Giant airship gets clearance for test flights
A giant rigid-frame balloon airship, dubbed Pathfinder-1 and reminiscent of the airships from the early 20th century, has gotten clearance to begin flight tests at Moffett Field in California.
At 407 ft (124 m) long and 66 ft (20 m) in diameter, it’s considerably longer than the “flying buttocks” of the Airlander 10, although less than half of its width. It might not qualify as the world’s largest aircraft, but it’s still absolutely enormous, approaching twice the length of an Airbus A380.
…Currently housed in a monstrous hangar in Mountain View, California, Pathfinder 1 has already flown indoors earlier this year. According to IEEE Spectrum, the company has now been awarded the special airworthiness certificate required to fly this beast outdoors – at less than 1,500 ft (460 m) of altitude, and within the boundaries of Moffett Field and the neighboring Palo Alto Airport’s airspace.
Because of the lightweight materials being used, Pathfinder-1 will use helium, not hydrogen, to lift it. The hope is that this airship can be used to transport cargo. The project is financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A giant rigid-frame balloon airship, dubbed Pathfinder-1 and reminiscent of the airships from the early 20th century, has gotten clearance to begin flight tests at Moffett Field in California.
At 407 ft (124 m) long and 66 ft (20 m) in diameter, it’s considerably longer than the “flying buttocks” of the Airlander 10, although less than half of its width. It might not qualify as the world’s largest aircraft, but it’s still absolutely enormous, approaching twice the length of an Airbus A380.
…Currently housed in a monstrous hangar in Mountain View, California, Pathfinder 1 has already flown indoors earlier this year. According to IEEE Spectrum, the company has now been awarded the special airworthiness certificate required to fly this beast outdoors – at less than 1,500 ft (460 m) of altitude, and within the boundaries of Moffett Field and the neighboring Palo Alto Airport’s airspace.
Because of the lightweight materials being used, Pathfinder-1 will use helium, not hydrogen, to lift it. The hope is that this airship can be used to transport cargo. The project is financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Hindenburg was approximately 800 feet in overall length.
A given volume of Helium can lift about 92% of the weight that can be lifted by the same volume of Hydrogen. This somewhat counterintuitive result is mainly due to the fact that He is monatomic, whereas H is diatomic, H2. The difference in lifting power was not the main reason H2 was originally favored, but it was the scarcity and cost of He compared to extremely easy to produce H2!
Of course, at the time of the first gas balloons, He was not even known to exist!
I was always curious why conventional aircraft did not use He pumped into sealed cavity space(s) to lighten overall weight. After all drag is directly related to weight and He is a fire retardent. Perhaps because of the scarcity and/or price of He?
John S, there isn’t that much volume in the aircraft to matter and what there is, is filled with passengers who need to breathe or fuel and cargo. Likely the weight of sealant would exceed the buoyancy of the Helium which would leak out any way and need to be replaced.
Also at altitude air is less dense so you would need to release Helium to avoid blowing up unpressurized structur.
In the first half of the last century the only Helium wells producing a decent output in the world were located in the US Southwest, mainly Texas. Because it was needed for the US Navy’s zeppelins and blimps and to prevent its use by a potential adversary, it was forbidden to sell it in international trade. So, sorry, no commercial airships lifted by the gas except in the US.
“The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, which provided for oil and gas leasing on federal land, reserved all helium contained in natural gas on federal land to the government. This was followed by the Helium Act of 1925, which banned the export of helium, “a mineral resource pertaining to the national defense.” However, after the loss of the USS Akron in 1933 and the USS Macon in 1935, military use of helium declined significantly. A lease agreement was reached in 1936 with the Goodyear–Zeppelin Corporation, providing helium for commercial aviation, and in 1937 Congress amended the Helium Act to allow for sale of helium produced in excess of U.S. governmental needs. The biggest potential customer, however, was Nazi Germany, which wanted to replace the hydrogen responsible for the Hindenburg disaster with non-flammable helium. A contract for 18 million cubic feet (510,000 m3) of helium was approved, but Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes blocked export of the gas due to its potential for military use.
During World War II, military demand for helium rose, so the federal government built a number of new helium extraction plants. One such plant was at Shiprock, New Mexico, to recover helium from gas at the Rattlesnake Field. Gas from the Rattlesnake field, like that of a number of other fields in the Four Corners area, contained mostly nitrogen and very little hydrocarbons, and was produced exclusively for the helium.”
Helium extraction and storage wasn’t privatized until the 1990’s, with sales to contractors beginning in 1998 and the open market in 2002.
I thought the world was running out of helium ?