Thus an engineer ended up turning a plane into his own home

Can you imagine spending the rest of your life on a plane? Not flying, not going from one destination to another, but living inside it. Day after day. Like a real home, with all that implies. As CNBC points outthis was Bruce Campbell’s dream, a retired electrical engineer who currently lives in a Boeing 727 In the middle of a forest on the outskirts of Portland, in Oregon, United States. When a commercial plane reaches the end of its useful life, It is likely to end up dismantled. The most valuable components – like engines, airplane systems or landing gear – usually recover, but fuselage can be abandoned for years in one of the great world aircraft cemeteriesalthough there are recycling initiatives for aluminum and titanium parts. Bruce Campbell was not convinced by the idea that structures as complex and sophisticated as commercial aircraft ended up unscathed and forgotten in a desert corner. He thought that if they could no longer fly, at least they could remain useful in another way: as habitable spaces. With that idea in mind, in 1999 he bought the fuselage of a retired passenger plane, along with several of its internal components. According to USA Todaypaid for everything $ 100,000 (about 190,000 to the current change). A BOEING 757 converted at home But buying the plane was just the beginning. The next challenge was to move it to its new destination. To do so, the aircraft had to be partially disassembled and transported in truck to its farm on the outskirts of Portland. Once there, between trees and vegetation, piece by piece was assembled again. Today it rests on a support structure that connects with the landing train and wings. Bruce has maintained much of the original plane design, including some higher seats and compartments. Visitors access one of the emergency doors and, when touring the central hall, they find an inhabited space, full of everyday objects: a microwave, a table, a refrigerator and several computers. One of them especially attracts attention: a Apple Macintosh Se From the end of the 80s, where visitors can leave a message. One of the spaces that most attract attention is the command cabin, where several of the original controls used by pilots to keep the plane in the air are still preserved. The thrust levers, the controls and much of the instrument panel remain in place, almost as if the plane were ready to take off. In the rest of the interior, wiring and electrical systems are completely in sight, a detail that fits with the mentality of Bruce Campbell, an electrical engineer of training. Far from reserving its unique housing as a personal refuge, Campbell has more than two decades receiving visitors. To those who approach with curiosity, it offers a small tour inside the plane turned into the house, where he shares his vision and his way of life. It should be remembered that we talk about a Boeing 727a narrow fuselage aircraft whose production was extended between 1962 and 1984. It was widely used in medium -range domestic and international routes – with an autonomy of up to 4,720 km in its most advanced versions – and became one of the most popular models of its time. More than 1,800 units were manufactured, although many were removed in the 90s, when airlines began to replace them with more efficient models. Images | Airplanehome/Bruce Campbell In Xataka | Faced with the fear of losing a fortune, the US denies a button off its F-35. It has something worse: the control of the “blue line”

15 years ago, a forest engineer decided to grow sponges in Galicia. The war against plastic has ended up giving him right

In the mid -90s, Juan Carlos Mascato finished studying forest sciences in Hamburg and enrolled in a company in the area. He was lucky: of all the things that company could have needed, he needed someone to speak Spanish, someone to send to Paraguay. It was then that he met the Lugfa and began his crusade against the plastic. Today is the largest producer in Europe in the sponges and natural scourers. And all from a small town in Pontevedra. What is the LUFFA? The LUFFAS are a genus of plants slightly related to pumpkins, cucumbers and melons. In fact, in Southeast Asia is a Very popular food as long as they are collected soon. Otherwise it becomes too fibrous to be consumed. So fibrous that, duly processed, they can be used as exfoliating sponges. For centuries, this type of vegetables (or some of its variants) were widely used and were among the crops of any orchard that would be precious. But the irruption of plastic from the 40s sent them to the drawer of history. Until now what THE WAR OF THE PLASTICS They have returned them to the first line. And what does the European Luffa giant do in Caldas de Reis? It is an excellent question. As Silvia Rodríguez explained in the countrythe clearest reason is that the Mascato family (of German mother, but Father Gallego) had a farm available in a town with a very particular climate that made it a good candidate to try subtropical crops: Caldas. Chance does not end there, of course. Because the processing of the LUFFA includes a fermentation phase in which the hot springs of the Gallego municipality fit as a ring to the finger. No one is a prophet in their land … And in this case it doesn’t happen either. Because the truth is that Iberian vegetable sponges It is little known here in the country. Of the 200,000 sponges that manufacture a year, only 10% stay in Spain. The rest goes to countries such as Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Norwegian or East next … Right now, the company works on an online marketing project in Germany and expanding its productive infrastructure to the US. What sponges can teach us. Because although the story is already very interesting, there is something that really crucial: that for decades we have despised many traditional solutions simply because they were. And that is a mistake. This was made clear in 2015 Karolinska Institute of Stockholm when granted your youyou The Nobel Prize in Medicine. Many interpreted him as a prize for traditional Chinese medicine, but it was not accurate: your feat was incredible. Since 1965, your youyou It was analyzing thoroughly Each and every one of the remedies that the millenary Chinese civilization had been selecting. And, indeed, most pure superstition, pseudoscience and placebo. However, he found the Artemisininea revolutionary treatment against malaria. Rethink the past. This is an example of the book that if we approach us with an open (but rigorous) look at the technological history of humanity, we can find really creative solutions to the problems of our day to day. In the middle of a world invaded by plastics, natural sponges are an excellent example. Image | Jan Helbrant | Tony Buser In Xataka | How an idea can model societies with hundreds of millions of people almost 1000 years later: Schultz’s hypothesis

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