Largest airship built in United States since 1930s to take shape soon
beaconjournal.com
beaconjournal.com
- How much of the carrying capacity is eaten up by the batteries necessary to hit the range target?
- Would anyone operationally want to fly a 10,000 mile flight? Is speed a huge barrier for trying to do this in a single round the world flight?
- Is helium scarce enough that there'd be negative externalities for medical helium if they actually produce these in any numbers?
- What's the status quo ex ante here? I would guess you airlift relief supplies to the nearest safe staging zone using a herc or similar and then use chinook or similar to get directly to the disaster zone? Is there actually a problem to be solved here?
(I like dirigibles and electric tech, so I hope there are good answers to all of these that make me look foolish)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/helium-shortage-why-the-worl...
[1] Earth's helium supply comes from decaying uranium, so it is kinda-sorta renewable, but the renewal time scale is millions of years.
Just like there is almost infinite gold in the earth
We ran out of $15 oil quite some time ago. That was not the same as running out of oil. "Economically viable" is not a static target.
So a heap of exploration potential plus the off planet side.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/19/you-wont-believe-w...
But oil at that cost provides a huge land-rent income to the Saudis when world (market) oil prices top $50, $100, $150, $200, ... bbl.
KSA's extraction price remains $15. The rest is pure profit to them.
(Discounting the hundreds of millions of years of geological accumulation and transformation which created the resource in the first place. See "Burning Buried Sunshine" by Jeffrey S. Dukes, 2003. https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.... (PDF).)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187395981...
If gold were as cheap as iron, it would be ubiquitous in society.
They reduce the planes use of Helium by it's shape and design, when the engines are turned off it's heavier than air and it will sink. However, Helium is a scarce resource. I don't approve of a billionaire fun ride between LA and Los Angeles taking up all the helium (which will leak out over time and may need top ups every time it departs).
I'm also, wondering if people (the demographic) have time to sit for long periods of time, they seem to value their time, and a private jet is faster.
Overall this is presented as an another green tech that will ensure carbon free travel. I see this as greenwashing a billionaire fantasy.
With all that said, travel is not the purpose of the airship. It's to help humanitarian aid response and relief for areas that are difficult for planes and boats to access due to destroyed infrastructure.
https://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/trains/ro...
It makes sense, but as with a blimp, there are certain technological limitations that just plain make it hard to compete with conventional air travel.
There are fancier long-distance trains that run on different schedules.
Except it won't enjoy the international law that is the core of the cruise industry. Cruise ships are essentially just resort hotels that don't have to obey wage laws.
Nevertheless, hydrogen does pose a real risk to the passengers in the event of an accident. In other helium airship crashes (for instance the USS Shenandoah), some people managed to survive by riding the debris down to the ground. And in some hydrogen airship crashes (for instance R101), some people managed to survive the crash to the ground, but subsequently died in the fire.
We now know the multiple factors that caused the Hindenburg disaster, and they are all easily fixable.
I think in principle, a blimp that could land on a field and stow its balloon rapidly could address these problems. But rigid airships seem inherently problematic; the fundamental nature of an airship (very big and very light) makes it susceptible to high winds, in the air or on the ground. I don't see any way around that.
Should be a short trip, at least
Basically, hydrogen is better. Hydrogen has an image problem because of the Hindenburg, but there are compelling reasons why nothing of the sort would happen again.
The idea is to regain airship capacity using helium, while it's still cheaply available from a couple natural gas wells, and switch to the better lifting gas in a friendlier political climate.
What are these reasons?
Tl;dw anyone?
The weather issues are somewhat more handleable but there’s still maneuvering issues. Planes can outrun storms, airships light have a time doing so.
The bad optics in an era where there was little video competition really set dirigibles behind for a century.
Hydrogen should be the Lighter than Air gas choice for airships.
I'll take a crack at this: Since it is targeted towards humanitarian relief, it may travel to places without electrical infrastructure to recharge it. So, 5000 miles each way. Presumably charging takes a non-trivial amount of time, so in a time sensitive application like delivering medical supplies, there is also an advantage to not having to stop and charge.
