Tom Scott – The Aéroplume
An evening pause: This looks like an incredibly fun thing to do. From the youtube page:
The Aéroplume, in France, is a helium blimp sized for one person. €60 gets you half an hour’s flight. I had to try it.
More information about buying a flight here.
Hat tip Jeff Poplin.
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I know helium is expensive but they only have to flush and refill the blimps once/year so that’s not bad at all. This looks like fun and I believe the sign said they were in Normandie which I am familiar with since visiting there previously. I just may have to go back! :-)
I still want to fly using a bat-winged suit like in Heinlein’s “Menace From Earth”, where you could soar on fan driven updrafts in a lunar dome. Those teenage dreams lead to my 10 year long hang gliding obsession/hobby.
Imagine this blimp idea in a pressurized lava tube on Mars, albeit much smaller blimps would be needed.
Rich boys with expensive toys manifesting their business concept imaginings.
The foundation of innovation and progress, sometimes.
Not saying it’s good, not saying it’s bad.
It just be.
Having worked in an airship hangar my question for these French entrepreneurs is how did they get rid of the pigeons. That may have been the greatest technical hurdle of the project.
@Jerry Greenwood – Knowing the French, those pigeons probably ended up in a fancy restaurant, on someone’s plate, smothered in an opulent sauce . . . ;-)
Pfffttttt. No need to go to France and paddle around in some human sized blimp. Give me a lawn chair and 42 weather balloons; hold my beer and watch this.
“This is TWA 231, level at 16,000 feet,” the pilot is reported to have radioed to air traffic controllers. “We have a man in a chair attached to balloons in our ten-o’clock position, range five miles.”
https://www.blueridgeoutdoors.com/magazine/september-2008/42-balloons-and-a-lawn-chair/
Lawnchair Larry.