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Sergey Brin Is Reportedly Building 'Massive Airship' In NASA Research Center (bloomberg.com)
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is secretly building a "massive airship" inside of Hangar 2 at the NASA Ames Research Center, according to a report from Bloomberg. "It's unclear whether the craft, which looks like a zeppelin, is a hobby or something Brin hopes to turn into a business," reports Bloomberg. When asked about further details, Brin wrote in an email: "Sorry, I don't have anything to say about this topic right now." From the report: The people familiar with the project said Brin has long been fascinated by airships. His interest in the crafts started when Brin would visit Ames, which is located next to Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s headquarters in Mountain View, California. In the 1930s, Ames was home to the USS Macon, a huge airship built by the U.S. Navy. About three years ago, Brin decided to build one of his own after ogling old photos of the Macon. In 2015, Google unit Planetary Ventures took over the large hangars at Ames from NASA and turned them into laboratories for the company. Brin's airship, which isn't an Alphabet project, is already taking shape inside one. Engineers have constructed a metal skeleton of the craft, and it fills up much of the enormous hangar. Alan Weston, the former director of programs at NASA Ames, is leading Brin's airship project, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing the secretive plans. Weston didn't respond to requests for comment.
I'd be interested to know how this might size up to the new British heavy-lift airship, Airlander 10: https://www.hybridairvehicles....
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Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I doubt this is intended to be a money making project. At most maybe an advertising expense/ tax deduction.
I'd rather see a guy spending his money on something like this, which employs a bunch of people and will be pretty cool when it gets off the ground, than on political manipulation like buying the Washington Post and turning it into a political blog or funding groups like Tea Party, MoveOn, or Occupy Wall Street.
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos is also funding Blue Origin, which is building rockets. I suppose if you have enough money, you can do all kinds of things.
My personal favorite of "I have so much money..." examples is Larry Ellison, who essentially bought the America's Cup by plowing so much money into winning, largely so that he could totally remake it into a high-speed, trimarans of death, competition circuit. Oh, and he bought a Hawaiian Island to be his personal fiefdom.
....a lot of hot air.
Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy,
Boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl,
Girl Dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
In 1996 a company in Germany called CargoLifter AG had big dreams and tried to build a giant transportation airship, but they failed miserably.
The only thing they ever achieved was to build an enourmous hangar in the middle of nowhere. After CargoLifter went bankrupt a Malayan investor changed it into a tropical theme park, which seems to be doing quite well now.
I sincerely hope that Sergey will achieve what he is trying to do. It would be sad to have a NASA hanger transformed into a tropical theme park.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
I personally find it very exciting. I knew that Alphabet had rented the Moffett Field hangars from NASA and were rennovating them. But their official stated purpose for doing so was to store a number of company planes. This is the exciting part:
So first off:
1) It's a rigid airship. Which used to be common but is now rare. Zeppelin NT is a semirigid, with a trilobate truss inside, but there's not many other examples. Rigids are favored when you're building something very large, as they reduce the stress on the skin.
2) It's huge. Hangar 2 is 52,1 meters high, 90,5 and 327,7m long.
I hope it's a lifting body! If I'm not mistaken it'd be the world's first rigid lifting body airship (correct me if I'm wrong!). Either way it's yet another sign that we're - at least temporarily - entering a new lighter-than-air renaissance. Who knows whether it will last, but it's great to see so many companies giving it another shot, making use of modern technology and design. Because there have been some huge improvements since the old Akron / Macon days. Also wonder about the fuel. Something like Blau gas, so it's buoyancy-neutral as it burns?
Of course, not everything in the article is exciting or new...
Um... yes, that's how lift cells work.... you either use them or you use ballonets, your choice... there's a couple other possibilities, like high overpressure superpressure balloons, or compressors + gas tanks, but the former doesn't scale, and the latter generally comes with too much mass and cost penalties with too poor responsiveness.
BTW, for those not familiar with the Macon and the Akron, I definitely recommend reading about them. They were literal flying aircraft carriers. You know how a landing jet on an aircraft carrier catches a cable with a hook? They did that too, but in the other direction - they caught a "trapeze" on their topside. They were then raised into the hangar, which was designed for five airplanes.
They unfortunately weren't long in service. Both of their losses could have been prevented with any combination of better weather prediction, computer controls, and better lift control. The Macon's loss was also stupid in that they were flying with unrepaired structural damage, out doing fleet maneuvers.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
A billionair, Silicon Valley, and an airship. But who will act as Grace Jones ?!?
