Know what I love about air travel? Tarmacs.
Their painted lines and patterns, the strange vocabulary of their directional signs, arcana that only the initiated in their strange head gear can understand.
I love that tarmacs are mostly always concrete (is this for visibility? I read once that concrete roadways afford more visibility than asphalt; produce fewer nighttime fatalities. Or is it simply because most tarmacs were laid during the age when most roads were paved with concrete?).
I love the gridded blocks of concrete that make the wheels bump a bit when we taxi. Love the red and blue lights that line the tarmac, tiny little sentries that keep me safe from harm.
Love the long low grassy medians that define these crazy divided highways, these ultimate open roads; love the patient courtship that planes play with each other as they find their spots before taking to the sky: cozy, approximate, but never too close.
3 comments:
Tarmacs are concrete because planes (and tow tractors are fricken' heavy. They'd sink right in if the ramp was asphault. They're not just concrete, they're thick concrete.
B1-67er
so why did highways evolve toward asphalt -- is it the preferred road material? or did the asphalt lobby simply win?
One last bit on tarmacs: what appears to be a Blue Danube Waltz of equipment from the terminal is more like a Motorhead concert on the ground. 140 Db of of heavy machine commotion.
How bad does it get? It is customary for tow tractor manufacturers such as TUG to cut their brand name into the thick steel grill protecting the radiator. A friend of mine was at the Dallas airport when one of their tow tractors went missing. They searched high and low for it, and knew they were in trouble when they found they word GUT impressed in backwords letters in the concrete wall of their shop..... 10 feet off the ground. They searched the airport and found the crumpled mass that was their tractor at the other end of the airport. What exactly happened? No one saw anything, no one heard anything, and no one was hurt. Who knows.
As to your question on asphault vs concrete, I'm not a concrete guy but I believe it works like this: Concrete is much more rugged but must be framed and a bed must be made for it to insure uniform thickness and support. This is because concrete is brittle, while asphault is ductile. So the asphault is cheaper to lay, but doesn't last as long as concrete.
B1-67er
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