People have been attaching wheels to everyday objects for thousands of years. Cars and buses are conspicuous examples, before, they were just needlessly expensive metal huts. In the absence of wheels, skateboarding was just standing, in hats.
It took an amazing amount of time to add wheels to suitcases, we'd mastered cocktail umbrellas, music, gin and supersonic flight before someone had that bright idea. It was staring us in the face the whole time.. I mean, you take the case out of the wheeled box, carry it for a bit, then put it on a plane, WHICH HAS WHEELS UNDERNEATH. Anyway, Occam's razor suggests that wheeled suitcases were brutally suppressed by the notoriously ruthless Bell Hop network. Their motives are obvious. Wheels are, however, obnoxious tiny little things that go "brrraaaaaaaaaaaappp" whenever they're dragged over anything rougher than a billiard table*. Some have the bare-faced cheek to make annoying noises even in perfect conditions.
Anyhow, enough faffing about. An Ekranoplan is essentially a VERY low flying aircraft that can get away with very small wings by exploiting the additional lift available in close proximity to the ground, small efficiency gains may be had by having these smaller wings. They do have disadvantages: they can't fly where there's objects, trees, houses, waves that sort of thing and they require tremendous power to get them airborne in the first place. If we make Ekranoplan luggage, we neatly sidestep these disadvantages. Firstly, in the luggage habitat, lets call it the luggosphere** there are very few things. Airports are almost completely smooth. They have escalators that are completely flat, imagine that! Even the occasional small step has a zig-zag ramp next to it, exploited mercilessly by the wheelchair bound. It's the perfect ekranoplan environment. Secondly, the power thing. Humans are, to all intents and purposes, overpowered. I, in theory, can run, for example. I have way too much power for simply walking. Now, maybe we could use a little bit of that power to get the ekranoplan going, and then reap the efficiency benefits down the road. Planning, forethought, learnt that in Malaya.
The real benefit: you can't stop. Well, you can, but it's a bit of a pain to get going again. So this will discourage casual stoppers. No one likes a stopper. Stopping should not be allowed. As soon as we invent the moving- walkway mounted urinals we can ban it.
So, luggage, handle, small fold out wings on a button- released spring loaded mechanism.
*luggage is prohibited in the billiard room, infractions will result in membership termination.
** if this doesn't get me headhunted by Samsonite, nothing will.-- bs0u0155, Sep 19 2014 / As soon as we invent the moving- walkway mounted urinals /
You will also need moving plumbers to fix same.-- popbottle, Jun 14 2016 You could daisychain the luggage and tow behind the airplane to increase the plane's carrying space.-- AusCan531, Jun 15 2016 // I, in theory, can run, for example. //
We will pay a dollar to watch that.
// moving plumbers //
That'll be a tough challenge - plumbers do move, but only at speeds approximating to those of continental drift.-- 8th of 7, Jun 15 2016 Bun [+] Two buns if it's nuclear powered.-- not_morrison_rm, Jun 15 2016 //plumbers do move, but only at speeds approximating to those of continental drift.//
Not true. The suggestion of a lunchtime pint from Kev the plasterer elicits tremendous velocities, or evaporation, hard to tell.-- bs0u0155, Jun 15 2016 Planes; yes yes, carry on withthat. But the preamble on wheels: it occurs to me that application of the Baconian methods might have been good. If appropriately sized wheels had been put on everything, one thing at a time, the improvement conferred to the suitcase would have been obvious.
By everything I do not mean every single thing in the universe but one of each type of thing.
There may be other items improved by wheels and this endeavor will reveal which they are.
Also, once one of every type of thing is handy, it would not be hard to test out other attachments: flashing lights, lanyards, fur, etc.-- bungston, Jun 18 2016 random, halfbakery