back to article Sergey Brin building humanitarian blimp for lifesaving leisure

In a few years, Alphabet president and Google cofounder Sergey Brin is expected to have an airship at his disposal for humanitarian missions and ferrying friends, not necessarily in that order. The tech billionaire's blimp, according to The Guardian, is currently under construction at the National Aeronautics and Space …

  1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

    Hindenburg

    It is said to have been conceived for use with hydrogen, but evidently someone recalled the fiery fate of the Hindenburg.

    It wasn't hydrogen as a lift source that was the problem, it was the fact they wanted it shiny and coated the envelope with an aluminium powder mix that was basically thermite, and when lightning struck the obvious happened.

    Aka, how do you make an airship go woof?

    1. PNGuinn
      Coat

      Re: Hindenburg

      German engineering.

      Did it comply with the emissions regs?

      Was the lightning strike part of an emissions fiddle (Biltzgreig)?

      Wasn't he some kind of musician?

      Thanks. It's the one with the stirrup pump hanging out of the pocket

  2. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Why do air taxis in the future always have to be driven by AI? Current taxis aren't although some might say they would be better drivers !!! People should focus on the physically achievable (VTOL cars/planes) rather than get bogged down in the minutiea of how they'll be steered.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      We have enough of a challenge controlling the frankly tiny number of conventional aircraft that are flying. Any "successful" flying car or delivery drone is going to increase the number of flying vehicles by what - two or three orders of magnitude, AND that is generally going to be concentrated around population centres or logistics hubs. If the only use for a flying car is Suffolk, or the plains of Kansas, then the market won't be very big.

      So you need to sort out traffic control, flight control, certfication and safety all at the same time. The costs and complexity of doing all of those will undoubtedly keep flying cars the same niche market as private helicopters, even if you could produce something that a rich thicko could safely control. And in the modern era of vehicles as weapons, how long before somebody uses a flying car or a BIG civilian drone as a weapon? And then what will the politcial response be? Or when sooner or later the said rich thicko crashes into a school bus, or shorts out the power grid?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "And then what will the politcial response be? Or when sooner or later the said rich thicko crashes into a school bus, or shorts out the power grid?"

        Doesn't that happen ALREADY, though, only sub out a flying car for, say, a Hummer H1?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Not so much. A car at altitude can strike anything below with great force just by failing to operate correctly. Forget the busses, think fiery death thru the ceiling with much greater frequency.

          And if that don't wring out yer colon, try every clown and his dog flying around over YOUR head with all the usual stuff falling out of the car (or being thrown out!). People would get hit by falling debris in a given large city every single day. We'd need industrial crash barriers on wheels just to walk around safely.

          1. DropBear

            I'm sure most of your fears could in some form be applied to the horrifying prospect of millions of "thickos" owning and nilly-willy operating ton-sized metal boxes on wheels (concentrated in urban centres, no less!). It would surely be pandemonium, and the end of Human Civilisation if we'd allow that!

            I'm pretty sure we had no hope in hell of ever getting cars today with all the professional panic bods weighing in on all the certainly-disastrous consequences (never mind bikes - a fast, heavy lump of metal that can't even stay upright on its own?!? Outrage! Have we all gone MAD?!?)

            Sure, people do end up getting killed in car accidents but that doesn't make sane people want to ban them - I'm sure there would be a trade-off with flying stuff too, but you know what let's not go full retard on a "moving at speeds in excess of 50mph is immediately lethal" level...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    So...

    They're gonna call it the Brindenburg ?

  4. TRT Silver badge

    Techn billionaires floating around in giant dirigibles?

    Makes me think of this.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Techn billionaires floating around in giant dirigibles?

      I was rather reminded of this. If Brin starts to hold board meetings in his blimp, I'd be somewhat worried if I was one of the members.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Techn billionaires floating around in giant dirigibles?

      Has anyone seen Grace Jones recently?

  5. handleoclast
    Coat

    Thunderbird 6?

    Except not as practicable as the lower numbers. Or as exciting. But very good for the long sequences of filler to pad an episode out to the required running time.

  6. lglethal Silver badge
    FAIL

    "He described airships as a way to make cargo distribution direct, rather than flowing through an inefficient chain of ports and distribution points. He likened the decentralization airships can bring to the way the internet reshaped information distribution."

