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.

Comments

38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull

[nimbius]

the real tragedy here is not the crash, but the fact that 38000 cubic meters of a very rare gas used for everything from advanced medical diagnostics to research into superconductors and even nuclear fusion is squandered into a single aircraft that cant be bothered to run through a computational fluid thermodynamics simulation before enjoying public humiliation.

im sure it sounds callous, but i hope this thing takes a life next time because clearly no ones thought through the ramifications of such a wasteful endeavour.

Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull

[thegarbz]

the real tragedy here is not the crash, but the fact that 38000 cubic meters of a very rare gas used for everything from advanced medical diagnostics

Let me stop you right there and start correcting you before you even finish your sentence.

1. 38000 cubic meters is not a lot of helium. It's about the same as used in a big MRI machine, maybe a tad more. But two small MRI machines already use more gas than this.
2. Helium is such a very rare gas that we vent it to the atmosphere as a byproduct of extracting natural gas from the ground. It's such a rare gas that we can extract close to 2 orders of magnitude more of it from the air than some other noble gasses. Basically it's not rare at all.

If you were remotely concerned about helium you'd be attacking the people who use it for cryogenic freezing of lines, or for welding, or those who vent it to atmosphere because they couldn't be screwed capturing / purifying it (which doesn't make economic sense anyway), not this airship which has used a pittance of the total helium used for lifting purposes which is using somewhere about 10% of the worlds helium supply and doesn't rely on high purity like your medical machines do.

Capitalism!

[Okian Warrior]

the real tragedy here is not the crash, but the fact that 38000 cubic meters of a very rare gas used for everything from advanced medical diagnostics to research into superconductors and even nuclear fusion is squandered into a single aircraft that cant be bothered to run through a computational fluid thermodynamics simulation before enjoying public humiliation.

im sure it sounds callous, but i hope this thing takes a life next time because clearly no ones thought through the ramifications of such a wasteful endeavour.

Hypothetically speaking, suppose someone offered you a job at that company (and you lived near enough for an easy commute, and so on) for $100,00/yr. Would you take it?

Or would you refuse, knowing that the helium could be put to better use in other ways?

Now suppose you own an MRI company. Do you spend part of your profits purchasing stores of Helium for future use, or do you pocket the profits (or give it to shareholders) and hope that societal pressure will fix the problem sometime in the future?

Or that governments will step in and do something about the Helium supply?

Welcome to capitalism.

Re: As did all the others.

[fnj]

What is NOT common, what no pilot would ever do, is to keep the elevators in down-ship position all the way until the thing has crashed into the ground. Watch the video. My guess is control system failure.

Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium?

[Jon Peterson]

The helium market is more complicated than people think. MRIs and superconductors need very pure helium, often in liquid form. Party balloons and (I assume) airships don't. So when helium becomes contaminated with air (which it does very easily) what do you do? Answer, you mainly vent it to the atmosphere, because your average research institute or hosptial can't possibly afford to install the equipment to recover pure (and possibly liquid) helium (what they need) from a helium-air gas mix. It makes more sense to sell the helium-air mix to balloon and airship manufacturers.