World's largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley

I would imagine airships are easier to autopilot and could be used for setting up automated warehouse to warehouse deliveries - including loading and unloading cargo, establishing a continuous flow of goods.

The niche I'd like them to fill is low-carbon intercontinental travel. Right now the only option is hitching a ride on a cargo ship, which is very slow, expensive, and only low-carbon in a marginal sense, and the prospects for long-distance electric planes or actually-sustainable aviation fuel seem pretty grim.

Since it’s Sergey Brin funding the venture, I don’t think running out of money is any real concern. So maybe they’ll be able to pull it off this time, assuming it’s even possible.

From what I recall, strong wind is kryptonite to any lighter than air vessel. I’m not sure how they plan to solve that problem, but I’d be really impressed if they do.

Dirigibles benefit from the square-cube law, so as long as you have a hangar large enough to build them, larger is overall better. There are probably some questions about those 3,000 titanium hubs, so it might not be trivial to make it bigger, but it feels more manageable to scale than an airplane.

And that is on the lower side of the scale, il76 and c17 lift 60-70 tons, while the big boys do over 100 tons.

And a typical US 53ft trailer can carry 22 tons.

Helicopter, payload 10 tons:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane

If the overall carbon footprint is less, then I guess its worth it?

I would imagine that they have plans to tether a few of these together, load up the cargo, and fly it around un-populated areas to build a distribution network. Perhaps tethering them can also mean overall stability and resistance to wind effects, something like an air train. Maybe, a small aircraft can lock-in to the first one and simply pull it along at higher speeds?

Assuming they can fly at about 50 MPH, can be automated and can fly day and night with minimal energy consumption, companies like Amazon and FedEx would be interested.

Not to mention tourism applications, surveying, etc.

If it can make constant dropoff and pickup it can compete with planes that need costly fueling and landing strips.

One smooth Hackathon in the cloud(s).

With the advent of Star Link, those 45 hours will be somewhat productive.

The quietness will depend on how well sound-insulated those diesel generators are I guess. They'd probably have to be running for most of that trip given that battery technology is where it is currently.

I'm on the spectrum, and I hate loud noises with a burning passion (due to the fact that the all of the information usually hurts like all get-out), but something ever since being a child that has gotten me extremely excited whenever I hear it is in the slow, giant-engine-whine "whip whip whip whip whip whip whip whip whip" sound of traditional old-school dirigibles from movies and such.

I don't even know if the classical dirigibles even make that noise. It just gives me dopamine.

I relearned a similar lesson while hiking the Appalachian Trail this year, I stayed at a paid campsite by the railroad tracks.

I thought I was going to hate it, but somehow my adult, self-believed rational self turned into a gasp-giggling, excitedly-breathing, and hand-clapping and jumping up and down experience whenever a train came by (and blew its horn at full volume because we were right freaking near a train crossing).

Intellectually I don't have the strongest passion for trains, but viscerally is something else. It did not matter if it woke me at 4-5 in the morning, I would always lift the hammock tarp and find myself very excited each time.

My emotions about the issue are roughly about the same as if you personally suddenly found your body and brain doing that around trains. I'll probably seek trains out more for that reason (because it feels...amazing!), and continue working through whatever residual shame lies in authentically experiencing such a thing as my self with that kind of joy. My brain may be autistic, but my soul is not, so some things require adjustment. <3 :')))) ;')))) :')))) <3

Still, what a beautiful thing to have such small things to make me extremely happy, no matter how unexpected or "strange", given the context.

If this was cheap, I'd definitely ride it for long trips like that, but I'm sure it will not be. I guess I'm curious also what the interior is like and how much square footage they have available too.

Edit, I found this information in a different article:

It could eventually carry up to 14 people and has a cargo capacity of up to 11,000 pounds. To that end, LTA says the airship will be primarily used to bring humanitarian aid (food and supplies) to remote areas that are difficult to access via traditional aircraft and vehicles.

I didn't get from the article or their vision https://www.ltaresearch.com/our-story that "New York to London" is their mission.

If it's much cheaper than plane but still much faster than container ships it could be useful for some types of cargo.

Think of it as equivalent to a container ship rather than a passenger jet.

"Dirigible" re-directs to the "Airship" on wikipedia, and the dictionary also considers them to be synonyms. I think "dirigible" is just considered to be a dated term and to not add anything.

Spring powered airships appear in The Windup Girl IIRC.

Or "The Sky Lords" trilogy [0]

[0] The story is set in the future, after the 'Gene Wars' have turned the Earth into a blighted wasteland. The inhabitants of Earth live a tribal-like existence and offer tributes to the Sky Lords. The Sky Lords live in giant airships and are the rulers of the people below.

Im guessing the whiteness has something to do with reflecting the sun's heat, so as to not heat up the helium inside.