That being said, I am also skeptical this is faster or more practical than using traditional cargo aircraft and/or helicopters. A C130 doesnt need much of a runway to land or takeoff.
Also, "largest built in the US since the 1930s" really isn't saying too much, how much manufacturing of airships does the US do?
Pretty cool tech tbh and it feels like pairing up with self-flying drones is the next step.
Seems like the economics for 100ton lift is looking better now.
Trucks were cheaper but I'm not sure if that still holds today
I don't understand your objection to the sentence even if it said "zeppelin" frankly.
[0] https://www.nps.gov/articles/goodyear-airdock.htm [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YS1maXSR30
It's not very fast, butpre-radar I imagine you don't need to get very far away either.
Also if I read it right their cargo capacity is about double that of a 747-400F.
Edit: nope, it’s 1/5th the cargo weight of a 747.
The niche use case I see for large airships (aside from pleasure rides) is deliveries in remote area with no infrastructure. For example delivering a big generator in Alaska.
In such use case, the comparison should maybe be against large transport helicopters.
> LTA's goal is to build huge airships to provide humanitarian aid in places where conventional transportation can't reach, such as in the aftermath of a disaster. (...) "We believe that lighter-than-air technology has the potential to revolutionize humanitarian relief efforts with its ability to reach remote locations that have little or no infrastructure," Weston said.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/alphabet-gives-some-loon-p...
I'm trying to think of a scenario where this would actually be more beneficial than other means of transport.
Again from article
> Pathfinder 3 (...) is designed to carry about 20 tons and be able to traverse as many as 10,000 miles using electric-only, zero-emission propulsion.
A quick search tells me that an Mi-26, the largest cargo helicopter can carry approximately the same weight.
Sergey Brin also has a ship that provides aid: https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/sergey-brin-secre... - so I don't know what advantage he sees in this airship.
Moreover, is there a design of an airship that doesn’t create a radar blimp the size of medium-sized asteroid?
But yes, they are not easy to hide, are vulnerable and cannot be not deployed on the frontlines because of this, but rather in the back.
But they can stay up for eternity.
But there is a niche for advertisement, aerial photography, observation platforms, heavy weight transportation and of course tourism.
See for example the seven Zeppelin NT, witch seem to have find some usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
Here's a previous comment with some links and photos of my flight:
Airships are absolute garbage at heavy lifting.
The lifting power of hydrogen or helium is about 1kg/m^3. This means as you scale weight up the size of your envelope grows quickly which greatly hinders manoeuvrability. And obviously the increase in envelope size means you need more structure and systems (propulsion & al) which are heavier and reduce your useful payload.
… great more pollution
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28278515
That links to a YC company building small cargo blimps introducing themselves and providing some good detail:
> We build small unmanned cargo airships and use them to move air freight at half the cost per mile of a small plane.
What a marketing BS. It's also probably like 1/10th of the speed (in the best case) and whatnot else.
If you hang fruit low enough, anybody can pick them.
Half the cost of the most expensive mode of transportation.
You could basically fly without fuel.
Planes on the other hand are indeed much faster etc. but they only are because they burn lots of kerosine.
But all in all, as long as kerosine remains so cheap, airships cannot compete, except in niches.
Aeroplanes became superior by all useful metrics and there hasn't been a practical reason to use airships since.
Depending on cost, there might be a niche market for some types of freight but that's all I can think of, along with tourism.
I don't have the numbers but my wishful-thinking-o-metre is high.
And since that metric was off the radars in 1930s, that is definitively new compared to the last era of airships.
World War II changed all that. The Hindenburg wasn't just a commercial airship, it was very much used as a propaganda prop by the German regime in the 1930s. By the time of the Hindenburg disaster, the market for commercial flight was about to be stymied by the War.
The disaster didn't just create trauma, above all it marked the end of an era of relative infancy in human flight. And even at the time, competing airlines already were building long range aircraft such as Pan Am / Boeing's famous "Yankee Clipper".
Technological advances and massive investments during the War favored airplanes such as we know them today. In the late 1940-1960's, airplanes allowed for cheap and fast international travel which could easily be scaled upwards. By that time, few if anyone wanted to spend 9 days crossing the Atlantic in luxury if traveling from London to NY could be done in mere hours.
