Sergey Brin rumored to be building an airship for humanitarian missions | Hacker News Reader

Sergey Brin rumored to be building an airship for humanitarian missions

theguardian.com

44 pointsbhartzer41 comments

I will use this to plug my favorite books on all things which involve energy "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air" by David MacKay. In one of the appendices he works out that the energy efficiency of airship transport is on the order of 10 times more efficient (wrt energy per weight and distance transported) than conventional airplane. He also points out why there are theoretical limits to how efficient a plane can ever be.

The efficiency of the airship turns out to be on the same order as train transport, really quite remarkable!

http://withouthotair.com/cC/page_280.shtml

The real competitor here is Lockheed-Martin, who has developed a hybrid airship: that combines a lighter than large structure, with an aerodynamic figure + propellers, that gets 80% of buoyancy from the helium gas.

With a first model planned to release in 2018 carrying 23 ton, for use mainly in oil&gas fields , where's it's really hard to get stuff to(so landing anywhere without an airport is a huge plus). They cost $40 million each And they already have 12 letters-of-intent for purchase. And they think they may sell hundreds per decade.

Their later model, planned for mid-2020's would carry 500 ton.

Considering that such ship doesn't require an airport, can deliver containers without landing(using cables like a SWAT team), and their fuel costs are much lower and they carry a huge weight, there's a large transportation potential for it. Some guesstimates about an hong-kong to US link, talk about a cargo lane that costs half the price of air, while only doubling transit time which is much faster than cargo ships.

So really, there's probably an up and coming industry serving the same goals as Brin's project, So maybe his project isn't needed.

But i wonder to what extent the fact that the Brin have decided to work on this field, have convinced Lockheed-Martin to go after this ?

[1]http://www.straightlineaviation.com/news/9-webnews/15-aviati...

Lokheed had a 50% size demonstrator of these in 2006, so I think they have been doing it longer than Brin.

Or just the C-130.

(which can fly 350 MPH and still drop thousands of kilograms)

Not competitive for the industrial use you propose but pretty good for humanitarian stuff.

Or https://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2017/05/airlander-10-larg...

We may (or may not) have a helium shortage[1] and it requires surprising effort to ignite the hydrogen in an airship[2].

Perhaps we should reconsider if our hydrogen ban is warranted for autonomous or remotely piloted airships. Note, the article makes no mention how this airship is piloted, but its primary use is to supply humanitarian relief missions.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/dire-helium-shortage-vastly-in... [2]https://youtu.be/wzW4258oIyg?t=46m56s

Geez, that documentary clip is really interesting. Given that lots and lots of incidiary and explosive rounds couldn't take down a Zeppelin, it really seems like the Hindenberg was really just an unfortunate one-off.

The Hindenberg had a ~ 60% survival rate. Plane crashes have close to 0% survivorship.

It shows the persistence of bad PR and the power of video.

> it requires surprising effort to ignite the hydrogen in an airship

They burned like tinder, in large numbers. The following is a list of hydrogen-filled airships which burned. These exclude losses due to enemy action.

  1902, *Pax* explodes over Paris
  1908, Zeppelin LZ-4 caught fire while moored
  1912, *Akron* explodes off Atlantic City
  1913, Zeppelin LZ-18 caught fire during test flight
  1915, Zeppelin L-4 burned when struck by lightning
  1915, SL-6 explodes after takeoff
  1915, Zeppelin L-18 burned in hangar
  1916, Zeppelin L-6 burned when being inflated
  1918, 4 Zeppelins and one other burned in mass hangar fire
  1918, Zeppelin L-59 explodes during flight
  1919, US Navy blimp C-8 explodes while landing
  1919, British blimp N.S.11 burned in flight
  1919, US blimp *Wingfoot Express* burned over Chicago
  1920, US Navy blimp D-1 burned at base
  1921, US Navy blimp C-3 burned at Hampton Roads, VA
  1921, British rigid airship R.38 broke in half and burned in mid-air
  1921, US Navy blimps D-6 and C-10 burned in hangar fire
  1922, US Army *Roma* struck power lines and burned
  1922, US Army blimp C-2 burned while exiting hangar
  1923, French Navy *Dixmude* struck by lightning and burned in flight
  1930, British rigid airship R.101 struck hillside during storm and burned
  1934 Soviet blimps V4, V5, and V7 all burned in a hangar fire
  1935, Soviet blimp V7-bis struck a powerline and burned
  1937, Zeppelin *Hindenburg* caught fire due to unknown cause and burned

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
  [1] http://www.zeppelinhistory.com/zeppelin-facts/airship-accidents/

So less than one incident per year, most with a low amount of casualties, on what I assume was quite a big population of airships. And that is without modern technology, because we've made some progress in flame retardant materials

I find that rather makes the case of bringing back hydrogen filled airships.

> what I assume was quite a big population of airships

That might be a bad assumption. Hard to find numbers for all producers but based on the various lists of airships (links below), it looks like total number of airships produced was probably in the "few hundred" range, and only a small portion of those were in use at any given time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zeppelins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airships_of_the_United...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sch%C3%BCtte-Lanz_airs...

Looks like biggest risk the the hanger! One would hope we could avoid such risks with today's level of technology.

Since autonomous airships still can still ignite as they're loading or unloading, it may be worth filling them with helium, but I do think using hydrogen may be more appropriate for Project Loon. Hydrogen could still be viable as long as the airship is designed so people won't be hurt even if it does ignite. For example, the cargo could be designed to have a low terminal velocity or a ballistic parachutes could be used.

