Re:Solar powered airships
by knowtheory on Sunday October 23, 2011 @06:46PM
(#3147519)
Okay, i should dial it back a bit. What they're promising is cool. Low infrastructure, high pay-load travel is indeed interesting.
But they too are depleting a natural resource, just as petrochemical fuel usage does. And while we can find other storage mechanisms for portable energy (batteries, flywheels, hydrogen, what-have-you), there literally is no substitute for Helium cooling, by virtue of the laws of physics as we know them.
This is not worth giving up cryogenics.
While I agree with the rest of your comment, could you explain why do you think that airships are "stupid shit"? I'd say that the insane amount of fuel we use for transportation is a big waste of oil and I really look forward to see airships back in the sky, doing heavy lifting and maybe more.