Don't you just love those stories about the future of travel? You know, the ones where we'll be able to fly around the world in an hour, or that all high-speed trains will be fuelled by a spoonful of Vegemite in 10 years time. Other than the fact that none of them ever come true, they're great, aren't they?

One story that caught my eye last week was the proposed floating airport in London, featuring four runways tethered to the seabed in the middle of the Thames estuary. Not only will the airport rotate to deal with changing wind and weather conditions but it also has the ability to expand, with additional runways being attached to the original structure simply and cheaply.

Architects Gensler have proposed the new airport as part of a bid to become the builders of any future airport in London and are confident a floating airport would work.

"The idea of floating runways is fairly basic stuff," said Gensler project director Ian Mulcahey. "We're just proposing it on a scale, perhaps, that has never been done before."

Hmm ... call me a cynic but that whole last bit sounds a bit like: "We've only done some great looking drawings and built it in LEGO but we're pretty sure that it would work for big people too."

If you ask me, the floating London airport is just the latest in a long line of stories highlighting the terrifying future of air travel. Looking at some of the proposals to make our flights faster, cheaper and more ecologically friendly are just plain scary.

If any of the following futuristic travel proposals come to pass, then I'm changing my name to the Naked Couch Potato and never travelling again.

The Jumbo Jet Sling Shot

An airplane-sized runway catapult that flings jumbo jets into the air faster and steeper than ever before? That doesn't sound like the most terrifying way to start a trip, does it? In their predictions for air travel in 2050, Airbus have proposed a type of "jumbo jet sling shot" to propel planes into the sky steeper and faster on takeoff, therefore reducing noise, fuel emissions and flight times. Steep "Air Force One"-style approaches at the other end -- just to bracket your fear -- are also proposed, as shorter runways in mega-cities become more of a reality. And all this from the company whose current flagship A380s can only land on the world's largest runways ...

Glass Airliners

In another idea from the boffins at Airbus -- do they actually want us to fly on their planes? -- airliners of the future will have transparent fuselages so you can see the clouds and constellations as you wing your way to your destination. Other than unearthing hundreds of undiagnosed vertigo cases, the only advantage I see is that you'll be able to see birds being sucked into the engines and all the near mid-air collisions even if you don't have a window seat.

30,000 Foot-High Peleton

Using the same technique as a cycling road race peleton -- where the leading riders cut through the air and drag the rest of the group along in their slipstream -- "formation flying" jet planes could have a 10-12 percent fuel burn saving, as well as a 25 percent reduction in emissions. But while flying in a V-formation or echelon to save a bit of fuel sounds great in practice, how many people would really feel safe being able to see the faces of passengers on the plane next to you?

Talking Planes

Forget pilots and air traffic controllers talking to each other to plan out flight routes - that's so last century. Planes of the future will be able to talk to each other to work out the most efficient routes based on weather and atmosphere conditions. This could go one of two ways: the best case scenario is that we have a sky full of cars like K.I.T.T. in Knight Rider, who become buddies with the pilots and do a bit of crime fighting on the side; worse case, it goes all Terminator 2 with the computers becoming self-aware and humans all becoming slaves to a race of master jet planes. Which is, if you think about it, just as likely to happen as talking planes ...

Flying with Cooking Oil

Qantas and Air Canada have both had successful flights with planes running on sustainable biofuel, which is just a fancy name to stop us from being scared about planes flying on canola. I'm not sure what's worse about this one: that an airliner is going to be fuelled by something my stirfry is cooked in or that cooking oil will inevitably rise to AU$150 a barrel by 2020? If you thought people got upset by the carbon footprint left by flying, I dread to think of the reaction when we tell them they can't eat chips anymore.