Man trying to reduce the strength of hurricane Ivan

[skrap1r0n]

ok I am by no means a smart person, and I DO apologize for not getting the actual link to this article, but it really seems like a bad Idea


Fla. Man May Try To Reduce Ivan's Strength
Cordani Wants To Dump Absorbent Material From 747

POSTED: 4:14 pm EDT September 10, 2004
UPDATED: 4:18 pm EDT September 10, 2004

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A South Florida businessman says he's going to try to reduce the strength of Hurricane Ivan by flying a Boeing 747 into the edge of the hurricane and dumping thousands of pounds of an absorbent material into the storm.

Peter Cordani of Jupiter plans to try to knock the storm down by one or two categories by dropping tons of powder that absorbs 3,000 to 4,000 times its weight.


Cordani is chief operating officer of Dyn-O-Mat, a company that sells environmental absorbent products such as mats for mechanics. He believes his product, SK 1,000, would cause a shearing action and a 15 degree cooling of the storm. ,p/>

Cordani has been working on his plan for five years.

He has assembled a team of experts, including two former astronauts, moonwalker Edgar Mitchell and Scott Mac Leod, who tested the lunar module.

Cordani is in contact talks to lease a 747 tanker from Evergreen Aviation in McMinnville, Oregon

Now, my question is, what are the ramifications of the energy conversion. if the hurricane actually COOLS Ivan, what happens with the heat exchange?

[AZgazer]

Now, my question is, what are the ramifications of the energy conversion. if the hurricane actually COOLS Ivan, what happens with the heat exchange?

I am going with a really bad idea here. I do not see a sudden violent drop of temp being good. If the water cools isn't it going to infuse a ton of cooled and very moist air immediately back into the air? Kind of right into the Storm?

I wouldn't want to be around when this goes down. Especially not in a metal plane with fuel on it. Why hasn't this been tested in a lab? And would the government be over-stepping their bounds if they didn't let this happen without some testing to make sure he isn't going to kick off some crazy reaction?

[skrap1r0n]

Thats what I am thinking. IIRCC, the energy in a cat 5 hurricane is equivilent to X amount of hiroshima a-bombs, a cat 4 hurricane is X-y a bombs. reducing the cat by artificial means will be the equivilent of setting off that difference in A-bombs.

Am i wrong?

[AZgazer]

Where are Metora or CWXman when you need them?

[Captain Kidd]

I'm wondering if that material is biodegradable...

[skrap1r0n]

Dunno, but this definitley bears watching. I'm gonna bet it doesn't work but damn if it does and theres a rapid reduction, theres gonna be hella energy released.

[Chip]

Thats what I am thinking. IIRCC, the energy in a cat 5 hurricane is equivilent to X amount of hiroshima a-bombs, a cat 4 hurricane is X-y a bombs. reducing the cat by artificial means will be the equivilent of setting off that difference in A-bombs.

Am i wrong?

Well sort of. A bomb is not a hurricane. The energy is there, but not released in the same way. :wink:

[Chip]

I'm wondering if that material is biodegradable...

(Said tongue-in-cheek and very hypothetically) - Another idea: Manufacture 100 large floating 10 mile diameter, 100 foot high slabs of Pykrete. Tow them into the path of the tropical storm as it is developing. Let them float around in there, almost submerged. Even if they collide, they won't break as Pykrete is incredibly strong material. It takes forever to melt and floating mostly submerged, lowers water temperature. It is also biodegradable. It will last for years.*

*Yes, I know its nutty. :wink:

[John Kierein]

When they drop it in the ocean it'll reduce the sea level.

[Worm hunter]

Peter Cordani of Jupiter plans to try to knock the storm down by one or two categories by dropping tons of powder that absorbs 3,000 to 4,000 times its weight.

**Bolding mine**

Unless Jupiter is a place im not so sure that this isnt some kind of joke, That just kind of jumped out at me when i read through it.[/quote]

[Tha_Pig]

Unless Jupiter is a place im not so sure that this isnt some kind of joke, That just kind of jumped out at me when i read through it.

Yes. There is a city named Jupiter here in Florida.