I don't see airships ever taking back a significant chunk of that market. If anything, they might appeal to certain niches. Maybe in the same vain as one could - even today - still ride parts of the Orient Express in style.
With that kind of thinking there would be no market for ocean cruise ships - but there is :)
Perhaps people could be convinced to take an "air cruise", though it'll never have the amenities of a ship, but as transportation there's very little room for slower and more expensive.
Slow float over Mt Everest.
Not really. It was comfortable if you had first class seating--at a price above today's business class. But the first class lounge was fairly lightly used for the most part and became business class seating when that level of service came in. While airports are worse in some ways because they're often so crowded, modern international lie-flat business class seating is more comfortable in general--and there are more entertainment options--than first class on Pan Am was.
> Just six foot?
The average height for men in the US is 5'9" [1]. The Netherlands is the world's tallest country with an average height of 5'11" [1].
[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/average-height-for-men#u-s...
Given your stats that you're provided and I'm choosing to assume are true, then I'm abnormal but it does not change my experience on average. Hopefully the increasing obesity issue will cause some ancillary changes that may benefit tall people at the same time some day. At least let me pay for it, you know?
Also one advantage airships have is that they can dock to pretty much any tall building. The Empire State Building has airship docking capability.
Imagine taking a transatlantic cruise on an airship that leaves from the top of the Empire State Building and docks at the top of the Eiffel Tower?
You can read reports of Nobile airship trips. And wind could delay trips by days.
The Empire State Building mooring wasn't a one-off. There were many others. What is now the InterContinental Hotel in Chicago was one.
A fun example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPn3MBNt7Rc
In terms of wind, airships with the right control systems can be designed to hold position in 50+MPH guts. That takes a lot of power and rapid response, but modern airships can do 110kph and presumably commercial adoption would need higher speeds.
I am not sure: countering the change in direction seems very hard. But I do wish luck to those who are working to push this technology along.
> modern airships can do 110kph
That is how fast the Zeppelins of 100 years ago traveled: cruising speed of 76 mph.
I read accounts of using airships in the exploration of the North in the early 20th century and I got the impression that they often dropped ropes in a clear spot away from the exact landing point and were led by a landing team to the final docking, which would be hard to do in the middle of a city today.
This photo shows a much less tall airship mooring mast.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/mooring-mast-1930s/
It doesn't look like that kind of mooring would be up to the modern safety standards, especially when you add high winds that are common at the top of skyscrapers.
Ground handling and docking is one of the main, and fairly frequently fatal, causes of airships accidents, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents. Fwiw mitigating is definitely possible. But it requires specialised docking equipment to be available anywhere they are to set down. Which is why I suspect they'll make rather better Bazillionaire play things than humanitarian aid delivery mechanisms. They are very cool though.
The picture below has an airship getting flipped on its nose by a gust of wind while moored to a tower.
It seems to me that airships really need two mooring masts. One at the front and another at the back. Maybe the one at the back flips up to lock on once the one in front is secure?
"A popular myth claims that the top of the Empire State Building was meant to serve as a docking station for dirigibles, but the building's owners say that the story is just hot air."
> Without doubt, the tallest mooring mast ever designed was the spire of the Empire State Building which was originally constructed to serve as a mooring mast, although soon after converted for use as a television and radio transmitter tower due to the discovered infeasibility of mooring an airship
Now I’m curious what it actually is.
There used to be a commercial heliport on top of the Pan Am Building over Grand Central Station. The first helicopter crash that sent chunks of metal flying 600 feet down to streets with huge amounts of foot traffic permanently closed it. I'm sure something similar would have happened had the Empire State Building 'port' actually been used.
Minus the lift v. float economics. That would strike at some combination of affordability and availability of attractions.
I believe someone else mentioned wind turbines, which is a great idea.
I would agree, not without a change in the market's parameters.
Environmental parameters coming into play can usher in such a change, though - I'm thinking of the lower carbon footprint of an airship compared to that of an airplane, that could push a change through.
I'm all for airships too, to be honest, as long as they are so cool and spacious as the one in Indiana Jones.