It's easier to hate on?
I'm wondering what the "innovation" is. Because I'm sure that he's not doing this without some angle, something unusual that he's doing with this one vs. other airships. Some sort of wow factor.
Sergei, blow me away with something totally crazy. Like make its skin transparent, fill it with heliox and have people live inside the envelope farming, like an Earth prototype of a Venus colony ;)
But honestly, my expectations are that it's a generic freight carrier, and that the twist would be that it's a rigid lifting body. Maybe if we're really lucky, solar-powered too.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
This could be used to carry large ungainly freight, like lifting a factory-built house onto a mountainside.
This is what happens when you have too much money. You just throw money at projects and hope they turn out to be useful.
Making a folly is a time honored tradition among the wealthy.
Even in the realm of aircraft. I see a Spruce Goose here.
A common usecase for large airships is remote mining operations. They need big, heavy pieces of equipment brought into places without roads. Currently, the first step is to build a road - which is expensive and environmentally destructive. An airship needs only a clearing - and the "skycrane" variants don't even need that.
Another advantage is that it's much easier to design them to carry "bulky" cargoes than airplanes. Again, especially "skycrane" designs where the cargo hangs beneath.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
This could be used to carry large ungainly freight, like lifting a factory-built house onto a mountainside.
And that would buy what over using a helicopter to lift materials, except risk and costs?
Human psyche being what it is, the world's biggest blimp will always primarily be a target. For ridicule and bullets.
I don't really see how this qualifies as a 'secretive' project.
It's due to the glands in the blimp skin.
[STR]
Airships are not party balloons; they don't "pop" when you make a hole in them. They have low overpressure and a huge volume to surface area, so a "bullethole" is just a slow leak; it's not even a reason to land. A helicopter is far more vulnerable to small arms fire than a helium airship.
As for what it buys over a helicopter, show me a helicopter that can move 50-500 tonnes payload at a per-kilogram rate cheaper than a freight truck while flying halfway around the world without refueling. Because that's what people are looking to build with this new generation of airships. Even Airlander 10, which is just a commercial prototype for the Airlander 50, carries more payload than the largest helicopter used by the US military, the Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
This could be used to carry large ungainly freight, like lifting a factory-built house onto a mountainside.
I'm rather dubious that there is sufficient market demand for remote heavy lifting to make it economically viable. I could be wrong of course and I'm certainly no expert but is getting heavy equipment into rural locations a really big unsolved problem? We don't seem unable to get heavy equipment into pretty remote locations today. Superficially it sounds like a solution looking for a problem.
Then of course there is the seemingly needless use of (probably) helium on what stands a strong chance of being a frivolous project. While we aren't going to imminently run out of helium, the supply on Earth is finite and should be tended carefully.
Oooo..., if only I were a terrorist...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Maybe the ship will be wrapped in textile solar cells? It is always sunny above the clouds (except nighttime). A huge airship could serve as base for drones collecting and delivering stuff. It could be useful in areas where the road network is bad. Many places in africa has that problem. Maybe an airship frame could be built by aluminium and carbon fibre instead of steel?Thus decreasing weight.
I don't think Larry Ellison will surrender his hot air monopoly without a fight.
The little problem with your take on this adolescent fantasy is the that Appleton (a nom de plume if IRC) never envisioned that 'ol Tom would own the airship. And the bank. And the town. And most of the state.
Appleton was kinda funny that way.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"never underestimate the bandwidth of a zepplin filled with zipdisks". He'll be able to transmit ten times the annual internet data of the US from one google data center to another in a week.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Rich folks like this guy have the funds to build nice post-apocalyptic shelters; Mr Brin appears to think having an aerial shelter would be best, and I think it's a clever way to get away from the zombie hordes, nuclear mutants, etc.
Except in scale, how does this differ from some average Joe Sixpack building a boat in his basement?
Well, what TFA doesn't mention is the free environmental benefit. NASA was planning to tear the hangar down, but discovered just how monumentally expensive it would have been to remove several decades worth of lead paint from the structural members. This plan is awesome in its win/win mentality. In putting the facility to real use, Brin first had to mitigate that environmental hazard. Bonus for us (US).
...it doesn't seem like a smart thing to build an aircraft that can be tossed around by the wind like a party balloon.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yes, but its first use would not be to move factory-built houses, but pieces of windmills.
