Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/08/the-worlds-largest-aircraft-breaks-cover-in-silicon-valley/
The world’s largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley::As dawn breaks over Silicon Valley, the world is getting its first look at Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship that its maker LTA Research hopes
Veritasium made a video recently about the pros and cons of airship feasibility. It’s quite interesting.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As dawn breaks over Silicon Valley, the world is getting its first look at Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship that its maker LTA Research hopes will kickstart a new era in climate-friendly air travel, and accelerate the humanitarian work of its funder, Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
The airship — its snow-white steampunk profile visible from the busy 101 highway — has taken drone technology such as fly-by-wire controls, electric motors and lidar sensing, and supersized them to something longer than three Boeing 737s, potentially able to carry tons of cargo over many hundreds of miles.
This morning, the airship floated silently from its WW2-era hangar at NASA’s Moffett Field at walking pace, steered by ropes held by dozens of the company’s engineers, technicians and ground crew.
The first lesson its engineers hope to learn is how Pathfinder 1’s approximately one million cubic feet of helium and weather resistant polymer skin will respond to the warming effect of Californian sunshine.
At the start of September, the FAA issued a special airworthiness certificate for the Pathfinder 1 allowing test flights in and around Moffett Field and the nearby Palo Alto airport, and over the southern part of the San Francisco Bay.
That will involve a long, slow slog to validate the new technologies and to demonstrate, to the FAA and paying customers, that a new generation of super-large airships can match the generally excellent safety and reliability record of today’s commercial jets.
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approximately one million cubic feet of helium
They won’t get far unless they learn to use metric.
/SCNR
Ha, yes let’s use a limited resource (helium) to save the earth!
No, I don’t have a better idea… and maybe the improvement is worth it. After all I’ll be dead in 100-200 years when helium runs out on Earth, but climate change is already having a huge impact.
Hydrogen would make more sense, but people are scared of it. Hydrogen craft are actually pretty safe. I think the British tried to use incendiary rounds to ignite hydrogen craft but there was too little oxygen so they wouldn’t burn. They switched to a mix of incendiary and regular round to create holes for airflow before igniting.
Hydrogen makes more sense, but it’s still derived from methane. Not getting away from fossil fuels. And methane is a potent green house gas, far more than carbon dioxide. Any industrial uses for methane will surely have accidental emissions.
I concur. This is really fucking stupid. The only actual advantage that airships have is loitering time, and solar aeroplanes can already loiter for months albeit with a small payload.
If you really care about the environment, make it an unmanned post and use more efficient (because it’s lighter) and abundant hydrogen. Chance of explosion is pretty low, and if it does who cares.
I mean, don’t airships also have the advantage of not needing to expend energy for lift, just forward motion? A solar plane doesn’t have to worry about this either I suppose, but an airship is much easier to make have useful cargo capacity than a solar plane.
That massive size and slowness and expensive material and depleting helium can only haul 8,000 pounds beyond its crew. For comparison, the most common passenger jet there is; the Boeing 737 can haul around like 50,000 pounds depending on how much fuel is on board.
It’s a cool concept, but I can’t fathom it ever doing a whole lot of good. The more carbon neutral appropriate thing to do that would be a viable option would be for jets to use a different fuel source. Maybe massive solar arrays at airports used to create liquid hydrogen and craft designed to run on that instead of jet fuel. I don’t really know myself, but I know there’s no way anything other than very niche scenarios will crazy huge expensive zeppelins be used.
That’s a lot of helium. WILL NOONE THINK OF TEH CHILDRENSES?!?!?
Think of all those party balloons not sent up into the air to choke turtles out to sea!!!
Think of all the funny squeaky voices not done by daddies to amuse their offspring and they end up passing out from oxygen deprivation!!!
What a waste to put it in this dumb thing that’s gonna blow up anyway killing loads of peepos.
dumb thing that’s gonna blow up anyway killing loads of peepos.
You’re thinking of hydrogen. Helium isn’t anywhere near as flammable.
I agree that it’s a dumb thing, though.
Helium isn’t flammable at all. It’s a noble gas, which are notorious for their lack of reactivity.
But I agree, it’s a dumb thing.
Helium or Hydrogen it’s all CHEMICALS huh?!? I don’t want anything to do with CHEMICALS. You’ll never find any of that shit in MY body!!!
Lemmy doesn’t have a BlimpKink community, yet :(
Who can forget the Blimpkink Pork hit “Dumb”? 😉
Pretty excited about this project.
Wonder how such a large and slowly maneuvered craft will fare against the more unpredictable and strong weather associated with climate change.
Not as large as the Cargolifter, which has only been built as 1:8 model for testing, but still impressing.
I don’t think that the Imperial Star Destroyer qualifies as air ship.
Ok? You can’t really call it the largest airship when it was never built.
I propose a new airship design called Cargohauler, it’s basically a Cargolifter but scaled up 2x. Your puny Cargolifter is nothing in comparison to my Cargohauler
This just in, I am proposing a new design called the JumboPumper. It is like your puny Cargohauler, but 4x as large!
I just stated that there was a more ambitious project that would have worked, but unfortunately ran out of money. I am impressed that Pathfinder 1 was actually built.
Pathfinder 1 is only built at 1:10 scale though, so it’s actually much larger than Cargolifter.
The article states Pathfinder 1 is 124 m long, but does not say that its a 1:10 model. However, Cargolifter CL160 would have been 260 m long.
The crew capacity seems to be limited for its size. Compared with airships from a century ago. No smoking salon :-) etc. Maybe its the helium instead of hydrogen?.
The Hindenburg had 50 sleeping cabins.
I’d be really excited for a vacuum ship
They need to use this as their commercial: youtu.be/8_xaSom3Lro
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Look at all the advertising space on the side of that baby.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Enjoy the good life on the Offworld Colonies!