The Boston Globe Video Story on the Personal Blimp

[ArcadeGames]

Dear Santa...

[cowboy6591]

Love the science and experimentation but the costs are a bummer.

[zeppship]

Thats not a non rigid blimp, thats a semi rigid thermal airship

[Jjames763]

@skyacht

I know you are planning a sleeker ship, when conditions are eventually more favorable. Are you going to sell them in various sizes as well? I would really be interested in a faster, smaller ship of a little more than half your 205,000 cubic feet, for extended one-man flights and shorter two-man flights. Also, how do batteries compare to gas for flight time?

[av8tor17b]

Questions: Why the internal support rods? What does that give you that you couldn't do with internal inflatable tubes? What would you do differently with the shape? It seems extremely round to me. Would not a more slender shape help with forward motion? What weight fabric are you using? It is like HTN-90 or Hyperlast? Thanks in advance for your answers.

[TommyPlane14]

Wow I love this. great job!

[micfishevyt]

Hot air airships aren't anything new. They make many in Europe.

[skyacht]

@micfishevyt That's true. However all previous hot air ship have had essentially no ability to steer a low airspeeds. That's what's new about this design.

[rozniy]

So... technically it's a rigid, not a blimp?

[skyacht]

@rozniy Technically, it's a actually most accurately characterized as a quasi-rigid -- sometimes rigid, sometimes not. But no matter what we call it, pretty much everybody else calls it a blimp. We've just stopped worrying about it.

[DanBell47]

Looks like fun.

[numbnuts234567]

Wow. Only a tenth the cost of a 2 million dollar helium balloon. That's only $200,000. Any kid can buy one with the money made at Wal Mart after school. And they can be launched from a small backyard of say 100 ft. X 200 ft. Perhaps this could be used for transportation in underdeveloped countries where the roads are not so good.

[brent198122]

Alright i'm sold...Anything to get in the air!!!

Now comes everything's price. Whats the tag on this hovering beauty??

[rhylin26]

How does lift compare to a helium blimp of comparable size?

[skyacht]

A given volume of helium will lift about 3 times as much as the same volume of hot air.

[redsoxfan245]

its a very massive ship yes but you said it holds about 1300lbs could you cut back on size and make one smaller that holds one person? and would it be any smaller?

[skyacht]

Sure. But it lowering the gross lift doesn't help as much

as you might think because the lift goes as the cube

of scale but the costs (more or less) go as the square

of scale. So, for instance, to double the gross lift takes

only a 60% increase in cost. So in the end, it usually

pays to make the ship larger rather than smaller. But,

tastes vary. Others have built smaller ships.

[Fraggle24]

How many pounds can that craft lift before it becomes grounded?

[skyacht]

If you are asking, to use aviation parlance, what the "useful load" of the aircraft is, then the answer is 1,300 lbs.

[SailorBarsoom]

In fairness, the people in the past who were talking about thousand-foot airships already had experience with eight-hundred-foot airships. It isn't like they were proposing to go directly from a child's balloon to a flying Queen Mary.

[skyacht]

You're right, there were such people may decades ago.

But I wasn't referring to them.

The folks to whom I was referring are walking

around today making such suggestions when they've

never built anything that flies.

[SailorBarsoom]

Well, there is something to that. Before anybody builds a thousand-foot airship, there will need to be several seven-hundred-fifty-foot airships, and some five-hundreds before that, and probably some two-hundred-fifties before that.

But because of the square-cube thing you explain in another reply, I suspect that we should move through the smaller phases as quickly as possible.

It may turn out that the biggest flaw with the 1930s airships is that they weren't big enough.

[EnigmaHood]

Awesome! I wish I could fly this to college XD

[nerblebun]

I'm not into speed.That said...what an awsome airship! I'd love to slowly cruise around enjoying the sights while in the air. Are you going to market this great flying machine? I want one.

[leoatroxwhite]

bravo!! this is what the scientists need studing the rainforests of south america, study the whole of the trees eco system with out haveing any impact. much better then the towers they build now. I d also really like one for quite 'air' picnics

[skyacht]

Thanks for the congratulations.

If you've read our writings, both here are elsewhere, you'll see that we have our own reasons for our design choices. That said, there is certainly more than one interesting design in the world. So please jump in and build your own ship so that you can back up your conjectures with data.

[modelwoddle]

To the designers, my congratulations to you all for taking up this goal. Its a worthy challenge.

My view is that this aircraft is too suceptible to the wind. the soloution is to reduce the balloon size. make a rigid frame in the shape of a delta wing with a really thick chord and huge camber, and yes fill it with helium and have it weighted so that its negatively buouyant power it with a small petrol engine say 2hp, and count on slow speed for dynamic lift and presto a functional machine.

[DrinkableNAPALM]

Good work, but I would use helium if I made my own. I know it is more expencive but this means a much smaller volume, more manoverable, less noise and that the outside temperature makes hardly no difference to the amount of lift generated.

[skyacht]

Thanks for the kinds words. But I'd think again about helium. Buying a ton of helium lift costs $10,000. Making a ton of hot air lift costs $7. Helium is less maneuverable, not more more maneuverable because you can't control the lift of helium. You have it backwards, hot air can deal with changes in ambient temperature, helium can not. Burner noise can be fixed. (How noisy is a gas stove?) A helium ship is about 35% smaller in scale. I don't see how that compensates for all its added costs.

[SailorBarsoom]

Then again, you could use steam as your lifting gas, and power it with a steam engine.

But there's already somebody else working on that. I wish you and them luck. The more successful airships flying around, the better.

[DrinkableNAPALM]

Its one big gas stove though so its not going to be that quiet, think of the ones on regular hot air balloons. After some research i have been told that helium is the best option for easy control opposed to hot air due to the increased volume and increased chances of porpoising with the thermal option. But even if that is not true the fact of being strapped to pressurised highly flammable gas with fire in close proximity is not my idea of safe. At least with helium you get what you pay for.

[skyacht]

Well, 8,000 hot air balloons regularly fly in the US with high pressure fuel near a flame without incident except

when they hit power lines. The technology for propane

is very mature. As for hot air vs propane, opinions vary.

That's what makes horse races.

[greg357159]

Where are they sold ?

[skyacht]

Not yet. We are still in the R&D phase.

[worldbmx]

I´ll never go up in some thing like that I HATE high ...

[lynxx2]

Awesome!

What is payload? I notice the pilot is less robust than the inventor. For hot air, do you use a burner like baloons? Where is it placed? Do you need FAA license, like baloons?

Sure would like to see one of these fly.

[Bigredgumball]

sweet!

[criticofeverything]

Put me on the list to buy one-or two!

[SuperSmashShows]

they should make a ron paul blimp

[261madmike]

Regulations D--m Regulations. Will any of these airshows be in the southern Califoria area? Saw your article at engadget.Thanks for responding.

[skyacht]

We're located in the northeast. As it stands now, we'll do shows more at our end of the country in 2008 and venture farther afield in 2009.

[261madmike]

Very Interesting, Have you plans to market it soon?

[skyacht]

We'll be flying at aviation events (airshows and the like) in 2008. It will be a couple of years before we can obtain the necessary regulatory approvals to sell to the public.

[MaverickHunter75]

how much do you plan to sell them for?

[skyacht]

They will be between $100,000 and $200,000 depending upon the performance that the market demands.

[MaverickHunter75]

..... i can hear my wallet scream already. :P but its a good price considering what you're selling.

[skyacht]

It's about the cost of a new small airplane or a new mid-sized sailboat.