"Although the airship only has a top speed of 80MPH it can take-off and land vertically.
The craft is also able to hover over an area for up to a week at a time - something neither airplanes or satellites cannot manage."
a comment that is interesting:
Hydrogen does not have twice the lifting power of helium, it has only about 8% more. You have to look at the difference between the density of the gas and the medium that the airship is floating in. If you had a gas with zero density (i.e. a vacuum in a rigid container), it would not have infinite lifting power, just slightly more than helium or hydrogen.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for the notion that we should conserve helium, because in the long run it's going to be hard to come by, because there's no way to produce it chemically and when let loose, it escapes from the atmosphere. It's unique among the elements in this regard.
There could come a day when we'll need a lot of it (for fusion, cryogenics, or whatever), and we'll be wishing we hadn't squandered it.
Airships are not really the big problem, but toy balloons for kids waste a lot.
- J-J Cote, Lunenburg, MA, USA, 22/5/2010 15:55Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1279831/Up-away-Worlds-largest-airship-lifts-time.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0oxIEw8Xo
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