Anyways, I don't think that will work. How many of this "absorbent material" can a plane carry? Have this guy ever looked at the size of a hurricane in the map? Sound to me like a mosquito trying to reduce the speed of a truck by flapping its wings in front of it…

[Worm hunter]

Thanks for the reply Tha_Pig, that would of bugged me for days.

Anywho i wonder what this absorbant material is supposedly going to absorb. It cant be heat since its says in the op quote it absorbs weight so what is it???

[Enzp]

I agree. I think it is important to consider the scale of things when looking at ideas like this. The Hurricane is huge and is driven by heat energy. Energy is energy, so even if it is not in a burst like a bomb, it still would take a considerable protion of the storm's energy being removed to have any effect. Looking on the weather map, it is unlikely a 747 full of anything - including nuclear bombs - would be able to remove even a tiny fraction of the storm's energy when the thing is the size of Texas.

It would be like trying to alter the path of a bowling ball with a pea shooter. Even if you blow REALLY HARD, it won't have much effect.

If the guy wants to try it, why not. Good luck getting some company to put their multi million dollar plane at risk flying around in the storm.

[electromagneticpulse]

Wouldn't a military cargo plane make more sense? i mean their designed to carry some really heavy stuff and are also made to take some heat during combat, a 747 is built to transport people and some bags not fly through enemy fire or hurricanes.


Peter Cordani of Jupiter plans to try to knock the storm down by one or two categories by dropping tons of powder that absorbs 3,000 to 4,000 times its weight.

okay so let me get this straight 1 gram of this powder would go in and be crushed by the storm and end up being a powder that weighs 3000-4000 grams. So 1 gram would come out at about 6 1/2 to 9 lbs, tank shells weigh about 11 lbs with gun powder... wouldn't it be like raining morta shells down on anywhere as soon as the hurricain lost enough energy to hold onto this powder?

[LunarOrbit]

I remember reading in Popular Science a few years ago about a plan to stop hurricanes by intentionally creating oil spills in their path. The spill wouldn't have to be very thick, just a thin layer of oil on the surface of the water would supposedly change the temperature of the water and prevent the storms from forming.

[Donnie B.]

I remember reading in Popular Science a few years ago about a plan to stop hurricanes by intentionally creating oil spills in their path. The spill wouldn't have to be very thick, just a thin layer of oil on the surface of the water would supposedly change the temperature of the water and prevent the storms from forming.
It's true! Were there any hurricanes in the Gulf of Alaska after the Exxon Valdes grounding? Huh? Were there?

[Normandy6644]

So has this guy tried this yet? Is he even going to?

[Humphrey]

I remember reading in Popular Science a few years ago about a plan to stop hurricanes by intentionally creating oil spills in their path. The spill wouldn't have to be very thick, just a thin layer of oil on the surface of the water would supposedly change the temperature of the water and prevent the storms from forming.

Thats a hell of alot more plausible than this guys idea. Plus i can bet its alot better for the environment. I mean if im guessing right its the same stuff they put in diapers and those "do not eat" packets. Whats going to happen if you have thousands of these things floting around our oacean being eaten by every living thing in it? Bad, bad idea.

He has to overcome two rpoblems here:
1. getting the granuels inside the storm without them being blown away in the first place. This could be solved by flying directly into the storm.
32. covering a wide enought area so that the entirety of the hurricane is covered in the stuff and lowered in energy so that it cannot support the high winds. Thats alot of area to cover.

A small storm like charlie was, it might even be possible. But this guy is prety damn big.

[Captain Kidd]

He has to overcome two rpoblems here:
1. getting the granuels inside the storm without them being blown away in the first place. This could be solved by flying directly into the storm.
32. covering a wide enought area so that the entirety of the hurricane is covered in the stuff and lowered in energy so that it cannot support the high winds. Thats alot of area to cover.
What happened to problems 2 to 31? They end up being solved?
:D :D :D

(Sorry, I was forced to come into work today and it looks like I'll be here tomorrow too so my humors a bit rough at the moment. :cry: )

[Humphrey]

Numbers 2-31 have been classified by the Legion of Doom.

