The moon-shot idea isn’t new. History is filled with large, impossible thinkers challenging our perceptions about what we can do.
Trying to fly, complex computers, and landing on the moon are all examples of moon-shot thinking.
The idea is to aim for the impossible. Answer a problem that doesn’t exist yet. Rather than make something 10% better…make it ten times better.
You know, achieve the unthinkable.
That’s the thinking behind moon-shot ideas.
An overwhelming amount of technology we use today is because of big thinking.
The key to moon-shots is that someone doesn’t accept impossible. They poke, and prod, and they never take no for answer…
This is basically a website dedicated to brilliant ideas.
However this one in particular caught my attention. You see, in my world, I get cranky that my online groceries are delivered ten minutes outside my three hour window. And I get frustrated when it takes another fifteen minutes to get to work because of heavy traffic.
But I forget that my first world problems rely on very simple infrastructure; the humble paved road.
A bit of asphalt is what enables you and me to have what we want moved from one place to another.
However, there are parts of the world where something as simple as a sealed road for moving freight is impossible.
The thing is, many countries with limited road infrastructure have limited means of commerce too.
Look at the chart below:
The light areas show a solid road network.
The dark bits show no real paved road connections. As you can see two thirds of the world has almost no paved road network. Not only that, but this is also home to half of the world’s population.
Put another way, this chart shows three billion people only have a limited transport system.
Now let’s look at the next chart:
This shows the cost efficiencies when it comes to transport relative to speed. That means, how much it costs to ship something.
Shipping is the cheapest and slowest, while truck and train are pricier but a little quicker. And anything by air is clearly the most efficient, but expensive. Which means for developing nations, where good roads are least common, moving goods by air is simply not an option.
Many countries, like Africa and Australia for that matter, rely on trucks and shipping. This is great if you live on the coast. But what about for those who live inland?
This is one of the problems that limit Africa’s commerce for example. Yes, there’s also a bunch of other problems, but today I’m just referring to transport.
Something as simple as getting products from point A to point B is vital to develop an economy. Heck, even Australia faces these conditions. As a result of our sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, we have the longest road trains in the world (around 53 metres long) to move stuff from one side of the country to the other.
And we can only achieve this with a very small road network. For many other countries, establishing a road network will never be an option.
So how can these nations access goods without a developed road network?
Well get this. The guys at Skunk Works (which is a think tank for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Program) have come up with an idea. You’re not going to believe this, but they reckon the answer is…giant airships, like the one below:
Check out this video for more on the technical details of the design, but the short version is, it has the downward thrust of a helicopter, the propellant and aerodynamics of an aeroplane and buoyancy of a hot air balloon.
The best thing is the cost of transportation is only a little more than road or train freight.
It’s also perfectly suited for remote regions. It can land on snow, water, sand and uneven ground.
And so it doesn’t float away, there are grip pads on the base which anchor it to the ground.
This idea is almost a decade old. It was first tested in 2006. However Skunk Works have fine-tuned it to a more commercial level. They say it can carry 500 tonnes of cargo. That means this airship could carry about three times more than the average cargo plane.
Is this massive airship the answer? I’m not sure. It seems crazy. But plenty of crazy things turn out to be commercially successful. That’s the point of moon-shot ideas. But I do know it could be the way to cut transport costs and connect remote areas to commerce.
The potential success of seemingly outlandish moon-shot ideas is the feature of Sam’s Volkering’s latest report. Check out what he says are the four moon-shot ideas for the new tech age.
Shae Smith+
Editor, Money Weekend