Ever since the movie Back To The Future came out I’ve wanted a hover board. As has anyone else that’s ever seen that movie I may add. Recently there was even some progress made towards inventing a real life hover board. And unlike the movie it actually works over water too. However, I’m not here to tell you about that hover board. Rather, I’m here to tell you about something else that was created by that same company that made the hover board. Something else that hovers. Drum roll please….a hovering house!!!
Now this isn’t a full on hover board house that you could ride around in as if it were a pimped out Winnebago. Rather, we’re talking about a house that can temporarily hover above the ground during the duration of an Earthquake.
As Fast Company writes, “Arx Pax CEO Greg Henderson said the company developed a method to combine the U.S. Geological Survey’s ShakeAlert system—which is said to be able to sense an earthquake’s seismic waves several seconds before the shaking begins—with the company’s magnetic-field architecture (MFA) and its three-part building foundation system. In effect, Henderson said, the integration means that in an earthquake, a building with an Arx Pax foundation and a ShakeAlert system could automatically ‘de-couple’ itself from the ground for the duration of the shaking. ‘One second [of warning] is all we need for our hover system,’ Henderson said.”
As great as this sounds I do have several questions about the logistics of how it would work in actuality. For example, how long would it be able to stay hovering for? And how does it know how long it needs to stay in the air for? Just so long as there are seismic waves in the general vicinity? What about aftershocks? Also, would the objects inside the house shift during the lift? Would you need special construction when outfitting your home with shelves and light fixtures, etc.? Also, if you were inside the house and it suddenly lifted off the ground with only 1 second of warning would you be injured? Could the technology be hacked or go off on its own accidentally?
Clearly, there’s a lot to think about here and considering that the system has never been tested before in a real house it’s hard to say if it’ll actually work. However, it’s probably worth the risk considering that the alternative is to do nothing and just leave yourself 100% vulnerable during an Earthquake. And it’s worth pointing out that it will be possible to add this technology to existing houses with just some slight modifications to the foundation although integrating it into new construction would obviously be preferable.
So while it may still be a while before we get to ride around in real hover boards we may soon get the next best thing: hovering houses. Which begs an obvious question: where do I sign up??!?!
Is a hovering house the Greatest Idea Ever?
Leave a comment