Immediately made me think of the Spruce Goose [1]. He's going full on Howard Hughes! "Wave of the future, wave of the future, wave of the future".

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules

Spruce Moose!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZJsla2TG6E

The article talks about how hydrogen was originally planned as the lifting gas, and that those plans were scrapped due to the FAA requiring non-flammable lifting gasses.

Given that Brin was apparently ready to try it with hydrogen, perhaps the risks of using hydrogen as a lifting gas are overrated? Given the scarcity / non-renewable nature of helium, the greater lifting potential of hydrogen, and advances in engineering, I wonder if these FAA regulations are in need of a rethink?

Also, even if the risks of hydrogen explosions are unmitigatable, I can still imagine unmanned cargo applications for hydrogen airships that could mitigate a lot of risk.

I was thinking the same thing. Helium is scarce, don't fill balloons with this precious resource. The future thanks you.

I'm all for filling party balloons with hydrogen too. Kids gotta stay on their toes.

This [unmanned cargo applications] is assuming you're flying it over uninhabited areas the Hindenburg was fortunate in that when it came down it wasn't over, say, Manhattan or over one of the many areas highly prone to forest fire. However I do like the idea of an unmanned airship doing long haul delivery over calmer parts of the ocean.

Exactly. There are already restrictions for transport of other hazardous goods. (EDIT: Finding sky routes should certainly be easier than finding restricted road routes) I'm also not sure that the biggest risk of a hydrogen explosion isn't simply the dropping of the cargo. Hydrogen explosion up in the sky is likely to burn upward and quickly. As long as the cargo or airframe isn't also burning, it seems likely the fire would never reach the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster#/media/Fil...

Yes, but the Hindenburg was basically already on the ground (coming in for a landing) when it went up. Also, I remember reading that the airframe itself was pretty flammable.

Additional safety at terminals seems prudent, but would a non-flammable airframe still be burning on the ground if it caught fire at 10,000 feet? I don't know.

Considering the nature of hydrogen that would be totally dependent on the availability of O2 in surrounding compartments.

> the Hindenburg was fortunate in that when it came down it wasn't over, say, Manhattan

No, it wasn't really "fortunate" that a disaster which seems most likely to have been (based on the credible hypotheses for the cause) immediately related to landing operations happened exactly at a landing field and not somewhere else.

   Brin’s airship was originally intended to use hydrogen as a lifting gas. 
   Hydrogen is much cheaper than helium and provides more than 10% more lift, 
   but will forever be linked with the infamous Hindenburg disaster in 
   New Jersey in 1937 that claimed 36 lives.

First of all, the true cause of the airship fire is still debatable. According to retired NASA scientist Addison Bain's incendiary paint theory (IPT) proposed in 1996, the Hindenburg would have burned even if it were filled with helium. So by switching to Helium as the lifting gas for airships still may not make it 100% fire-safe even in the example that was given.[1]

Second of all, Helium is a RARE natural & non-renewable resource (it cannot be artificially produced, at least not yet), albeit abundant on Earth. Most helium on Earth is a result of radioactive decay, which occurs for a long long time.[2] Hence, I think most Physicists would argue the usage as a lifting gas to commercial airship is a wasteful and eventually non-economical way to consume them due to the sheer amount and no practical recycling measures.[3][4]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster#Incendiary...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Natural_abundance

[3]: https://qz.com/718830/we-rely-on-helium-for-life-saving-care...

[4]: http://www.zmescience.com/science/chemistry/wasting-helium-r...

Hopefully this goes better than the barges: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_barges

What's old is new again....

He's been investing in airships since the late 2000's [0].

[0] https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sergey+brin+airship&hl...

Hope to see this materialize. I share a fascination with airships, only way to have low energy cost air travel. However I doubt airships will be relevant to shipping period, but I severely doubt so unless someone figures out a way helium can be ditched for hydrogen due to both lift and supply concerns.

I don't really understand why hydrogen is not used for this, except the obvious historical connotations.

Airplanes are full of highly flammable jet fuel, nobody suggests that they must run on non-flammable fuel. Of course one would need to take appropriate safety measures, probably some combination of compartmentalization of the bladder and controlled release (away from passengers) in the case of an ignition, but it seems like something that should be solvable with modern engineering.

The government is a bit trigger happy with bans of things that are associated with high profile disasters, at least in my opinion. Shame getting laws removed is so difficult, especially for something as niche as gasses for airships.

If you can figure out how to create a an extremely rigid extremely lightweight material you could also use a vacuumed out area instead of gas bladders. The trick would be that the marerial would have to be non porous and extremely light and strong.

To make it clear, it has to be really strong, stronger than diamond for example. Graphene wouldn't do the trick either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship

It's not just the strength that is lacking. The thin shell would buckle long, long before the compressive strength limit was reached. We are talking orders of magnitude.

Yea, the numbers in the linked article are based on Zoelli's formula for the critical buckling pressure of a sphere.

Well, it seems like a more practical billionaire project than yet another flying car.

What's wrong with Volga-Dnepr Airlines?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga-Dnepr_Airlines

The "humanitarian" part is just PR:

"Brin wants the gargantuan airship, funded personally by the billionaire, to be able to deliver supplies and food on humanitarian missions to remote locations. However, it will also serve as a luxurious intercontinental “air yacht” for Brin’s friends and family."

If by "also" they mean "primarily"...

$150M is actually pretty cheap compared to some of the most expensive luxury yachts out there.

Taking the trafficking from Libya to whole new levels eh?

Pay your taxes and stop the filter bubbles, then build plane.

Howard Hughes.

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