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The world's largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley
(techcrunch.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Airship, tons of cargo? They famously suck at carrying anything of weight. The hindenburg could carry like 10 tons, and a regular zeppelin around 2 tons.
Helium isn’t exactly an abundant resource either, is it? I’m all for a future with a sky dotted with airships, but how could you possibly scale this up?
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I thought it was an abundant resource just not here, awkward places like the moon and sun.
Man I can't wait till we're able to harvest helium from the Sun! That means that we made to the big leagues.
Dyson sphere or ring world which do like better?
Dyson Swarm. Makes more sense to me.
Yeah, it's expensive as shit.
Hydrogen has about half the density of helium. The fire risk is notoriously unpopular, however.
Wide-spread adoption of airships would almost certainly have to use hydrogen.
The article says it can carry about 4 tons of cargo on top of the requirements to run the thing, but that's for Pathfinder 1. I'm trying to think of an actual real world use case for these. Outside of tours that carry around 50 adult passengers with no belongings, I don't see the practicality of it.
It’s completely impractical, which is why they’ll inevitably transition to luxury travel for millionaires. It’s faster than a yacht, but slower than a private jet, so it’s only useful roll is in carrying rich bastards to vacations that they aren’t in a rush to get to.
The equivalent of a cruise ship, that's really the only market. Except with a much lower passenger count and a lot less space, so a much higher ticket price.
Maybe a luxury air yacht for the ultra-wealthy who're bored with their ocean yachts?