"“You want to put a hospital into Africa?” Bruce Dickinson, the company’s lead investor, said to me. “You put the whole hospital in the inside of this—whoosh. Start the generator. ‘Here’s your hospital, buddy!’ Job done. You know? You can just plunk the vehicle straight down on the farm, load it with fifty tons of green beans or whatever, and twenty-four hours later you land right next door to the processing plant. It’s a global conveyor belt. And water! With these vehicles, you could drop off a twenty-ton slab of water that is clean, drinkable, to an African village. It’s astonishing what you can do that you just can’t do with anything else. Shit, you can do that with it? Wow, you can do that with it? Seriously fantastic!”"
Promises of a return to the age of airships have been around for at least a couple of decades, so I'll believe it when I see it. Nonetheless, this is an excellent article which is well worth reading, via Helen Read (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+HelenRead/auto : G+ doesn't list the correct Helen Read if I try the usual +name).
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born
but I thought there was a helium shortage?
ReplyDeleteWinchell Chung Yes and no.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.decodedscience.org/helium-shortage-situation-update-one-year-later/42314
Dmitry Vedeneev Well I imagine that if anyone has a use for a giant airship, it's a group of mercenaries who live on an island fortress.
ReplyDeleteAwesome idea, someday we'll load our entire city into a transporter.. We lift off, land somewhere like locusts, Denude the entire region and then move on.... Like in Independence Day!
ReplyDeleteOh wait.... Would that be bad of us? (Scratching head)
(Kidding!, Awesome concept!)
We really just need to accept the fact that hydrogen provides stronger lift, is renewable, and is no more dangerous than jet fuel. Even the famous Hindenburg "disaster" had a better survival rate than most passenger jet crashes in the last two years.
ReplyDelete