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New Details On Sergey Brin's Plan For The World's Largest Aircraft (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares The Guardian's report on plans for a new aircraft that's two-and-a-half times the size of a 747.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is building a hi-tech airship in Silicon Valley destined to be the largest aircraft in the world, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the project. "It's going to be massive on a grand scale," said one, adding that the airship is likely to be nearly 200 meters [656 feet] long... Brin wants the gargantuan airship, funded personally by the billionaire, to be able to deliver supplies and food on humanitarian missions to remote locations. However, it will also serve as a luxurious intercontinental "air yacht" for Brin's friends and family.
One source put the project's price tag at $100m to $150m. Igor Pasternak, an airship designer who was involved in the early stages of the project, believes airships could be as revolutionary for the trillion-dollar global cargo market as the internet was for communications. "Sergey is pretty innovative and forward looking," he said. "Trucks are only as good as your roads, trains can only go where you have rails, and planes need airports. Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between."
The Guardian quips that while Brin's plans may stay secret for a while, "the good news is that the first flight test of such an enormous aircraft will be impossible to hide."
One source put the project's price tag at $100m to $150m. Igor Pasternak, an airship designer who was involved in the early stages of the project, believes airships could be as revolutionary for the trillion-dollar global cargo market as the internet was for communications. "Sergey is pretty innovative and forward looking," he said. "Trucks are only as good as your roads, trains can only go where you have rails, and planes need airports. Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between."
The Guardian quips that while Brin's plans may stay secret for a while, "the good news is that the first flight test of such an enormous aircraft will be impossible to hide."
Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between.
Except when there's a storm in A or Z.
The Spruce Goose of our time, or the Hindenburg of our time? Cannot decide.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Brilliant!
I'd sell him the vacuum at a big discount because I know he'll need a lot of it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The rich are very different from you and me.
#DeleteChrome
Stuff like this tends to happen if some people just have more money than they know what to do with ...
Stuff like this tends to happen when government neglects to tax rich people. When they feel the pinch of taxes, suddenly they think of more productive ways to spend their money.
If you read the article, you'll see where they wanted to use Hydrogen but the government said No.
Not only that, I'd be surprised if an airship could match even 1% of the carrying capacity of a modern container ship.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
"Is there some additive that could make hydrogen safe? "
Yes, just mix with oxygen and toss in a match. The H2 is perfectly safe after that.
Yeah, they invent things.
No they take ideas invented by others without much understanding of whether they are viable or not, no matter how crackpot, and blow some money on it. When you have got a few billion dollars it does not matter if you waste a few million, as long as you get a quick thrill and your name into the news.
While I think his intent to use the craft for disaster and emergency situations is laudable his plan of a single huge airship is ill conceived at best, idiotic at worst.
A single ship is a single point of failure, anything goes wrong with it, a mechanical failure in an engine, an issue with it's control systems, bad weather at it's launch site and it is grounded. Plus you have the "time to site" to consider, to wit: An Earthquake in central India, how long will it take the airship to get there from California? Airships are not all that fast.
A better plan would be a fleet of smaller airships stationed at bases around the world. Redundancy in numbers. When a disaster happens they all load up and move out. The ships from closer bases get there first and can start helping while the ships from farther out are in transit, and the ships in transit can be redirected to depending on local need. Something you would not be able to do with a single ship.
Unless the idea isn't really to help others, but more about getting into the record books for having the biggest something in the world.
NO! That just makes it far more dangerous!
Irritates the crap out of me that Google is probably building this "balloon" in MY hangar at Moffitt.
Yeah, it was better back when NASA ran the hangar and used magic owl-dodging aircraft.
I'm pretty sure that when someone leases your hangar for decades, it's a bit disingenuous to call it YOUR hangar.
Just wait for Sergey Brin to enter into the shoe design and production world!
Set in a future where a failed climate-change experiment kills all life on the planet except for a lucky few who boarded the Airpiercer, a plane that travels around the globe, where a class system emerges.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt17...
I welcome serving my Google overlords...
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â