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Comment by backprop1989 | Hacker News Reader

backprop1989

Step 1: Put the helium in a blimp Step 2: Fly around the straight and over to Taiwan Step 3: Pump it into the chip factory

There you go, solved it.

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Step 1B: load up all the tanker vessels carrying the oil onto the helium blimp

Two birds, one stone baby! Just hopefully it doesn't get hit by a bird or something...

How do you get the blimp back?

Fold it up and ship it.

Ship it through the Straight of Hormuz?

I think bigger question is, how do you bring the blimp down without dumping out helium?

Airships have air bags inside. Same deals as submarines. They take in and out ambient stuff into the bags to control buoyancy.

What ambient stuff is available at the altitude where a zeppelin typically flies?

there is generally plenty of ambient air in the earth's atmosphere

And how can that ambient air be stuffed into bags to control buoyancy?

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

An air pump will not compress the air such that it becomes dense enough to overcome the buoyancy of the helium. The idea is ridiculous.

Tell that to the airships I guess

so balloons appear to have negative mass, it's actually just the result of having lower density than the air. the upward force balances out with the gravity where the lbs/in^3 figure of its entirety matches that of ambient air. it's exactly the same as how an empty tank underwater floats, and a water filled tank underwater sinks.

or I guess one could say it's the bottom side getting more compressive load from air than the topside, given the observable effect, whatever floats our zep...

The stuff the Zeppelin/Blimp floats in

And how do you propose that stuff be stuffed into the bags to control buoyancy?

Attach hooks to the bottom of the blimp and send a guy in a heavy sled with hooks on it, with helium balloons attached to it, to the bottom of the blimp. Attach the sled to the hooks on the blimp, then get the guy to pop all the sled's balloons. The blimp will land on the ground gently, if the math is right.

you could compress the helium into tanks?

This. Buoyancy is related to volume. Reduce the gas volume, increase its (relative) density, bouyancy goes down, ship goes down.

Same way submarines adjust dive depth without dumping air overboard.

Shoot it down with a F22.

easy problem to solve- single use zepplins.

Hydrogen

What do you do with the hydrogen once you're back

Send it to the sun to get more helium!

Fill it with hydrogen and just squeeze really hard.

Explode it

fresh water

An easy target for a drone!

At least it'd be non-flammable helium!

put the chip factory on the blimp

Zeppelins are back, baby!

You do realize helium is a byproduct of LNG production and if you’re not pumping gas you’re not getting helium? It’s not a transportation issue.

Yes, except for this one flaw it's a perfect plan which would have worked perfectly.

But that isn't even the issue. Drone attack on the plant that produces it. So even with the input materials. No dice for now.

That's only one part of it. Even if the plant isn't attacked, they're not gonna be pumping gas when storage is full and LNG can't be shipped out.

I always thought the socially inept computer enthusiast who can't detect social cues was an anachronism by this point in history but then I started visiting hackernews.

What helium?

Nonsense. Deploy the SLS. Use the hydrogen tanks.

If the seals can hold hydrogen, helium should be easy for them.

If only the SLS seals would actually hold the hydrogen!

The Hindenburg wants to know your location

Edit: oh right, know your chemistry...

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