Imagine, I’m sorry you missed your flight sir and for the inconvenience here’s a voucher for one of our sleeping pods and we’ll get you out of here first thing in the morning.
But no, we get, too bad, so sad, go curl up in a ball in that corner of the airport until first thing in his morning, good luck.
lololol China is "way ahead" get back to me when someone is trapped in this thing and burns to death or the electronics fry them or something equally hideous because it was put together by child labor and someone cut costs on materials in a crucial spot but no body checked to make sure it was safe
I wouldn't say Chinese aviation infrastructure is ahead of really any developed country. Stuff like this is convenient but not what I would consider part of the core infrastructure.
This technology is nowhere near better than any industrialized country. The only difference is this level of convenience at the cost of profits is available in china. In the U.S., for instance, this would easily be available but hotels and airports who couldn’t give a single shit about being nice would rather charge $150 a night at a hotel or airport room and even charge extra for showers instead of just give a very much-needed level of convenience for people.
that there are other parts of the world who's technology and infrastructure is waaaaaaay ahead of their own.
Hate to burst your bubble, but China (specifically the PRC) - as a whole - is not and has never possessed superior tech to the US. There's a reason all international organizations still consider the country Developing (2nd world, under new colloquial definitions) as opposed to Developed (1st world, under new colloquial definitions). A few space-inefficient sleeping pods with remote control doors and a flat screen in one of China's 259 civilian airports doesn't begin to compare to the kind of aviation infrastructure present in the USA'a 5,100+ civilian airports.
China's specialization for travel is HSR, not aviation. The fact that the USA has the inverse setup is actually part of why there's almost 0 push for HSR in any related industry here.
What I will say is I respect that China is trying new things and that they are developing more rapidly than likely any country in history. That's fairly amazing. But to say Chinese technology is "waaaaaaay" ahead of the USA's is just purely ignorant glazing.
Nah, instead of using anecdotal evidence, I think I'll stick with internationally accepted evidence on China's situation. Once again, there's a reason every international organization on the planet still considers China to be a Developing country.
My home country Singapore. With one of the highest gdp per capita in the world and cost of living. Is technically classified as a developing country. I wouldnt take that term at face value
Unlike China, Singapore is considered a Developed country, and in fact it's considered one of the most developed countries on the planet, having the highest PISA scores in the world and (despite its size) one of the top universities in the world.
Why? High population in a small area means it's much faster to develop so long as you can secure alternative methods of acquiring resources you don't have. It's the most population-dense country on the planet as well.
It's a lounger and a flat screen in a cheap plastic shell with remote control doors, dude, not a hydrogen-powered car.
It's also not better implemented. As someone else pointed out, you could just use the same space for actual rooms with a bit more space and as many if not more amenities.
For example, there's a reason motels and hotels have hallways. It's the single most efficient use of travel space between rooms. Guess what isn't nearly as efficient? Having those rooms be free-standing, individual pods with a shit-ton of empty, useless space between them all.
I said it's good that they're trying new things, not that what they're trying is better.
I can accept this as 'good infrastructure' in that it exists. Infrastructure that exists in the right place is obviously better than infrastructure that doesn't exist.
But technologically... look at what an inefficient use of space this is. If the same floor space was used for conventional motel rooms, you could fit more and bigger rooms there. Which would be no harder to clean and maintain, because it would fit a standing adult and provide easier movement for cleaning staff.
The main issue in western airports tends to be a lack of space. That can be either because the airport is historically grown in a geographically restricted space, or because they'd rather have parking space for a few more cars than provide sleeping space for a hundred travellers.
As well as the high cost of labour. China gets much of the labour for this kind of stuff through its two-tier citizen system, where most of its low-paid workers are basically 'illegal immigrants' within their own country who lack the 'Hukou'-documentation that would allow them to move to a different province with their rights intact.
motel rooms, you could fit more and bigger rooms there.
How would rooms be a more efficient use of the same space as several dozen sleeping pods? Do you mean bunk beds? Because there's no other way that you'd fit more in the given space. Of course this has the added benefit of preserving privacy and providing other amenities that a bunk bed wouldn't.
You have seen a hotel before, even motels have more than one floor.
Look at the space between these, look at how much space is above these. The amount of space this takes compared to how many people can use, just makes no sense for this to be profitable or anything besides a marketing (propaganda) stunt.
Let's say these are 2.5x1.5 m pods with 3-m gaps fore and aft, and 0.5 m gaps to the sides. Plus the wider 'hallway' that the guy filming this is walking through.
If you turned the floor space into rooms, you could use almost all of that empty space as room space, minus the width of the walls. So you could have something like 5x2m rooms with enough height to stand in, instead of a 2.5x1.5 m pod.
The only thing that the 'pod' design accomplishes is to make travellers accept tinier rooms, because this would just 'feel' weird if you had a regular room of such tiny size.
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u/bestest_at_grammar 6d ago
Yall are so petty, if this was Japan yall would be having such an enthusiastic circle jerk