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Large, Slow Airships Could Move Buildings
Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."
use it to move the ever increasing wind turbine parts that, a year ago, seemed to be getting too large to move over roads especially as regulations pushed them into less and less accessible areas.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
oops, SRY - forgot mods don't have sense of humor
As opposed to now, when the actual answer is drugs, mental illness or weather balloon? Seriously, considering that the UFO phenomenon was purely a cover for balloons used to spy on the USSR back before satellites could, it's amazing how long this paranoia has gone on for.
Nice attempt at levity.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Hardly amazing. People like stories. Considering how long we've had nonsense like astrology, homeopathy, religion, and all sort of other superstitious nonsense, how can you be surprised that the UFO nutters are still at it?
They do not need to. They simply fix the Yuan against the dollar, subsidize, and then dump the product. With their QA, we even have a double entendre here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Both you and the OP are correct in different ways - and aptly illustrate why this is such a bad idea.
Buildings (and pretty much everything else on Earth) are mostly designed to resist compressive loads I.E. the force of gravity. Thus, if you want to move a structure using this method your pretty much have two major options: First, to move an existing structure you can build a heavy cage around it so you can lift it from the top. Second, to move a new structure you can design in massive reinforcements so you can lift it from the top. Both are expensive and add considerable parasitic loads to the structure and the lift.
Not to mention, this idea has been floated a dozen times or more in the last fifty odd years, and always with the same result - a bankrupt company and penniless investors. While they've got some cool hacks in this scheme, they don't seem to have overcome the basic solution-in-search-of-problem problem. I.E. there doesn't actually seem to be a market.
Those building will soar high above the skyline, just like the Hindenburg! Wait...
It wasn't just the hydrogen; it was also the fact that the envelope of the Hindenburg was painted with thermite. Zeppelin learned its lesson, and its modern airships use far less flammable materials for the envelope. So even if airships did have to go back to hydrogen, it'd be far less risky than in the 1930s.