A major limitation and expense on wind farms is the need to transport oversize blades to the sites, which requires some serious road building, considering that many of the best sites are in rugged terrain, and maneuvering a truck with a 36m payload means you need to build a route without any sharp turns. If the airship can also function as a sky crane, then erecting the windmill's mast and attaching the blades is a lot less expensive, too. Very likely the only roads that a wind farm would need would be the kind of dirt roads that would service the power lines.
Other low hanging fruit would include moving lightweight but bulky produce like lettuce from farm to market, a lower cost alternative to helicopter logging, installation and servicing of cell towers in remote sites, and use in regional emergencies such as floods (Katrina) or earthquakes.
We are 20 years overdue for a new airship industry. We had the technology to produce commercially viable airships before the turn of the century. It is long past time to see these air whales overhead.
This. The Goodyear Blimps often pick up bullet holes, whose only impact is a slow leak. Part of the preflight inspection is to look up through a window in the top of the cab, for little points of light.
On a recent hike in the U.K. I saw trail construction in the Lake District. A helicopter was being used to haul slabs o gray slate to a boggy mountaintop at the rate of one tonne per load, or about two slabs This was a job that could have been done in many fewer trips, hence lower cost, with an airship.
As a person of leiesure (sp?)
If you have so much free time, what's the problem with buying a dictionary or spending 5 seconds googling it?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is a cheaper solution.
That has yet to be established. Building a small number of very large airships is an extremely expensive endeavor. It's not even remotely clear that there is enough business for them to recoup their cost much less be a cheaper solution. If you have actual data to support it being a cheaper solution and for the value of the business to be had by all means share with the rest of the class. This is not remotely the first time this has been discussed on slashdot and those who think it is a good idea (and it might be) almost universally assume it is economically viable despite a near complete lack of evidence to support that assertion.
That's what technology is after all, the ability to do things more efficiently.
Just because you come up with a technological solution it does not automatically follow that it is more economically efficient than the alternatives.
Plus: who gets to decide what's "frivolous"? Certainly not you.
The market decides what is frivolous ultimately. But that doesn't mean I cannot look at a project and determine that there is high probability of it being frivolous without spending the money to build it. I could be wrong of course but I'd be mildly surprised if this turned into an economical solution to a real world problem. If it were obviously a better solution to a pressing problem chances are someone would have already done it. We've known how to build large airships for about a century.
Probably played too much of the old Final Fantasy games.
You know - this moment when you finally get the airship - and the whole world opens up to you :)
Well - in his case the "whole world" part is kinda already done. So why not just put the airship on top.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
I'll show them! Let's see one of those stupid Amazon drones deliver a Tesla to someone's driveway!
And yet he has never paid for a polo shirt, wearing only those given away as trade show swag.
Because heaven forbid a mere citizen dares to make his viewpoint known
Yes, it's legal and many people do it; that doesn't mean I have to like it.
people pay good money for the Orient Express experience and i for one would love to do a trans ocean flight experience ala 20's with luxury in mind. Michelin rated chefs and such.
> BTW, for those not familiar with the Macon and the Akron, I definitely recommend reading about them. They were literal flying aircraft carriers. You know how a landing jet on an aircraft carrier catches a cable with a hook? They did that too, but in the other direction - they caught a "trapeze" on their topside. They were then raised into the hangar, which was designed for five airplanes.
So basically Crimson Skies in real life:
https://youtu.be/WE20UlBFJbc?t=193
That would be so cool to do with choppers today.
Since there is a helium shortage. Any new airships should use hydrogen.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
If I'm not mistaken it'd be the world's first rigid lifting body airship
Not really. All airships would create lift when the hull was inclined; up to 20% of their mass. With their low density there was enough area to create a substantial amount of lift, even with a body of rotation for a hull (which is much lighter to build than an aerofoil-shaped lifting body, by the way).
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
You fokin' wut m8?
I was about to say I need to go to more trade shows, but that would probably be more expensive than a lifetime supply of polo shirts.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Instead of going off on tangent projects, get back to basics and fix Android. Why the hell do Google-branded phones (not just Android, but Google-branded Android) lose apps and panels on update? I lost count how many near-accidents I had because of the free Google navigation app. Fix the the core business before you off on your tangent projects.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Oh, great. Yeah, thanks. Now I have to go and try to get Crimson Skies working in wine again...
I imagine Sergei Brin gets paid to go to trade shows.
(Score: -1, Stupid)