[Maksutov]

I remember reading in Popular Science a few years ago about a plan to stop hurricanes by intentionally creating oil spills in their path. The spill wouldn't have to be very thick, just a thin layer of oil on the surface of the water would supposedly change the temperature of the water and prevent the storms from forming.

Thats a hell of alot more plausible than this guys idea. Plus i can bet its alot better for the environment. I mean if im guessing right its the same stuff they put in diapers...[edit]

So they're going to fling fertilizer at Ivan? Poor guy...that stuff found in diapers is one of the most potent materials on Earth, or probably anywhere else. When you have kids, Humphrey, you'll find out! 8)

[Astronot]

This guy sounds like he is only trying to hype his company. Since it probably won’t happen, he has very little to loose but can gain some exposure for this absorbent product and public goodwill for his company. Never underestimate the power of free publicity.

[Dgennero]

Let's try a quick calculation:
Suppose he drops 10 tons, absorbing thus 20,000 tons of water.
The central regions of the Hurricane have the potential to drop, say, 20cm (8 inches) of rain on an area several dozen kilometers in diameter.
1 square kilometer of 20cm of rain weighs 1000mx1000mx0.2m = 200,000 tons. If the dropped powder is spread by the convective motion of the storm over an area of 100 kmx100km, this spells removing 20,000 tons of water out of 2,000,000,000 tons, or roughly a thousandth of a percent.
That is a minor fluctuation Ivan will not react to [-X , barely better than trying to deflect it with mental, telekinetic "energy".
If, on the other hand, the powder stays concentrated over a small area, there will be a sudden, locally confined area of different pressure and humidity, probably lower pressure - an area, into which air and moisture rushes violently. And alas, thanks for creating that tornado #-o

[AZgazer]

#-o

What he said. :D

[Jigsaw]

That's actually Old News--he's been working on this theory for a while. That article in the OP makes it seem like he just up and decided to charter a plane, possibly for advertising purposes--not so.

From September 1: (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/content/accent/epaper/2004/09/01/a6e_dynomat_0901.html)


Inventors think they could reduce storm havoc
By Paul Lomartire

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

< snip >

For three years, the Jupiter businessman and inventor has been trying to get hurricane experts to consider his super-absorbant product, SK-1000, which can be dumped into a hurricane to weaken it before landfall. "It will suck the moisture out of the storm and cool the storm down 15 degrees within seconds," says Cordani. "That will reduce the devastating punch. If you reduce a storm by 8 to 15 mph you can reduce 60 percent of its damage."

[Dr. Peter Ray, a Florida State University professor of meteorology] says no one can know if Cordani's idea could work until it's tested. "My goal is to do good science, not to promote this," says Ray, a Doppler radar pioneer. "But the questions can be answered using the best science available at a level done with integrity and honest scrutiny."

As for getting government hurricane experts to embrace Cordani's idea, that's naive, says Ray, who earned his doctorate at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. "You're dealing with government agencies," he says. "Unless it was born in NOAA, it would not happen, them embracing it." But, he adds, if NOAA was given a big chunk of research money by the Congress to investigate Cordani's idea, the tests would begin immediately.

< snip >

Insurance companies were the first to listen to Cordani's patented SK-1000 process to modify weather. But hurricane experts discounted his plan. For starters, they said, no airplane was big enough to carry enough of the stuff to affect a storm, even if SK-1000 did what Cordani said it would.

< snip >

While he worked on concentrating SK-1000, Dutton, Dyn-O-Mat's president, looked for an airplane maker to design something that could haul and drop it into a hurricane. Cordani has now improved SK-1000 from absorbing 250 times its weight to 2,000 to 3,000 times its weight, so a plane would have to haul a lot less of it to affect a storm.

And Dutton got the plane built. "We finally have the big aircraft in position," he says, but he can't announce the company until the final contracts are done. The 747-sized plane will carry a 200,000-pound payload.

Buddies going all the way back to Happauge High School in Smithtown, Long Island, Cordani and Dutton quickly learned a simple fact: You can't tell certified science guys anything if you don't have a bunch of college degrees. "The key is to work with the government to bring in the dollars, the insurance conglomerate and the researchers," Dutton said.

