'GREEN' Airport

A friend passed this press release my way, thought you guys could throw your two cents in.

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A US $80 Billion Aviation Challenge: The StarPort “Green”
Airport By Jim Starry Inclined to Significantly Reduce
Pollution And Transform The Quality Of Life For Millions Of
People Around The World

Boulder, Colorado/EWORLDWIRE/July 22, 2003 — A US $80
Billion Aviation Challenge: The StarPort “Green” Airport By
Jim Starry Inclined to Significantly Reduce Pollution And
Transform The Quality Of Life For Millions Of People Around
The World

With over 4,000 new airports scheduled to be built
worldwide within the next decade, an innovative design
called the StarPort could produce fuel savings of 300
million gallons a year at each airport, would require only
one-third of the land as a conventional facility and yield
four times the revenue.

The breakdown according to http://www.AReCO.org is:
– 2.000 in the United States
– 1,800 in China
– 20 in the Baja Peninsula

Worldwatch Editor Ed Ayers calls the StarPort design a
“breakthrough… a much more intelligent way of using
techniques we humans have had all along”.

The StarPort design by Jim Starry incorporates inclined
runways that use gravity to help planes slow down on
landing and accelerate on takeoff. Inclined runways would
be shorter, requiring a smaller footprint.

“The impact of planes taking off down a declined runway
means each plane will reach takeoff speed sooner,
translating into a savings of 1,000 gallons of jet fuel per
flight,” stated Starry. “While that may not sound like
much, considering a single modern airport consumes nearly
500 million gallons of fuel a year, the number quickly
reaches astronomic proportions – add that to reduction of
noise and pollution to the areas surrounding the airport.”

(This statement is supported by a recent international
Newsweek article released by John Ness.)

As StarPorts, the new airports would deliver nearly two
billion gallons a day in fuel savings, more than 1,000
times the oil the Bush administration hopes to extract from
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The runways would be slightly concave to help planes stay
centered and stay out of cross wind vectors. JIm Bort and
Jack Graham, Directors of LAX, recently stated that this is
the only new airport design they have seen in 30 years that
would definitely increase safety while reducing noise and
air pollution.

Runways would be wider at touchdown, narrowing as they
approach parking gates atop the terminal dome.

Jim Bushea, Director of FAA, has stated recently that “all
designs are valid. Good luck designing airports.”

“FAA regulations do permit inclines up to 1.5 percent,”
continued Starry. “It is possible to design a runway that
starts at a 1 percent incline and slowly rises to a 4
percent grade.”

“This design is the only design that’s simple enough to be
used in a short enough period of time to make a large
enough difference – saving $80 billion in U.S. fuel a year
– to arrest global warming – which is btw, murder in the
first degree,” added Starry. “The media has the presence
and power to make the difference.”

FACTS
A modern airport consumes nearly 500 million gallons of
fuel a year – nearly half as much fuel as burned by a large
city’s automobiles. Since aircraft are not required to
install catalytic converters, airports are responsible for
more than half of the local urban air pollution. Airports
create nearly 5 times the level of air pollution of the
cars because they burn 1,000 gallons of fuel per hour.

Oakland’s airport taxies a plane 178,000 a year from the
terminal to the runway dropping 400 gallons of partially
burned fuel each time.

“Eliminating the taxi very simply eliminates all noise and
air pollution,” stated Christy McKenny, Director of
Planning at Oakland Airport. “Since planes don’t back out
to the runway, it’s virtually instantaneous takeoff – no
more waste.”

Airline gridlock at nearly every major airport causes more
than 20 planes to be lined up on runways awaiting take off
while spewing enormous amounts of partially burned fuel
into the atmosphere. The fumes from idling diesel jet
engines are about 14 times more polluting than gasoline
exhaust.

At many airports, levels of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons
and nitrogen oxides are at least 10 times higher than in
surrounding cities. Airports designed to handle 350 flights
per day 30 years ago are now scrambling to handle 700.

A Boeing 747 jet consumes more than 500 gallons of fuel
during taxiing – enough fuel to operate a car for a year.
One thousand taxi-to-takeoffs consume 12 million gallons –
sufficient to power 200,000 cars for a day. Only four
percent of the fuel burned goes into actually moving the
aircraft: The rest is thrown to the wind as exhaust and
noise.

The sprawling 52-square-mile Denver International Airport
was built to handle 2,000 flights daily – a landing or
takeoff every 20 seconds. Denver International offers 100
gates and five 12,000-foot (2.3 mile-long) runways. The
StarPort could save $200 million in fuel costs for an
airport with the air traffic of Denver International while
cutting taxiing distances by 48 percent.

Put on the Brakes
Regenerative braking systems installed on electric cars not
only slow down speeding cars, they simultaneously transform
the braking force into electrical energy that is stored in
batteries for later use. If lightweight vertical armature
electric motors were installed in aircraft wheels, the
tires could be pre-rotated before touchdown (eliminating
damaging structural shock and tread burn).

From the moment a plane touches down, the tires could begin
generating electric power. Combined with an inclined
runway, they would eliminate the need for noisy 30-second
thrust-reversal engine burns that can easily burn 300 to
500 gallons of fuel for each landing.

The Subsurface Terminal
An incline of 2 percent would eventually lift a
6,000-foot-long runway 120 feet above the surrounding
landscape. The central terminal, where planes park and wait
to take on passengers, could tower as high as a 10-story
building.

Most airport customers now endure a 1.5-mile trek from
their cars to departure gates. At many airports, this means
that each day 200 passengers on 700 flights wind up walking
70,000 miles to build up their Frequent Flyer accounts.

StarPort passengers would board from below, moving almost
directly to their aircraft from a subsurface terminal in
less than six minutes. For an airport the size of Denver,
this design would reduce the average travelers’
curb-to-counter commute by 80 percent. In addition to
terminal space, the sub-terminal space would include
several floors of parking, restaurants, shopping, hotels,
convention and meeting space.

Instead of circling a traditional airport and waiting in
long lines to enter a single entrance, the StarPort would
have traffic entering and leaving the airport from four
directions.

Runways would be laid out side by side with a 600-foot
separation, allowing simulatneous takeoffs and landings.
Taxiing distances would be reduced 80 percent, with
additional fuel savings. Lights beaming upward from the
terminal could serve as runway lights. In winter, the
terminal’s heat would serve to melt the ice and snow offthe
runways.

Major US cities are scrambling to find airport sites that
meet a simple, but impossible, description: “50 square
miles of unpopulated land – close to downtown.” A StarPort
could be built on only 15 to 25 square miles. Instead of
turning valuable open space into new mega-airports,
StarPorts could be built at hundreds of smaller existing
airfields that were abandoned with the move toward larger
aircraft and longer runways.

“These airports will be built,” concluded Starry. “How
they’re built is up to you.”

About Jim Starry
Jim Starry is the director of Economic Development Through
Environmental Design, Inc [PO Box 1931, Boulder, CO 80306].
He has worked as an engineer at Martin Marietta and the
National Center for Atmospheric Research. Articles on the
StarPort design have appeared in Popular Mechanics, Popular
Science, The Wall Street Journal and will be cited in a
forthcoming Worldwatch Report.

Recent presentations were made to World Bank, FAA, and
Aspen Institute. Arrangements for presentations to city
directors of transportation can be made by contacting
George Ripley at or via email at . Fee for presentation is
$5,000 plus transportation.

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Comments gentlemen and ladies….