Today’s younger generation is far less likely to suffer from a bad case of sweaty hand.
Back in the late-1980s day, when I had music pressed to my ear on a daily basis, my bulky Sony Walkman often greased my palm with perspiration. The threat of sending my auto-reverse cassette player crashing to the concrete was at an all-time high. Buttons could have popped off; batteries could have been lost. Oh, the carnage.
I had to do something to prevent this premature electronic death and thought of a way to securely shoot tunes from the hip. My invention involved a belt armed with a Velcro-carrying case. This way Walkmans of any size could easily be locked into place, creating a sweaty-hands-free promenade through the park, campus or hall. Unfortunately, my idea never made it to paper, leaving thousands of portable music devices high and dry. Make that high and wet.
Occasionally, inventions toss and turn in my brain, and on those extremely rare occasions they turn up on my desk. About a month ago, Rick Adler came to me with a cure for sweat sessions at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the event of a terrorist takeout of a major span in the U.S., his RSA Floating Bridge could restore traffic over water in a matter of hours.
Adler’s genius involves a prefabricated floating vehicular and pedestrian bridge, spanning a maximum 2,200 ft, which can be easily and quickly reassembled at the site and connected to preconstructed concrete footings to produce a four-lane throughway with an additional center lane for service vehicles or a pedestrian walkway. The emergency bridge also could make way for passing ships. This is accomplished with a series of winch motors mounted to concrete blocks at or near the shore with cables attached to portions of connected floating bridge elements. As the center of the bridge is transitioned open for vessel traffic, the programmed winch cables are pulled in one direction as the attached floating elements curve away to allow passage. The winch motors, which also stabilize the bridge against currents, tides and winds, then reverse the cables to pull the bridge pieces back to the center.
Another crafty element of this emergency bridge is the ability to rise and fall with the changing water elevation while still accommodating safe vehicular passage on and off the span, and service vehicles could pull a stalled car off the bridge through the use of the 14-ft-wide center lane. A separate on- and off-ramp is designed at both ends for necessary access.
Since 9/11, the U.S. DOT, the Federal Highway Administration and the DHS have dissected just about every possible explosive scenario involving bridges in this country. You can test bomb all you want, but what our federal government often lacks is the ability to follow through on the high rise of studies conducted every year. Adler is working closely with The HNTB Cos. and the DHS to make this rescue mission a reality. It is refreshing to know the response of our national security agency extends well beyond a line of shoeless people at the airport.
The tanker fire affecting the I-580 connector bridge in the Bay area (See Bay bedlam, p 10) showed that it only takes about 800° of heat and a couple of hours to initiate major damage on our interstate system. Terrorists seem to be hung up on massive human casualties, but they also crave for the execution of this nation’s strong economy. Taking out a series of bridges like the I-580 connector would certainly put the blindfold on, but ideas like Adler’s certainly jam any and all guns pointed at Wall Street. Commerce will be moving again without breaking a sweat.