< snip >

He did get NOAA to test his first version of SK-1000 using hurricane computer models, and it slowed the storm by 4 to 6 mph. With the improved SK-1000, he says, "we have a shot at 15 mph now.
They sound serious, but I can't help enjoying the teensy hints of the classic woowoo, "They laughed at Galileo, too!"

His webpage discussing this.
http://www.dynomat.com/storm.shtml

[Humphrey]

Buddies going all the way back to Happauge High School in Smithtown, Long Island, Cordani and Dutton quickly learned a simple fact: You can't tell certified science guys anything if you don't have a bunch of college degrees. "The key is to work with the government to bring in the dollars, the insurance conglomerate and the researchers," Dutton said.



This part of the article i really don't like. This is Big time Woo-Woo thinking.
"They dopn't listen to me because i don't have a doctorate, its not because my idea is realtively impossible to do and that they should not waste their time on something like this."

[Jigsaw]

Yeah, maybe it is a bit woowoo, but hey, he's made the mainstream media. (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WEATHER/09/12/hurricane.cure.ap/index.html)

He might actually get some funding, who knows. At least it's a better idea than nuking it.

[Nowhere Man]

The trouble is, a hurricane is so darn BIG that there is nothing that humanity can do in the short run to affect it. We can affect the size and number of them over the long term with global warming and cooling, but nobody's sure which way we have to go :D .

The only way to deal with a hurricane is to go where it ain't.


Fred

[jaydeehess]

I had had the thought that reducing the surface temp of the ocean in the path of a hurricane would be more effective and safer. I was inspired by forest fire fighting methods in which a backfire is set to deprive the wildfire of fuel.

One would have to seed the sea with liquid oxygen. My thought is to trail hoses from large LOX tankers, the hoses being at a depth of 10 meters below the surface. Perhaps it could cool the water enough to at least prevent a CAT 4 from becoming a CAT 5 storm. I don't know how to do the calcs, I'd have to brush up on specifac heat and all that. I also have no idea what LOX costs. If such a plan would cost $2 billion for each storm then leaving the storm alone may be cheaper.
I have an almost comical vision of large sheets of ice floating in the Gulf of Mexico.

[Enzp]

They laughed at Galileo. And they laughed at Carrot Top. Maybe if we gave Carrot Top a telescope instead of a telephone...

Nah.

[kucharek]

The energies involved are HUGE. Even the warmth of the ocean is a LOT of energy. The Gulf stream, coming from down there, warms half of Europe to nice temperatures. Producing some coolant to cool down the ocean (liquid oxygen is surely not the best choice), would mean to release that heat enery somewhere else earlier.
Maybe the best way to deal with the hurricanes would be to slow down the spin of the Earth so we have less Coriolis forces giving the air the spin... 8)

Harald

[Humphrey]

Maybe the best way to deal with the hurricanes would be to slow down the spin of the Earth so we have less Coriolis forces giving the air the spin... 8)

HaraldBingo!!! Now all we have to do is wait for planet x to hit the parking break on Earth.......

[Rich]

Maybe the best way to deal with the hurricanes would be to slow down the spin of the Earth so we have less Coriolis forces giving the air the spin... 8)

HaraldBingo!!! Now all we have to do is wait for planet x to hit the parking break on Earth.......

But wait!!!! Won't slowing down the rotation of the Earth cause time to slow down? My work day takes long enough as it is.

[kucharek]

Maybe the best way to deal with the hurricanes would be to slow down the spin of the Earth so we have less Coriolis forces giving the air the spin... 8)

HaraldBingo!!! Now all we have to do is wait for planet x to hit the parking break on Earth.......

But wait!!!! Won't slowing down the rotation of the Earth cause time to slow down? My work day takes long enough as it is.

Seeing it this way, it would be sufficient to slow down time... No need to tamper with Erath's rotation...

[jaydeehess]

Producing some coolant to cool down the ocean (liquid oxygen is surely not the best choice), would mean to release that heat enery somewhere else earlier.


