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The world's largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley
(techcrunch.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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I concur. This is really fucking stupid. The only actual advantage that airships have is loitering time, and solar aeroplanes can already loiter for months albeit with a small payload.
If you really care about the environment, make it an unmanned post and use more efficient (because it's lighter) and abundant hydrogen. Chance of explosion is pretty low, and if it does who cares.
Afaik they want to use hydrogen, it is actually pretty safe with modern understanding, but regulations make it hard to pursue.
I think people that dismiss hydrogen airships as impossible to make safe because of the Hindenburg miss that planes of that era weren't super safe either, but have been made quite safe today, and that planes are filled with large amounts of flammable fuel. I personally think we should give them another shot.
Right? I'm embarrassed that we still think hydrogen to be more dangerous than gasoline and other fossil fuels.
I mean, hydrogen is dangerous, as are most things, but it likely won't ever kill 5~10 million people per year from pollution alone.
And regarding airships, hydrogen doesn't just explode as some like to think, and won't just plummet In case of fire if sealed in multiple metallic and flame resistant compartments like in modern airships, at least not without a freak accident.
I mean, don't airships also have the advantage of not needing to expend energy for lift, just forward motion? A solar plane doesn't have to worry about this either I suppose, but an airship is much easier to make have useful cargo capacity than a solar plane.
Neither do naval ships.
I can only see this being useful over land and short distances.