quickest way between two points. Time is a commodity – one that people don’t want to waste.
Nick Talbot, design director for a new project called Aircruise is out to change our appreciation of the journey. At a conference in Brisbane he said “It kind of intuitively felt like a bit of a shame that the act of travelling seemed to be becoming devalued. It was all about just getting there … We looked back at the very romantic days of travel with big ocean liners [that] were unbelievably elegant and delightful ways to get around … And the journey itself was in fact the destination.”
The result [is] the silent and pollution free Aircruise, towering 265 meters from base to tip, which could theoretically ferry 100 guests from London to New York in a leisurely 37 hours, occasionally dropping down to a few hundred feet to allow travellers to “smell the roses”.
via Aircruise concept Seymourpowell | Floating hotel | Video | Photos.
The as yet theoretical Aircruise would be environmentally friendly, powered mainly with solar panels and hydrogen gas. We could be waiting a long time for it however, as engineers work to create a material that would support such a large structure in the air.
Exciting, but visions of the ill-fated Hindenburg flash though my mind. Would you take flight on the Aircruise?
Image Credit: Sydney Times Herald
Amy Thibodeau is originally from the Canadian Prairies, spent the last few years in one of the world's greatest cities, London, UK and is spending the next year traveling around the world. She is interested in everything, but lately is mostly fixated on travel, food, art, politics, creative writing, cuddly animals and experimenting with different kinds of photography. You can find her on her personal blog 
Interesting idea and very sculptural but I can’t envisage how it would fly
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