That is why I wondered about the cost of LOX. It would take a lot of energy to produce that quantity of it and that would make it expensive of course.

I had thought of liquid nitrogen and dry ice. The former I wondered about the effect of a lot of dissolved nitrogen in the water on fish populations. I know that they will flee the cooler water anyway but how much nitrogen would emain dissovled later and what would be the effect on fish? The later, dry ice, I considered not cold enough therefore requiring even more massive quantities and again there is the effect on fish populations. Oxygen however would be actually beneficial to fish.

Another mega project for hurricane control would be to utilize an island or build one along the Atlantic path of these depressions a few hundred miles east of Barbados. The entire island would be set up as a giant cooling station pumping the heat of the surrounding ocean to a point just south of the equator. This would have the effect of robbing the developing depression of energy before it enters the Caribbean and thus reducing it's strength. It might spell hard times for the coast of Africa south of the equator but there are always trade offs. :o :D

As for relying on planet X to put the brakes on, well the old girl has not been all that reliable for the believers. I think we should not rely on her. :D

[Humphrey]

As for relying on planet X to put the brakes on, well the old girl has not been all that reliable for the believers. I think we should not rely on her. :DDamn. And i already bought my cleats so i stay stuck to the earth when it stops.

[kucharek]

The temperature of stuff doesn't tells how much energy it contains. Water needs very much energy to be heated, or ice needs a lot of energy to be melted. I don't know the specific figures, but maybe using just water ice is more efficient to cool other water than using liquid oxygen/nitrogen. Heat transfer from water into the liquid and later gaseous oxygen/nitrogen may also be so worse that the cooling effect is degraded. Can someone throw in figues for specific warmth for the materials and phase changes in question?

[TriangleMan]

Significant changes to water temperature would likely have disasterous environmental consequences which would outweigh the reduction in damage from hurricanes. Rather than spending a lot of money/power on ways to stop or redirect hurricanes it should be spent on the building of homes that can withstand the wind force, and ensuring that people do not build in areas prone to flooding or surge. More money to engineering research for wind-resistant roofs wouldn't hurt either. Once all of these are in place hurricanes will not pose such difficulties for areas affected by them.

[gritmonger]

Significant changes to water temperature would likely have disasterous environmental consequences which would outweigh the reduction in damage from hurricanes. Rather than spending a lot of money/power on ways to stop or redirect hurricanes it should be spent on the building of homes that can withstand the wind force, and ensuring that people do not build in areas prone to flooding or surge. More money to engineering research for wind-resistant roofs wouldn't hurt either. Once all of these are in place hurricanes will not pose such difficulties for areas affected by them.

Bangladeshi folks have learned to build their houses on stilts instead of trying to control the floods...

Anyone think of building retractable homes? Or homes that can compress into a closed wedge shape? Or just adopting the roll-shutters that are on almost every German home? Security and weather protection.

[jaydeehess]

ensuring that people do not build in areas prone to flooding or surge.

Killjoy, I want a seafront home to retire at and dangnabit I don't want to have to go up and down a lot of stairs. I don't care if penquins find the western equatorial Atlantic to be just to their liking and manta rays all die off I want storms dissapated before they destroy my retirement! :D

[weathergal]

The problem with a lot of hurricane modification schemes is that they fail to take into account the shear size of the storms. From the AOML Faq page (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5e.html), since I don't have the time to work out the numbers myself:


If the eyewall was thirty miles (48 kilometer) in diameter, that means an area of nearly 2000 square miles (4550 square kilometers). Now if the hurricane is moving at 10 miles an hour (16 km/hr) it will sweep over 7200 square miles (18,650 square kilometers) of ocean. That's a lot of icebergs for just 24 hours of the cyclone's life.

Now add in the uncertainty in the track, which is currently 100 miles (160 km) at 24 hours and you have to increase your cool patch by 24,000 sq mi (38,000 sq km).

So in order to have some hope of affecting a hurricane with an eyewall the size of Ivan's, you'd have to spread your cooling agent or whatever over an area about the size of the state of West Virginia.