    He does realise that the whole point of centralizing ports and distribution points is that it saves a fortune by creating economies of scale. Point to point delivery is expensive and to use an airship to do it, you would have to be talking about a very large, high value cargo going from one spot directly to another. You are not going to do a delivery of, lets say milk, at various supermarkets in a city with an airship. You would simply drop the milk at a distribution centre. So how is your airship better that the standard network.

    What a load of C-level bollocks...

    1. Charles 9

      Perhaps because the truth lies somewhere in between. Distribution is a tug-of-war between different transport costs. Too small an area and like you say you have goods scattered all over the place; however, too LARGE an area and you end up with lengthy in and/or out transportation costs as you reach too far. It's really quite complicated as you try to optimize the two legs of your distribution chain: the incoming and the outgoing. That's why locally-sourced products are a boon (they reduce the incoming transportation costs) as is location close to population centers (to reduce and average out the outgoing costs).

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      This is basically Cargolifter all over again.

    3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Well, if it were economically feasible to replace a fair proportion of trucks with airships, why not ?

      It still couldn't be point-to-point, though, it would be hub-to-hub, but still, it would work.

  7. a_yank_lurker

    Vought XF5U

    The Vought XF5U (aka the 'Flying Flapjack') was a WWII era project that had some very unusual flight characteristics. It was know to take off in a moderate breeze with virtually no run. It had a very low landing speed while having an estimated top speed of ~480 kts (550 mph). In still air it required a very short distance to get safely airborne (I believe the distance was less than 100yds/m). This might be a better project for a flying car than the current misbegotten designs.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: Vought XF5U

      Thanks, Yank ... I continue to learn more in the comments of El Reg than almost anywhere else.

  8. PNGuinn
    Boffin

    So, what DOES it going to be look like ... ?

    So - NOT a flying a*se.

    Definitely a vast money pit.

    A flying a*rsehole? 200 m long?

    Will it have frikkin lasers?

    Where?

    What will happen to everyone underneath it has gaseous liquid or solid emissions?

    From an orifice sat in front of / behind 200m that's some serious infrasound.

    Will the deflector fans be designed in time?

    Will any new elReg units have to be developed?

    Enquiring minds etc etc.

  9. Chrissy

    Billionaire aims to build largest flying object...

    .... I think I've heard this story before... is he going to start storing his urine in jars too?

  10. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Can we just stop with the flying car pipe dreams and be done with it?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Any similarity between this and an episode of "Silicon Valley" is completely unintentional...

    And on the joke front:

    Q: What do you call a crashing airship full of tech billionaires?

    A: A good start :)

  12. David 164

    I doubt he will complete this project for only 100-150 million dollars. Airlander 10 has had 300 plus million spent on it and it has only just started test flights.

    Plus if I was a billionaire it make more sense for me to just buy an Airlander 10 or even have them money to construct a Airlander 50 model and pay for a customise cabin attachment. Probably do the whole lot for around 75 million quid.

    Cummings seem pretty behind of what batteries can deliver nowadays, tier1engineering for example already have a manned helicopter capable of doing 20 minutes flights on a platform that clearly not optimise for electric flight, the batteries are underneath for example which can't be good for aerodynamics.

    Airbus E-fan

  13. red03golf

    Yikes!!

    That image looks like Kim K's arse, just a scaled-down version. ;oP

    1. Miss Config

      Re: Yikes!!

      Was wondering whether I'd be the ONLY reader seeing somebody's arse

      ( but had nobody in particular in mind )

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yikes!!

      I loaded it into "Is it Porn?" and oddly it came out "15.6% - Certified not Porn" and "Safe". (Link probably not safe for work anyway).

      Must be on the blink.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Glad to see that I'm not the only one with images of a pr0n nature in my head...

  15. imanidiot Silver badge

    And another load of people with more money than sense...

    Whenever these types of projects show up it's always led by people with too much money (sometimes not their own) using a lot of handwaving to explain away any inconvenient area of problems that need to be solved as "trivial" or "well use technology XYZ to solve that" without any concern for practical applications of the technology or actual difficulty.

  16. hellwig

    Oooohhh....

    Now I get all those blimp references in season 3 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

  17. adam 40 Silver badge
    Flame

    It's the Kim Kardashenberg!

    Looks like a flying arse in white spandex.

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