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:
“I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
““Dark times” is what they call it in Norway when the sun remains below the horizon all day long: the temperature falls slowly but surely at such times.—A nice metaphor for all those thinkers for whom the sun of mankind’s future has temporarily disappeared.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)