Sergey Brin's Airship Aims To Use World's Biggest Mobile Hydrogen Fuel Cell (techcrunch.com) 58
Sergey Brin's secretive airship company LTA Research and Exploration is planning to power a huge disaster relief airship with an equally record-breaking hydrogen fuel cell. From a report: A job listing from the company, which is based in Mountain View, California and Akron, Ohio, reveals that LTA wants to configure a 1.5-megawatt hydrogen propulsion system for an airship to deliver humanitarian aid and revolutionize transportation. While there are no specs tied to the job listing, such a system would likely be powerful enough to cross oceans. Although airships travel much slower than jet planes, they can potentially land or deliver goods almost anywhere.
Hydrogen fuel cells are an attractive solution for electric aviation because they are lighter and potentially cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. However, the largest hydrogen fuel cell to fly to date is a 0.25-megawatt system (250 kilowatts) in ZeroAvia's small passenger plane last September. LTA's first crewed prototype airship, called Pathfinder 1, will be powered by batteries when it takes to the air, possibly this year. FAA records show that the Pathfinder 1 has 12 electric motors and would be able to carry 14 people. That makes it about the same size as the only passenger airship operating today, the Zeppelin NT, which conducts sightseeing tours in Germany and Switzerland. The Pathfinder 1 also uses some Zeppelin components in its passenger gondola.
Hydrogen fuel cells are an attractive solution for electric aviation because they are lighter and potentially cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. However, the largest hydrogen fuel cell to fly to date is a 0.25-megawatt system (250 kilowatts) in ZeroAvia's small passenger plane last September. LTA's first crewed prototype airship, called Pathfinder 1, will be powered by batteries when it takes to the air, possibly this year. FAA records show that the Pathfinder 1 has 12 electric motors and would be able to carry 14 people. That makes it about the same size as the only passenger airship operating today, the Zeppelin NT, which conducts sightseeing tours in Germany and Switzerland. The Pathfinder 1 also uses some Zeppelin components in its passenger gondola.
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The moon has LOTS of helium.
The moon has lots of helium-3 which is even more valuable than the kind that's put in balloons.
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The moon has LOTS of helium.
I've seen that documentary, and it didn't;t turn out well for the corporations in the end
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You can theoretically make helium and the by-product is energy, lots of energy.
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So what do you do with your minute quantities of radioactive helium that you created at horrible expense?
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It still needs hydrogen for the fuel cell. He's basically built the 21st century Hindenburg.
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Any powered vehicle that stores its own fuel is going to be a fire risk if the (energy-rich) fuel isn't handled carefully; that doesn't mean it's impossible to engineer the vehicle to minimize that risk; automakers and aircraft makers do that routinely.
What interests me, safety issues aside, is whether the hydrogen powering the fuel cell could also be used to fill/lift the airship, thus allowing the same amount of mass to perform two functions and thereby achieve better efficiency.
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If you were to simply burn your ‘lift hydrogen’ as fuel, then of course you’d lose the lift it provides, which wouldn’t help you. But if you had containers of pressurised hydrogen on board, perhaps you could use that, along with lightweight, deformable lift containers, to give you something a bit like the airship equivalent of the ‘swim bladder’ found in fish?
You should be able to use that like a trim
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Helium is infinitely scarcer than hydrocarbons.
An airship packed with hydrogen (Score:1)
Private "disaster relief" (Score:2)
BTW - The actual definition of fascism isn't someone that's conservative or someone you don't like -- It's an economic model where traditionally state-run institutions are owned by private interests.
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It's high-profile advertising. If they can prove that they can carry out humanitarian missions then it can also handle humdrum cargo transport.
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Probably also just the usual billionaire thing of whitewashing their image by doing a few humanitarian things that actually make them money and distract you from the on-going catastrofuck they are causing.
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Bingo. [slashdot.org]
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Sure, "revolutionize transportation" just like Segway did. [bbc.com]
Re:Private "disaster relief" (Score:4, Interesting)
Making money isn't what motivates someone with $88B. Once a person is super rich, while they must maintain their wealth to keep their status, they need to seek out other means to increase their status. Especially among their peers. For them once you've met one guy with $88B, meeting a richer one with $100B is not significantly more impressive.
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What would motivate a person to be eternally ridiculed for wasting the world's scarce helium?
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It's going to an uphill battle to convince the general populace to give a shit about any non-renewal resource, especially one that is seems so cheap and abundant as helium. We can't even get most people to agree that we should stop burning coal. And that stuff release toxic smoke and mercury. And most importantly you can't use coal to make festive party balloons. There's zero chance of fixing this before it is too late.
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"Disaster relief" is a convenient excuse; its basically a floating sky palace, an aerial vacation home that he ostensibly plans to put to good use if someone makes a request and he feels like taking them up on it.
