Hacker News Reader

That's very cool!

How does it handle weather? You mention it can take off and land in inclement weather, but how does it compare with existing competitors? Intuitively (as someone with zero knowledge or experience in any of this), it seems like planes and helicopters could handle higher winds than a blimp - is that the case?

View on HN

It depends. For example, small planes need runways to take off and land, and if the crosswinds are over 15 kts they aren't able to operate. In this same situation, our airships would be able to take off and land because they have VTOL capability like a helicopter and can point in any direction. Helicopter can take off and land in really high winds, up to 40 kts, but they are 4-8x more expensive to operate than planes, and have limited range.

Our test site is by a wind farm so we have a lot of experience with flying blimps in wind, and we expect our max takeoff windspeed for the full size airship to be 25-30 kts.

How does it cope with turbulence and wind sheer compared to an aeroplane?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com