Agree with previous posters that the better idea is to promote better building codes. Shutters would be a good idea too. Someone was discussing at work the other day how some of the damage could have been prevented by more people having shutters or even plywood over the windows. The hurricane blew out the windows, winds howled into the house, and the roof went flying. Of course, shutters don't help much when there's a lot of storm surge.

Jaydeehess, my suggestion is that if you want a seafront house, build one on the Pacific coast, as the sea surface temperatures there are too cool for the most part to support strong hurricanes.

[TriangleMan]

Killjoy, I want a seafront home to retire at and dangnabit I don't want to have to go up and down a lot of stairs.
There is lots of seaside property available where there are no hurricanes such as Newfoundland. The property is cheap too! :wink:

[Amadeus]

I can see the advert now.......

"who you gonna call? Storm Busters!" :lol:

Just checking out the site it said that he is going to try this out on embrio storms just full scale stuff like Ivan.

I realy think this is a bad idea though.....
I would however like to see it done, from a safe distance.

[Humphrey]

You know i was thinking, there really is absolutely no way that this guy can loose.

Hurricanes cycle in strength. Look at Ivan. And eventuaklly they loose power naturally. If he does it late in the game, any loss of power he can say its his stuff. If it slows down, he did it, not the island its traveling over and thus stopped from its energy source. If nuthing happens, he can stay that the stuff works, but was blown away before it entered, he just has to change how its delivered. You get the idea.

He was on MSNBC last night. Hes stuff absorbes the water and truns into a solid. When the solid his sea water it then turns into a gell. He did not mention if the gell is bio degradeable or harmful. Just that it would fall into the ocean.


I was wondering how the whole cooling phase will happen. Wehn water changes state it takes/uses energy. But the water is not changing any states here. Its being absorbed. So where is the heat transfer to take away the temperature and energy? [I am probobly misunderstanding or forgetting something here.]

[jt-3d]

Or he can say it would have gotten stronger if not for his idea.

[kucharek]

In some way I hope we will never be able to control the weather.
There are so many different needs by different groups that would request different weather for the same area that it would be a highly political subject.
And if control is not complete, who would take responsibility, e.g. if a US-controlled hurricane destroys Yucatan or a Japanese controlled taifune causes heavy damage in China?

[Gerrsun]

Of course, the thing to consider in doing this is if stopping hurricanes, even if possible, is actually a BENEFICIAL thing. Yes lives are lost and billions of dollars in structures and materials is destroyed BUT what are the positive effects of hurricanes?

I did a quick google search and saw mentions of hurricanes filling up water resevoirs, soaking fields, and churning us sediments to clear out wetlands.

Would it actually be worth it from a long term perspective to stop a hurricane if it could even be done.

...On a different note, I saw someone wanted to detonate a nuclear weapon in a hurricane to stop it. That just sounds to me like a horrible idea, all that radioactive material being blown all around...sounds like a terrorists wet dream.

[Gerrsun]

Of course, the thing to consider in doing this is if stopping hurricanes, even if possible, is actually a BENEFICIAL thing. Yes lives are lost and billions of dollars in structures and materials is destroyed BUT what are the positive effects of hurricanes?

I did a quick google search and saw mentions of hurricanes filling up water resevoirs, soaking fields, and churning us sediments to clear out wetlands.

Would it actually be worth it from a long term perspective to stop a hurricane if it could even be done.

...On a different note, I saw someone wanted to detonate a nuclear weapon in a hurricane to stop it. That just sounds to me like a horrible idea, all that radioactive material being blown all around...sounds like a terrorists wet dream.

[Captain Kidd]

There's also econimic benifits involved too. Home Depot has sent hundreds of workers to man the Florida stores and they're selling truckloads of plywood almost before they can offload it.

Then following the hurricane the construction industry will see a boom rebuilding everything. Of course on the negative side they say that quite a few of the smaller Florida insurance companies will go bankrupt. They couldn't handle two hurricanes within weeks of each other. And the tourist and casino industries will get hurt too. But the net ecomic effect will actually be positive.

