The cheapest way of travelling à la Cyrano de Bergerac

An illustration of Bergerac's illogical way of cheap travelling

Low cost travelling is everyone's dream, it does not only belong to us who witness the magic of aerodynamic engineering today but it also belonged to everyone who lived in the past. Cyrano de Bergerac, a homosexual-suspected French writer who lived in the 17th century also had a dream of zapping himself to any places in this world at a low cost. Unfortunately de Bergerac was born two centuries before an actual air balloon flew for the first time carrying a pessenger within. His proposed way of cheap travelling was only on the text he wrote, and it is a laughing stock for everyone of us who reads his proposal today. Here is what he proposed to make a cheap far-off travelling:

De Bergerac was imagining that he had a balloon, large enough to bring him within up into the air. After he reached a noticeable height, all he had to do was to stay suspended in the air without having to move any inches. As he stayed suspended in the air, he would witness the earth rotating below, and after several hours he would land in a totally different place! De Bergerac was sure that he would be able to go to Canada from France without having to go by sea if he had a balloon he imagined!

But can we go travelling around the world as the way described by de Bergerac? Unfortunately things are not as simple as the theory that ran into de Bergerac's mind. If you are floating in the air, you don't really separate yourself from the planet earth! You are still tied together, because you are floating in the envelope of atmosphere which also participates in the earth's rotation. And the atmosphere spins together with the planet along with everything in it: clouds, airplanes, birds, insects, dusts or even viruses! Logically if the atmosphere does not rotate together with the earth, we would be always battered by a superstrong wind more terrible than the strongest hurricane we've ever witnessed in normal condition. We would take an analogy like this: suppose that you are on a motor cycle dashing at a speed of 100 kph in a very calm wind, what would you feel? Of course you would feel a strong wind coming towards you! The same case is also true for the spinning earth with the still atmosphere.

Now we understand why we can't benefit from the cheap (travelling) idea described by de Bergerac. Besides if de Bergerac's idea is applicable to actual physics, all of the commercial airlines would have already long gone, out of business!

(Written by Yari NK)