You could have luxury travel with dance floor and bar in the front and sleeping cabins and air freight in the back.
Many of the problems that existed with airships in the past are solved today. Weather forecasts are much better today. Elevation can be controlled better with compressors which can expand and reduce volume of ballonets on demand combined with propellers which can be more fine controlled and directed to cause lift of descent.
Not to mention access to a plethora of advanced materials they did not have in the 30s.
Most importantly we are in a green shift. When airplanes took over nobody cared about CO2 emissions. Airships can realistically run using electric motors driven by batteries or preferably fuel cells. For airships volume matters less, so you can more easily have large quantities of hydrogen in the ship. In theory you could use hydrogen as lifting gas and fuel.
The dangers of hydrogen is somewhat overrated. Hindenburg was about paint coating more than hydrogen. We also got much better techniques for handling it yet today. You can have an outer shell of a different gas e.g.
During WW1 German airships got frequently fired on without causing any them much damage. They had to fly close with incendiary grenades to take them out.
The USS Akron loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron#Loss
The USS Macon loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5)#Loss
Only the USS Los Angeles was decommissioned (not crashed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Los_Angeles_(ZR-3)#Operati...
I'm not an expert but for disaster relief a few military cargo planes could be refuelled midair and drop 20 tons of aid on parachutes to most of the world fairly quickly.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/20/politics/military-cargo-p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26#Specifications_(Mi-2...
Some have already called such airships the yachts of the future.
There will obviously be problems involved as numbers increase, maybe we can control them in ways we failed to consider on other transport lifestyle adoptions we’ve done.
https://sharpmagazine.com/2018/02/15/inside-draken-internati...
On a more serious note: we never knew how good we had it with the likes of Gates of Buffet. Or even Rockefeller.
Because he didn't start it doesn't mean he didn't contribute to the development of the company.
Also, no one can claim that success would have been at the doors without his input.
Note: I'm not defending Musk here as much as I am opposing the rationale of the argument.
SpaceX, however, I believe was literally founded by Musk.
People think he’s just a nice guy philanthropist now and forget he got there by being an absolutely ruthless, cutthroat monopolist.
Rockefeller literally had a camp of union organizers machine gunned and hired thugs to set fire to his competitors shipments so maybe he’s not the best example, either.
No it's a by-product of decay of heavier radioactive elements. It's often found dissolved into fossil gas deposits, but it's not a fossil resource.
Helium deposits don't originate form organic matter, so they're not fossil.
Therefore the best solution is hot hydrogen.
On mars this could work.
The brain confusion that a room of vacuum is lighter then air and will therefore have a lift is amusing.
He's saying that a bag that contains only vacuum would be the lightest, but as it contains nothing, it would just collapse into having no volume due to the atmospheric pressure. That would obviously provide no lift. As such, you need something in the bag that will fill the space.
Next bring that airship to Venus.
i wish they would put some of those money to adjust FAA rules for the modern development - drones, human carrying multicopters, and whatever others things may come if the rules become friendly for innovation
Aviation is fucking dangerous. I know, I knew many private pilots of experimental aircraft growing up, some of which died in accidents.
One guy died when his seat slid backwards while climbing out from takeoff causing him to pull back on the yoke and cause a stall. This is a stupidly common way to go.
Another died when his twin lost engine power on one side, again during takeoff, and he spun into the ground.
The list, unfortunately goes on. Neither of those particular two on the list died in experimental aircraft, although the pilot of the twin did survive an earlier crash in an experimental during landing, where he misjudged the time it takes to spool up a jet engine.
Do not take private companies putting things I to the sky lightly.
Imagine that you have to explain to drone pilots that even a very small drone is completely unacceptable in an airport vicinity. Yes, your 0.5kg drone can seriously damage the compressor of an engine!
> in an airport vicinity
GP's and parent's strawman fallacy based line of argument reminded a video where Putin was explaining why it is so hard to get a protest permit in Russia - "Imagine if your protest happens in front of a children hospital, and thus it can block a live saving delivery."
But there are lots of cases where people fly cheap commercial drones around an airport, and that is completely unacceptable. It could easily result in a criminal charge and even prison time.
in particular because many aspects of it is technologically half a century behind. Stone age regulations prevent any meaningful advancement. It is like all the cars would still be manual transmission, no ABS, nor traction control...
