joefigura

Agreed, nice to meet someone else who knows what a hybrid airship is! it solves a lot of challenges around ground handling and cargo loading/unloading.

The full scale design is a fatter shape that approximates a flying wing. That's why the aircraft in the demo video is two lobes - the final version will have an aerodynamic cover between the lobes.

> Is this a case of people over-hyping the problem...

As best I can tell, this is the case. The price of helium has gone up quite a bit, but non of the commentary links that to the actual production volumes of helium or size of remaining reserves.

> Can you just put hydrogen into an existing helium blimp

We'd need to modify the envelope design, but the rest of the design wouldn't need to be modified (aerodynamics, controls, propulsion, etc.)

We'll spend a lot of time on certification. We need two things: a type-certification of the aircraft, and operator certifications for the organizations flying them. Both require a lot of flight hours, which will be our main development activity. There's no escaping aircraft regulation, but we have a clear path

Hopefully we've responded to practical constraints in other answers, but if not let me know questions.

Good question! Airships do get more efficient as they get larger (more volume to surface area). But at the 650 lb payload size our vehicles fly more efficiency than a comparably-sized plane - small planes are also aerodynamically inefficient!

Our goal isn't to maximize efficiency, but rather to build something that fits a market need and that we can deploy quickly. We actually think that the quest to build huge, efficient airships has lead past airship projects astray. There are several projects that have struggled to build 10 ton or 50 ton vehicles, but no past attempts to build something in this size class.

Good questions. Helium is non-renewable, but there is still plenty in the ground. It's a byproduct of natural gas extraction, and as long as there's more gas in the ground there will be helium available. We do think that declining natural gas production as the world decarbonizes is a long term risk.

The helium market's been pretty volatile since the U.S. government finished selling off the national helium reserve in 2019. But we think that's mostly due to short-term market dynamics because helium's a hard commodity to produce and there are only a few producers. There are lots of stories about helium running out, but we've dug in and haven't found much evidence that supply is actually drying up

We think we can build a hydrogen blimp safely. It's not on our tech roadmap currently, but in any case the best way to build a hydrogen blimp is to get lots of flight hours on a helium version first.

You're right, 650 lbs is the full scale version. The current prototype carries 0-10 lbs, depending on battery load. Edited the post to make that a bit clearer.

Interesting piece! I think the article makes some good points, but I don't think that helium is the reason that airships have failed to find use cases. The benefits of hydrogen do not change the fundamentals of the business case. Hydrogen's cheaper, but even using helium the lifting gas is <20% of the operating cost of the airship. The hangar, cost of the vehicle, and maintenance are all more impactful than the cost of the lifting gas.

The bigger hurdle that airship startups have faced is the upfront cost of developing a new vehicle with a many ton payload. Projects trying to build very large airships have so far to get a vehicle to market, because of the amount of capital it requires and the lack of a strong, specific commercial case (Hybrid Air Vehicles, Cargolifter, Lockheed's Hybrid Airships). Changing the lifting gas to hydrogen does not address those challenges. But airships are certainly underutilized - I'm optimistic for their future!