I wonder how strong a magnetic field would be need to be to prevent leakage in an airship using ionized hydrogen as a lifting gas.
Assuming that the airship can sustain a 10K C hydrogen plasma, of course.
Maybe just at the boundary.
Assuming that the airship can sustain a 10K C hydrogen plasma, of course.
Maybe just at the boundary.
Most likely you either have to pump a lot of power through the mesh to get field coverage enough to reliably bounce atoms away from the skin or you have to make the wire mesh so dense that you've basically got a layer of copper as your envelope and are therefore far too heavy to lift off.
It seems like too obvious an option to have simply been missed over the decades.
Still, I have to wonder if someone will invent a way to coat a string of fabric in like 1nm thick copper film. Or maybe graphene will save this idea too.