I'm a big McPhee fan. Critical difference here, the Aereon was an aerodynamic lifting body design, this is a bog standard dirigible by comparison.

Somehow the Wikipedia page has no photos?? Tons of great ones here:

https://lynceans.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Aereon-Corp_...

Helium supply was never really an issue. All the media hit pieces were essentially triggered by the Pentagon stopping to run a price-fixing cartel to the benefit of US universities, who after endless wailing and gnashing of teeth finally adjusted to market prices and such desperate last ditch measures like "we actually have to recycle our helium now and can't just vent it carelessly after every run!!1"

Can we set helium supply aside, though?

I really hope we can make airships work, but it seems like the volumes of helium required will be prohibitive for wide-scale deployment.

Hydrogen works well but remains dangerous... perhaps modern tech can make it "safe enough"?

re: the lifting body thing, that's Hybrid Air Vehicles' Airlander https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/ (may also be others).

It unfortunately scales up very well, or rather it completely doesn't scale down. The problem is while gigantic design seems to be good on paper you can't build a demonstrator blimp or a small scale model (kinda like airplanes can with widebody/narrowbody or shorter/longer fuselages) to break into the commercial industry. And they need not only individual scale of a single ship but also quantity scale to show that they can operate profitable. And even if someone build them, then they need to convince people to switch from ships, trucks and trains. And places unreachable by those already don't have enough production for the gigantic blimp transport.

But it would be awesome if someone goes full Elon Musk on this idea and bruteforces the final giant design with a pile of money. Blimps are great :)

> Also, I remember someone trying to shape a blimp like a lifting body, so it gets a some extra lift from forward motion.

They are all shaped like that. Famously, the R101 at the end of it's final flight was so overweight (reasons disputed) it needed dynamic lift to stay afloat, with eventually disastrous consequences when first one engine was down for maintenance and then the second was ordered to cut revolutions for unclear reasons.

The problem with that sort of speed in an aircraft is that suddenly weather becomes very important. It's not unusual for wind speed to be close to 65 knots at altitude. If that's a headwind, you're standing still.

Trying to cheat the laws of physics so it sucks less than all the other failed attempts at making blimps more than a niche product.

Nothing in the announcements indicate any degree of success, so I'll suspect it'll be quietly shuffled off to the few markets where blimps are already successful in.

Sergey Brin's hobby projects don't have deadlines or business plans.

10 years is also known as "started yesterday" when it comes to aircraft projects.

You mean the silver in the film for the photos? I concur! :)

The ship doesn’t need to touch the ground, but you need to attach it firmly (because as soon as you unload a ton, that ship wants to jump up by about a ton). You can mitigate some of that with helium pumps and pointing the engines up and down, but a firm cabling would be necessary. In a pinch, I assume you can drop the necessary equipment to attach cables from the ship itself (it will still jolt when you do that).

Can’t be much worse than this one.

Money: most projects didn’t have enough investment. Brin presumably can handle a conversation that starts with “We need another billion for…”

Wind patterns are actually well understood: hot-hair ballons already move around simply by changing their altitude and going around reasonably freely. I don’t know if those could handle the jet stream, but that would make NY-London a lot faster.

Agree with you on how slow previous prototypes have been: I was part of a project that tried to use them for urban transport, and it was not going nearly that fast… 65 knots is the speed of cars on a highway (at least the legal limit).

> So often tried never successful. What si the difference now?

It's fortunate the Wright Brothers didn't listen when the guy at the Kitty Hawk bar said that.

Airships handle damage from small arms fire pretty well. The holes are small and pressure differential is low so leakage is limited. In armed conflicts it was necessary to use incindiery or explosive ammunition to shoot them down.

The problem with US trains is comfort? I thought it was availability.

I don’t understand how point-to-point air cargo doesn’t have a practical use.

I.E. moving supply chain items directly between manufacturing facilities, wearhouses, and distribution centers.

Help me understand?

Probably handles more like a hot air balloon than a fixed wing aircraft.*

* I have zero experience with any of this.

For flight to a destination, it may be possible to use an altitude with a more favorable wind direction. For landing, the aircraft approaches a mooring mast from downwind.

Pretty sure the British figured out how to deal with military airships back in WWI.

They say humanitarian, cargo, and passenger.

I suspect the main one is cargo, to fit the “reasonably fast but low-cost” market between boats (very slow) and planes (expensive). This is presented well in this video: https://youtu.be/ZjBgEkbnX2I?feature=shared

Sky yachts that can be put under a non-profit and marketed as humanitarian or "educational" or "research" platforms. I knew of a superyacht that was "studying" coral loss. Of course, at Fiji. Probably had to give one of the 8 staterooms to some academic.

Square cube law means larger airships have fewer issues with the wind. Still not great.

Do we really need to "think of the children" air cargo transportation? Especially something as frivolous as floating balloons?

Kinda hard to hide a test flight of the largest aircraft ever made.