We travel to continents East and West to Travel by Air and Sea, how about North and South?

Posted by admin

I was playing around on Google earth and came up with a big stumper of a question. We travel by Airplane and Ship to travel between continents from East to West or West to East. Why don’t we travel from North to South or South to North to get to the other side of the world? Why don’t airlines fly from Chicago, go over the North Pole and land in Moscow? Is it a matter of distance? If so could the aerospace community returning back to the idea of Nuclear Powered Airplanes be the solution?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 1:28 am and is filed under Air. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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4 Responses to “We travel to continents East and West to Travel by Air and Sea, how about North and South?”

  1. Esmerelda Says:
    June 24th, 2009 at 5:59 am

    Well actually, they do. Check out the airline route maps in any of the international carriers. They go north/south when it is expedient.

  2. ron971 Says:
    June 25th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    Here’s an interesting little exersize: Find a globe and a length of string. Stretch the string from the point of departure to the point of arrival (Chicago to Moscow in your example). You will see what is called the great circle route. Although it is a curved path, this is literally the shortest route between the two points on a globe. In this example, you’d depart from Chicago in a northeasterly direction, pass over southern Greenland, north of Iceland and bicect Sweden before arriving in Moscow from the northwest after flying about 4985 statute miles..

    Shorter distances usually take the least time and the least fuel regardless of the means of propulsion.

  3. COON DOG Says:
    June 28th, 2009 at 4:18 am

    They do. I fly from New York to Thailand and they fly over the pole. When you fly to Japan it goes over Alaska Russia and down to Japan
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  4. Dan Says:
    June 29th, 2009 at 11:40 am

    Long-haul airliners fly great circle routes. Some of these go over the North Pole. Go to your school library with a piece of string and go to the globe and see what the shortest distance from Chicago to Moscow is and where it goes. Do the same thing for Chicago to Hong Kong.

    Nuclear-powered airplanes are not practical yet. Nuclear power works for ships, but is too heavy for aircraft.

    Regards,
    Dan

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