This sort of thing is common with billionaires. Paul Allen used to travel around the world in his megayacht Octopus [wikimedia.org], which was like a floating apartment complex at sea (the thing moored itself in the bay north of Reykjavík for weeks at a time, it was a real eyesore). But he always pitched Octo
Elon's got some competition... (Score:3)
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One giant fat unarmoured target, in disaster relief, during chaos, entirely foolish concept. What you want is to review what the navy is up to, and replace all large warships with one design, a mid sized carrier that can beach and unload many vehicles, nuclear powered to supply unlimited hot water and electricity and instead of unloading the merchandise of war and slaughter, unload construction equipment and the merchandise of constructive and development, as well as handling helicopter rescue and recovery
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To be fair, airships aren't as easy to shoot down as you may be picturing. They're not like a party balloon; the helium pressure inside is only barely above ambient, and takes a long time to leak out through holes.
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Sergey Brin is channeling Jeff Tracy and IR (Score:2)
Thunderbirds are Go! [youtube.com]
FAB
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BTW - The actual definition of fascism isn't someone that's conservative or someone you don't like -- It's an economic model where traditionally state-run institutions are owned by private interests.
There's a lot more to fascism than that, maybe you're thinking of privatization. Here's an excerpt:
Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy
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how do you make money from disaster relief?
An airship for disaster relief is a stupid fucking idea. Somebody must have thought that one up in all of ten minutes toilet time.
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And if it happens to be too windy out for an airship that day, oh well, the jungle villagers can die. And with the severely limited speed, you're not getting many cargo runs in per day. And somehow I doubt Sergey will be frequently stationing it in the Congo to be ready to react quickly when disaster strikes anyway.
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Every Billioinaire (Score:1)
Every billionaire needs their far-out wow project, just to keep up with the Joneses.
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It's not clear if you're applauding that he's putting his wealth to work or not.
Advertized ID Collector monetized link (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone has a non monetized privacy invading tracker link to the poster's article?
https://techcrunch.com/2021/02... [techcrunch.com]
That redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/c... [advertising.com]
and redirects a 2nd time to: https://guce.techcrunch.com/co... [techcrunch.com]
and redirects to: https://consent.yahoo.com/v2/c... [yahoo.com]
Consent bullshit since guce advertising already collected my privacy for profit.
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I experienced no redirects when visiting that URL.
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Interesting. I'm in the EU and which I click it I get a redirect to A Yahoo cookie consent page, and then back to Tech Crunch.
Looks like people in the EU are ask if they would please take pity on us poor advertisers and allow some tracking cookies, while US users just get privacy raped automatically. It actually detects what legal jurisdiction you are in before deciding if it is going to be nice or get out the anal probe.
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it's only 2000hp (Score:1)
Hydrogen and electricity: what a great match! (Score:2)
"Although airships travel much slower than jet planes, they can potentially land or deliver goods almost anywhere."
If memory serves, a hydrogen airship made a particularly spectacular delivery at Lakehurst, New Jersey a while back. I wonder if rumours are true that Brin is having trouble choosing a name for his airship. The leading candidates at present, apparently, are Columbia and Challenger, with Titanic a close third.
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Helium.
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Well...damn.
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More Hindenburg passengers survived than from a typical fixed wing aircraft crash, but that idiot narrator ensure idiot plebs would fear hydrogen forever.
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Zero Hindenburgs survived, pretty much the story of every large airship. Most got torn up in the air, storm force winds are a bitch.
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Fear? Please try not to be stupid. Electricity, hydrogen and oxygen isn't going to be a good mix in the near future. No, every trip isn't going to result in a horror story, but would you like to compare reliability of fixed wing versus airships over a range of weather conditions?
What's it going to look like (Score:2)
if it hits the ground.
What's this company's motto? (Score:2)
Not good for all disasters (Score:2)
Giant storm disasters might not be dirigible-friendly.
About hydrogen and maybe hot air alternative? (Score:1)
During World War I the Germans used hydrogen for bouyancy in the Zepellins that bombed England. I remember seeing a documentary and the Zeppelins were not that prone to having hydrogen fires, despite being attacked by aircraft. Eventually the attacking pilots learned to concentrate fire on one particular spot in the gas bags to get something started.
There's been a lot of debate and suspicion about the Hindenburg disaster. So, while I wouldn't call Hyrdogen utterly safe, it's probably not as dangerous as
Unconscionable waste of helium (Score:2)
Want to make a scarce resource even scarcer? Fritter it away in a monumental vanity project. Not only that, but large airships are mainly famous for crashing. That is because wind and lighter than air do not mix well. Does Sergey have any idea how much force can be exerted on a large object by an 80 knot gale? I think not.
I hope this awful project dies the death it deserves.
classic /. fare (Score:2)
"While there are no specs tied to the job listing, such a system would likely be powerful enough to cross oceans."
Power is not the constraining factor in "crossing oceans". What's worse, ignorant reporting like this or /. reproducing it without knowing better?
disaster airship? (Score:1)
Jumpin' Jack Flash, it's a Gas Gas Gas! (Score:2)
After reading the title with "airship" and "hydrogen", I then scanned the first line of TFS. Autowrap cut it off at "planning to power a huge disaster" and I immediately agreed.
BTW, several posters have gone off about wasting precious helium. Does anybody know what they're going on about?
Problems with hydrogen - leaks, energy to make (Score:2)
It is my understanding that hydrogen is difficult to store. It will leak out of any container.
Another problem is that making hydrogen uses more energy than it saves. Unless you use nuclear power, using hydrogen is going to cause a bigger carbon footprint.