this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Solarpunk technology
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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
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I'm skeptical of the scalability.
On paper, it sounds like a good idea. Competing in air freight for medium speed / cost makes sense. Fuel for an airship is probably easier on emissions than bunker fuel used for freight ships.
Buoyancy is what I'm struggling with. We don't have an unlimited supply of helium. Thermal airships don't seem to be any faster than cargo ships. Hydrogen is too combustible.
So maybe this does have potential to carve out a small part of the market, but I can't foresee this being a huge disruptor in the global supply chain
That hydrogen is too combustible is largely a myth. The main problem with it is leakage through the hull membrane, but that is a solvable engineering problem.
TIL, thanks
yet still a hard problem. don't underestimate it.
You don't use Helium. You use Hydrogen. Hydrogen cannot burn without oxygen. Hydrogen is too tightly packed in an airship to get sufficient exposure to oxygen. Therefore, even in case of a fire, much of the hydrogen just escapes without burning. Airplanes too fell from the sky when the industry was not mature. We didn't just ban airplanes outright.
yup. and we don't dope the envelopes with aluminum powder either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
Likely static charge from a cloud causing hydrogen to ignite. Hydrogen burns freely at all concentrations both very low and very high and is therefore far, far more flammable even than natural gas, so I'm afraid hydrogen airships will always be a catastrophe waiting to happen.