[Nicolas]

Just some comments on the "plane" element in this plan:

1) (from the article in the palm beach post).
While he worked on concentrating SK-1000, Dutton, Dyn-O-Mat's president, looked for an airplane maker to design something that could haul and drop it into a hurricane. Cordani has now improved SK-1000 from absorbing 250 times its weight to 2,000 to 3,000 times its weight, so a plane would have to haul a lot less of it to affect a storm.

And Dutton got the plane built. "We finally have the big aircraft in position," he says, but he can't announce the company until the final contracts are done. The 747-sized plane will carry a 200,000-pound payload.
This article says he looked for an airplane maker to design a plane the size of a 747 that is able to drop the goodies. I HOPE for this man (and his grandgrandchildren) that this means that the company CONVERTED a (old) 747 so it can deploy the stuff (some sort of tank beam), because how will he (or anyone excluding the government in a national, official, research programme) EVER pay the design for a new kind of plane??? (if you want an estimate, look up the purchase price of a new 747 and the break-even number for Boeing, multiplicating roughly gives the design costs...). If he has the government involved as the article says, we would know which company "designs a plane". Just look at the media and political coverage the A380 fundings get! So for my part, I translate this part as "I converted a large plane". (like the Iran Air force 747 tankers).

2) Someone suggested that the choice for a military plane would be better because it is more able to fly through storms and carry more weight. Do not underestimate the lifting power of a 747F, which is one of the main commercial freighters, and one of the largest planes in the world. Only the REALLY big military planes lift more (An-225, C-5 to go in extremes). And don't forget the required range to reach a storm over the ocean.

3) Handles about point 2) too: Military freighters don't neccesarily are able to fly in heavier weather than commercial ones. Jet fighters of course can, they are able to handle 9G's (F16) instead of the commercial liners 2.5-3 G's (they really get damaged extremely bad, if not simply fall apart at 3G's). Militairy freighters however, are more like the commercial ones. Their engines are sometimes more powerful (the G-222 actually loops the loop!), their landing gear sometimes is stronger to allow for short landings, but overall their airframes aren't really stronger than for commercial freighters. And if they would be, they would be able to carry less cargo (no freebees in airplane design!). 90 tons seems impossible to me considering the plane is strong enough to withstand a hurricane. (a standard 747-400F carries 120 tons maximum, which is not having the max fuel load, hence reduced range).
NO plane in this category should ever fly into a hurricane, especially not one that is strong enough that it must be diminished. To stay within the flight envelope of your plane, you would have to stay at the extreme outer regions of the hurricane. Going into "where the magic happens" just adds to the death toll of the hurricane.

4) Some military planes are converted commercial ones (like the KC-135 tanker, the air force ones). So again they have a lot in common. THe An-225 is a commercial freighter too, used by the military as well.

My conclusion: the "most possible" scenario is that he converted a 747 into a tanker-like config, possibly reinforced it. But then still he wouldn't be able to go into the storm (just look at the nice things flight manuals say about going into storms, most times sounds like "AVOID!!! NO-GO" ). And even this conversion would require a lot of money -peanuts compared to designing a new plane this size- but still, something the government won't just jump into. (especially if the project remains private, what it seems to be).

And then I'm not even going into the part of actually diminishing the storm...

Any comments are very welcome, I just posted some ideas on the plane part to start from.

[Meteora]

Where are Metora or CWXman when you need them?

Well, if you'd spelled our names right.... :D

This thread started when I was on vacation, controlling the weather... I mean... enjoying the scenery in Colorado. I often do searches on "Meteora," but only occasionally search for "meteorology," which is how I found this.

But, I see that the topic has been handled well, and there's not much for me to add, except this....


As for getting government hurricane experts to embrace Cordani's idea, that's naive, says Ray, who earned his doctorate at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. "You're dealing with government agencies," he says. "Unless it was born in NOAA, it would not happen, them embracing it." But, he adds, if NOAA was given a big chunk of research money by the Congress to investigate Cordani's idea, the tests would begin immediately.

You cannot earn a degree of any kind at NOAA's NSSL. It's a research facility, not an educational one.

And, the remark about NOAA not "embracing" ideas from the outside is nonsense.