Future
The size and manpower requirements of steam catapults place limits on their capabilities. A newer approach is the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). Electromagnetic catapults place less stress on the aircraft and offer more control during the launch by allowing gradual and continual acceleration. Electromagnetic catapults are also anticipated to require significantly less maintenance through the use of solid state components.
Linear induction motors have been experimented with before, such as Westinghouse's Electropult system in 1945. However at the beginning of the 21st century, navies again started experimenting with catapults powered by linear induction motors and electromagnets. EMALs would be more energy efficient on nuclear powered aircraft carriers and would alleviate some of the dangers posed by using pressurized steam. On gas-turbine powered ships, an electromagnetic catapult would eliminate the need for a separate steam boiler for generating catapult steam. The U.S. Navy's upcoming Gerald R. Ford class carrier includes electromagnetic catapults in its design.
Read more about this topic: Aircraft Catapult
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.”
—Lillian Smith (1897–1966)
“The ellipse is as aimless as that,
Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear
In our present. Its flexing is its account,
Return to the point of no return.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Bobby read his future in women; his girls were omens, changes in the weather, and he’d sit all night in the Gentleman Loser waiting for the season to lay a new face down in front of him like a card.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)