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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.
Every other blimp/helicopter hybrid crashed pretty early on, so this is hardly unexpected. The fundamental problem with all lighter than air craft has been landing, taking off, or being handled on or near the ground. It is an intrinsic weakness that cannot be overcome.
"Oh, the humanity!"
Have gnu, will travel.
Call that an airship, or something, please. Even though this picture reminds me of a very flexible girlfriend of mine.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?
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.
Really? They flew into a telegraph pole? When were they flying it, 1937?
Attention ladies and gentleman and all the ships at sea! The Hun is invading Europe, but airship travel is SAFE!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Building these things that are at the mercy of the elements is a bad idea.
This is the set of all things.
Now get out of my cave.
Ryanair is going to order fifty of them.
Yes but still a step below the semi-rigid airships like the Italians had in the 1920s (Norge, Italia) or the rigid airships, both of which have smaller relative cross section again.
The bit about fans doesn't sound like anything new to be honest the engines are less powerful there are less of them so don't add up to the same thrust as was seen in airships which had engines that could pivot in a similar way to this. One airship of the 1920s had five engines - each 410 kW (550 hp). Airlander 10 apparently has four x 350 hp.
Because an airship is a type of aircraft, ignoramus.
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.
The most amazing part about that video: they recorded it in Landscape mode!!!
"Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."
Yep, and it's a great landing if they can reuse the plane.
Duh! It carries the ground vehicle with it and drops it by parachute or with a bit of string.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.