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World's Largest Aircraft Crashes Its Second Flight (theverge.com)
Not too long after it completed its first test flight, the Airlander 10 -- the world's largest aircraft -- has crashed its second test flight. Since the 300-foot long aircraft contains 38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull, the crash was all but sudden. You can see in a video posted to YouTube from witnesses on the ground that the aircraft slowly descended to the ground, nose first. The BBC has published some close-up photos of the cockpit, which sustained damages. There were no injuries in the crash, according to a tweet from Hybrid Air Vehicles. The company did also deny eyewitness reports of the aircraft being damaged in a collision with a telegraph pole.
Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?
Actually, quite the opposite. The cost of Helium depends not on how rare it is, but how much it costs to extract it from the ground. Since it's actually a byproduct of natural gas production, the cost of extracting it is cheap (basically, free) and the main cost is actually the cost of separating it from the methane, storage, and transport. Because of this, a lot of helium isn't even captured and instead is vented to the atmosphere, where it eventually escapes to space. Why? Because capitalism. It's not profitable to capture it, so it's not captured. Nevermind that it's a non-renewable resource used for many important applications that has no substitute available. So Helium is cheap, until all of sudden it won't be.
The most amazing part about that video: they recorded it in Landscape mode!!!