Flying Cars are Next

DomeShells

Holy shit! These awesome looking Australian-made DomeShells have been tested against the Building Code of Australia, and have a C1 cyclone rating. Pretty sweet specs given recent experiences in Queensland and the USA. Oddly enough, the project comes out of the Queensland University of Technology.

I totally want one. Two, actually — I’d attach a 7 to a 10, and put some kind of awning over the gaps at either side — though the three-dome design pictured here looks pretty rad. The on-site construction is clever: The shell is made by spraying foam on an inflated mold, then they apply concrete to the inside and outside. Pneumatic house production! Neat-o and futuristic.

Next, I want a flying car to put in my DomeShell garage.

This entry was written by Jeff Waugh, posted on April 5, 2006 at 23:33, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

7 Comments

  1. Nomen Nescio
    Posted April 5, 2006 at 23:59 | Permalink

    i’ve seen the same idea used here in the USA before, too - there’s a few of these down in florida, where they are said to ride out hurricanes quite well indeed. as far as i understand house construction, they’re built on the same principle, too. it’s probably something reasonably obvious to people who work with pumpable concrete on a daily basis, even if it’s not something that’d occur to computer geeks like us. :-)

    http://www.domeofahome.com/

  2. Glynn
    Posted April 6, 2006 at 00:06 | Permalink

    A flying car to crash into a flying tree?

  3. Dave
    Posted April 6, 2006 at 00:15 | Permalink

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu_House

    There’s a link at the bottom to a gallery showing what they look like now…

  4. Travis Reitter
    Posted April 6, 2006 at 01:28 | Permalink

    If you think that’s cool, imagine living with Teletubbies:

    http://www.permaculture.co.uk/mag/Articles/earth-ship.html

    http://www.sanjuancountry.com/personalpage/esphotos2.html

    http://flickr.com/photos/tags/earthship

    The idea is that Earthships are made from a bunch of recycled materials (esp. old tires for insulation), and are nearly 100% self-sufficient (generate much of their electricity with solar power, re-use water - the water for your plants doesn’t have to be as clean as the water you drink, etc.).

  5. Pascal Klein
    Posted April 6, 2006 at 19:44 | Permalink

    I’d imagine that they are quite costly, though nevertheless very cute. Wouldn’t mind living in one. :)

  6. JaneW
    Posted April 6, 2006 at 21:39 | Permalink

    Get one with 3 domes, joined by curved passage ways to form a circle… from the top it would look pretty much like the Ubuntu Logo! ;)

  7. Kurt von Finck
    Posted April 9, 2006 at 12:55 | Permalink

    I want to build one of these in Tatatouine, Tunisia and change my name to Owen. Maybe the GF would change hers to Beru, but I’m not so sure we’re so keen on raising any of my nephews. Even if they are really good at fixing droids.