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.

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[PPH]

"Oh, the humanity!"

Aircraft?

[hcs_$reboot]

Call that an airship, or something, please. Even though this picture reminds me of a very flexible girlfriend of mine.

38,000 cubic meters of helium?

[irrational_design]

Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?

Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium?

[Anonymous Coward]

The helium shortage is a myth! It is a lie perpetuated by Big Noble Gas to drive up prices!

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium?

[stephanruby]

An MRI machine needs 1,700 litres of liquid helium, which needs to be topped off regularly. That's the equivalent of 12,724 cubic meters. The airship needs 38,000 cubic meters of helium, which I assume also needs to be topped off regularly.

In other words, the airship uses Helium at the rate of three MRI machines (according to my layman calculation). I'm not making a judgement one way or another. I just wanted to quantify the comparison.

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.

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:Capitalism!

[toddestan]

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.

Telegraph (?) Pole

[Mister Transistor]

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!

Re:Telegraph (?) Pole

[93 Escort Wagon]

Really? They flew into a telegraph pole? When were they flying it, 1937?

I watched the video and distinctly heard someone say "Oh, the humanity!"

Re:When will they learn?

[Austerity Empowers]

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.

I know what this means

[Applehu Akbar]

Ryanair is going to order fifty of them.

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.

The most amazing part

[ThatsNotPudding]

The most amazing part about that video: they recorded it in Landscape mode!!!