The United States Air Force has a special team of half insane and half scientific modern day warriors. Knights of the sky willing to do the unthinkable; they fly directly into hurricanes; on purpose? Pretty brave stuff indeed. I propose a scientific mission for these brave heroes; to lay smart dust in the eye of an advancing Hurricane. I propose they fly directly into the Hurricane and drop out floating buoy type devices, which will open as the eye-wall of the advancing hurricane winds pass over. The buoy will open up and allow the smart dust to be sucked out and enter the Hurricanes, turbulent and structured environment. To make sure the drops are completely and perfectly orchestrated I propose using an AFF Satellite scenario. AFF stands for Automated Flight Following System, which is used in aerial fire fighting to insure that the fire retardant is dropped in the drop zone even though with the smoke the visibility is very low making it difficult to see. As one aircraft goes in another follows in behind it. This off the shelf technology has been used for over a decade now and with the advances of GPS accuracy and GIS modeling of surface terrain by satellite its uses should be incorporated into the laying of smart dust. Since the eye of the Hurricane is stable and somewhat calm the smart dust buoy apparatus can be easily laid very quickly and then get the hell out of dodge. Since the eye is clear all the way to space as you can see right into it from an overhead satellite the system can be used with full accuracy. If for some reason this does not work, we enlist the US Navy to do the job with modern day submarines, which come up into the eye and toss out the buoys. It would be better for the air version due to the time factor of having all the buoys in place over a 3-5 minute time period; this mission maybe even too dangerous for the Hurricane Hunters? Smart dust are very tiny dust size mechanical electronic sensors. If you recall the movie Twister large mechanical electronic sensors were dropped as a tornado went by to track the storm on a computer. Smart Dust does the same thing but it is so small you can barely see it. By using the Automated Flight System and knowing the winds aloft we can lay smart dust by air using UAVs Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to drop the smart dust in the eye of a Hurricane to learn more about how it generates its own wind to help in future Hurricane trajectory tracking and prediction. Once we have complete data and map a Hurricane on a 4D grid we should be able to know where to focus energy to steer a Hurricane ever so slightly so it will not hit a large city or cause billions of dollars in damage. For instance a direct hit in Miami, New Orleans, Virginia Beach, Jacksonville or Tampa. We need to have the knowledge to implement the technology to steer Hurricanes in our part of the world and Typhoons in the rest of the world. Think on this. |