>pull back on the yoke and cause a stall
VTOL multicopter wouldn't have such a stall
>Another died when his twin lost engine power on one side
Instead of cemented in time by regulations twin, having say 10 electric engines would mean that loss of one would result in just small automated readjustment of trust/power distribution.
Most of the new aircraft development would contain a lot of automation to the point of self-flying. The dense network of automated traffic control for such new aircraft would be another thing that only billionaires could really do. That would allow to take out of equation a lot of human errors that make current aviation dangerous.
And the liability is inherently far greater than ground vehicles. For example, right now it’s practically impossible to accidentally drive a ground vehicle, certainly not something less than a ton, into highly sensitive places like the pentagon/nuclear weapons storage facility/military base.
But it’s very easily imaginable that an automated aircraft less than a ton could fly itself into such a place, accidentally or intentionally, and cause a serious kerfuffle.
Or to put it another way, it’s thousands of times more costly to protect airspace from intrusion than ground space.
To cover the possibility of the owner being unable to pay out to cover the costs of disruption, liability insurance similar to car insurance would likely be mandatory, just thousands of times more.
If flying vehicles became deregulated and instead had a mandatory minimum insurance requirement for $1 billion of liability then it’s effectively the same. Because that’s the realm of very serious folks with large legal teams anyways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroLift_CycloCrane
https://hackaday.com/2016/10/06/maybe-your-next-robot-should...
http://www.robcrimmins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1982-N...
Basically an aerial crane which solves the buoyancy problem by spinning the whole thing like a helicopter. It's neutral by itself; if you want to pick something up, you increase rotational speed and generate lift with airfoils.
I saw this thing as a kid on a trip through Tilamook OR. Seemed really neat, though I'll bet it was tough to control with early-80s electronics. It would be fun to build a hobby version out of drone parts.
Cargolifter aimed for twice the size in all dimensions resulting in eight times the capacity, 160 tonnes as compared to 20 tonnes.
1. http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/07/20/the_good...
I'm starting to think that transoceanic trains might actually be a more viable alternative. There's been some very preliminary exploration of this.
It turns out that for several heavily-travelled routes, the water distances involved are actually reasonably short. Most notably the Bering Straight link from Alaska to Siberia, 82 km (51 mi) wide at its narrowest point.
Traversing the Atlantic would be more formidable, possibly a multi-hop bridge from Newfundland to Greenland to Iceland to northern Scotland. Other links include the Timor Sea (between Australia and Indonesia), Gibraltar, and the southern Atlantic crossing from, say, Recife, Brazil, to Freetown, Sierra Leone, about 3,000 km (1,900 mi).
Norway has proposed "floating tunnels" as a technological option to bridge fjords for vehicle traffic for its E39 coastal highway project. These might work for transoceanic rail links: tunnels would float deep enough beneath the surface to be spared wave action and collisions with shipping traffic, but shallow enough that pressures would be reasonable. Depending on speeds, even the longest crossings (3,000 km) might take from 15 to 3 hours (200 kph to 1,000 kph).
Costs and risks are of course high. The project might be limited to, say, automated freight transport initially. But it's not obviously impossible, and could prove an alternative to either slow boat or high-emissions aircraft for future transport and travel.
360 degree Thrust: https://youtu.be/VoAwBKDTk40
KBP @ NASA TRS: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19930090732
I understand that the core skills from airplanes would carry over, but how do you create the protocols and best practices for piloting a completely new vehicle that hasn't been flown in nearly 90 years? Do the practices from 90 years ago still apply?
As for transfer from airplanes, only somewhat. Airships have a lot in common with boats/sailing but really they are very much their own thing with their own set of constraints and difficulties.
Silicon Valley had a nice zeppelin from 2008 to 2012.[1] The CEO, who was qualified to pilot the thing, used to show up at steampunk conventions. He said it was the best handling airship built up to that time, and he'd flown a few others. Steerable fans under computer control make those things far more manageable, and docking without an army of line handlers becomes possible.
