Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Touching Down With A Heliport

By Catherine Reynolds


Humanity was not built to go up. If nature wanted humanity to go up, human beings would have evolved to have the same level of agility as other great apes, or just flat out evolved wings. No, humans were meant to be terrestrial animals. However, humanity is nothing if not stubborn. What nature has failed to bestow, humans created outright. Just because the human body lacks the means to fly did not mean that the human spirit was incapable of flight, and through blood, sweat, and tear, humanity achieved flight via the use of machines. But those machines were subject to gravity still and could not stay in the air for an indefinite amount of time, there were limits to how long they could stay up. Even now with all the advancements in technology, that limit was only increased, not broken through entirely. When the limit is reached, a heliport becomes necessary.

They are any places where helicopters are supposed to land. Generally speaking, they are flat strips of space, anywhere the skids can find purchase. They can be located in a variety of spaces.

Reality dictates that what goes up must eventually come down. As such, the entities that own and operate helicopters will need places to put them down, as simply jumping out and abandoning them in the sky can result in machines that weight tons crashing to the ground. Also, just putting a chopper down anywhere is illegal in some jurisdictions and is a safety concern basically everywhere.

For the most part, an entity in ownership of a helicopter will have no problem coming with the monies necessary to build a helipad. In fact, it can be relatively inexpensive. All that is needed is some concrete for the surface, some paint to mark it as such, and some lights to help support nighttime and other low visibility operations.

As long as there is the presence of a flat surface, there can be a helipad. But most owners will build those platforms on the tops of skyscrapers. Air capable ships will have a designated flight deck for the takeoff and eventual landing of aircraft.

A helicopter is great for many purposes. The first is short range flight. The vertical takeoff and landing means that it can be in the air and on the ground quicker than an airplane, at the expense of travelling distance. Those with the means to use them can use them in order to cover long distance quickly, as they can bypass traffic quite effectively.

But private civilians with money are not the only entities that make use of a helicopter. Militaries all over the world use them quite extensively. There are few vehicles that can ferry troops and supplies quite like a chopper can, in terms of speed. The drawback is that choppers are often a target for enemy artillery.

Nothing in life is free. A chopper is extremely expensive. Even a basic model with no amenities will cost millions of dollars for a new one.

Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. The three others are strong interaction, weak interaction, and electromagnetism. Now, as the weakest of the four fundamental forces, gravity does not exert any considerable level of influence at a subatomic scale. By contrast, on a macro scale, gravity exerts a tremendous amount of influence. It makes planets orbit the sun, it makes the moon orbit the Earth. It is what gives everything on earth its weight. It is what makes objects with weight gravitate towards each other. As such, the things that go up invariable gravitate back towards the ground. In other words, what goes, must come down.




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