Unfortunately, they launched a luxury tourism project at the beginning of a recession. Then, around 2011, the pride of helium doubled. It was just too expensive to operate.
Also hydrogen might be more fun. POP
They conveniently do not mention the Macon's sister ship, the Akron, which crashed in 1933 killing 73 people.
Santos-Dumont's Dirigible No.6 [1] could 40km/h with a 12hp engine in 1901. It had a 630 m³ balloon (33m long x 6m diameter, total mass ~600 kg). With modern engines, materials, and modelling you could make a very comfortable and quite speedy 2-3 person yacht in that size.
This is worth expanding on. There is a worldwide shortage of helium [1]. It's being aggravated by ongoing natural gas supply disruptions:
> The helium shutdown in Arzew is a result of high natural gas demand in Europe, due in large part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Helium is found alongside natural gas in conventional wells. Algeria normally compresses natural gas into liquid form at Arzew for global transport by ship. During that process, it’s economical to extract helium because it liquefies at much higher pressures and lower temperatures than natural gas, explains industrial gas consultant Jon Raquet.
> But now, much of Algeria’s natural gas is being sent to Spain via pipeline, making separation impractical. The industrial and rare-gas advisory firm Edelgas Group estimates that liquefied natural gas production in key regions is down 30% from January, leading to a 10% drop in global helium supply.
And it's not like we're talking about just a little helium, either:
> ... Pathfinder 3, at 600 feet long and 100 feet in diameter, is designed to carry about 20 tons and be able to traverse as many as 10,000 miles using electric-only, zero-emission propulsion.
Running some back-of-the-envelope math, we can think of this as a cylinder roughly 400 feet long (to take account for tapering on either end) and 100 feet in diameter. That's 3.14 x 50^2 x 400 = 3.1 million cubic feet of He just to fill. It doesn't even account for ongoing resupply, testing, etc.
The US is the largest producer of helium at 77 million cubic meters [2]. With a conversion factor of 35:1, that puts the volume of the airship at ~ 886,000 cubic meters. So we're not talking about consuming all of the US production of helium, but it's not insignificant, either.
> The United States is the largest helium producer worldwide. In 2021, the production of helium in the U.S. stood at approximately 77 million cubic meters,
[1] https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/War-Ukraine...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production...
(EDIT: they're not called ballonets; ballonets are used to maintain pressure in a non-rigid airship.)
- they are very sensitive to the weather condition, especially winds
- they are more economical in fuel compared to airplanes but maybe not enough to compensate for their slowness
- they use either hydrogen which is very dangerous or helium which is available in limited amount (and afaik already in tension)
> Google's free rein in its early years surely had a lot to do with the fact that Page and Brin were successfully marketed as nice guys who could be trusted to be responsible stewards of Google. However stupid the rest of the world may have been to ever take this on faith, it is still on Page and Brin to keep their end of the bargain now.
Being the proprietors of Google isn't something that Page and Brin could hypothetically do if they wanted to, it's the job that they already have now. And again, unlike Larry Ellison spending all his money on cancer research or whatever, it's not something that others want to push them into. Being the nice guys who will run Google in a responsible, positive-sum manner is a role that they to a large extent made up themselves and rather successfully auditioned for, and they were happy to enjoy the rewards, extremely valuable rewards, of reduced public and government scrutiny that came with it in Google's earlier years. (It's also more their time and their initiative than their money which is being demanded, but that's relatively incidental.)
It's also not as if they've simply gone "played you, so long suckers" and disappeared into partying or empire-building or personal weirdness with no concern for what the rest of the world thinks about them. It's fairly clear that they still want to enjoy public admiration and respect for some of the things they've been doing. Perhaps because it's good PR for Alphabet, or because it's something that they care about on a personal level: it doesn't matter which. Of course they should be asked about their already existing, more important commitments before they're rewarded with this. Naturally your missing alimony payments or the orphanage you used to support are not off-topic when you're being photographed unveiling the plaque with your name on it at the new lion enclosure at the city zoo.
I'm a little disappointed this is another "billionaire tried to solve humanitarian problems with novel tech" stories and not an "eccentric billionaire plans to never set foot on the ground again" story.