hi. i heard about this company a few days ago, and ive just getting round to looking at the site. http://www.worldskycat.com/

wouldnt it be soo cool if they managed to get the project to be a success?
think about it, low emmisions, large load capabilities, stol/vtol capabilities, and a big old balloon.

what do you think?

sure could be, i dont see why not. It as all the features that thesedays are needed if we want to stop destroying our planet even further.

Only problem i would see in using this is its speed, dont think baloons go that fast

Also when ever thing is cheap, efficient, and costs less it usually isnt wanted in the business world as there isnt much money to be made there.

They tried something like this before. It ended in a firery mess. I can't for the life of me remember it's name, I wanted to post a picture of it.

it was probably a zepplin of something filled with hyrdogen, with isnt a good idea. the ones abve are safe. they fired loads of automatic rounds at one and it could still fly.

i liked the old English idea of firing a ship up into the stratosphere (or was it higher?), so that it could take advantage of the earths natural rotation and the lack of that much air (and therefore friction) to achieve super-high speeds

Although as the 747 shows, the future is how many people you can squeeze on, not how fast you can go

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

They tried something like this before. It ended in a firery mess. I can't for the life of me remember it's name, I wanted to post a picture of it.

Hindenberg I believe (not so sure on the correct spelling). But one accident does not make the concept dangerous.

Quote from Captain Slow :

it was probably a zepplin of something filled with hyrdogen, with isnt a good idea. the ones abve are safe. they fired loads of automatic rounds at one and it could still fly.

Yeah, it could fly, but for how long? It only takes a few minutes until you end up looking like this.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

They tried something like this before. It ended in a firery mess. I can't for the life of me remember it's name, I wanted to post a picture of it.

It was the Hindenburg disaster ..LINK

mad

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

Yeah, it could fly, but for how long? It only takes a few minutes until you end up looking like this.

No... The problem with the Hindenburg was that it was filled with Hydrogen (cheaper and easier to obtain for Germany after WW1), which is very flammable. Helium on the other hand is completely inert, and as such a repeat of that disaster is impossible.

Modern balloons don't blow up like that. Hindenburg was filled up with hydrogen and the material used made a spark happen itself and was higly flammable. Saw a document from this few years back, I have the memory of an elephant but can't remember all what was said. But people will allways too be suspicios about those balloons because they know what happened to Hindenburg, it was sum of bad things and coinsidens.

Pardon my spelling but I had some evil scottish beer.

Quote from TagForce :

No... The problem with the Hindenburg was that it was filled with Hydrogen, which is very flammable. Helium on the other hand is completely inert, and as such a repeat of that disaster is impossible.

Not impossible as such, airships can go down at any time. Just not all in a fire ball of awesomeness.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

Not impossible as such, airships can go down at any time. Just not all in a fire ball of awesomeness.

"Oh, the humanity!"

Yes, but the danger of an airship filled with helium crashing hard and killing all aboard is about 0.1% of that of a regular airplane doing the same. Even so, there were only 2 deaths as a direct result from the fire of the Hindenburg disaster. The other deaths were due to people jumping from the great ball of fire to the ground some 100 yards lower.

Also, the reference was to looking like that picture, which is impossible since Helium is inert

To add, in modern balloons the air is divided in multiple separate sections not in just one like in the old zeppelins. That means if one of those blows up the ship doesn't crash immeaditly.

i think of you crash this balloon u won't feel a thing

and maybe it can land on water

I wouldn't exactly call this a new idea, as it seems to basically be a blimp.

Fast is good though.. Although, being so high up from the Earth you won't notice the speed at all which will take all the excitement out of going fast. Sure you'll get there quicker, but whats the point if you don't piss yourself in fear!?

Blimps are awesome. So is supersonic (public) travel. Sodding public opinion means neither of these useful but old technologies are about today.

I'm with Bob on this.

Did anyone see that Dr Who (10th Dr) about the parallel world where everyone had airships? That's what our world would be like had the Hindenberg disaster not happened. That one crash destroyed the world's faith in a form of travel that was only in its infancy and could have been great. Same as Concorde and the Paris crash. Instead we get stuck with the polluting (yes, yes, less pollution than a truck per passenger or something but still more so than an airship) and crowded jet airliner because it's statistically, relatively, safer.

I would love for the SkyCat to restore our faith in airships not just because I have a soft spot for the idea of airships but so we can make true progress and replace the stop-gap solution the jet airliner seems to be.

wide body jet has been around since the 70's, so it's the time for some sort of revelation I think. I would feel pretty safe in this balloon, because even if it lost all power it can still hover instead of crashing down to the ground.

@JJ72:
That's what normal aircrafts and even helicopters also do. No difference there.

Vain

i doubt theres much chance the government would be a help. they wouldnt make as much money from the tax on the fuel. same reason they wont ban ciggarettes IMHO

Quote from Vain :

@JJ72:
That's what normal aircrafts and even helicopters also do. No difference there.

Vain

I think you'll find aircraft only glide so long without power. And planes can hover?

Firstly, the blimp will also sink to the ground when it's out of power. The helium in it doesn't carry the complete mass of the blimp but only a part of it. The rest is carried by the engines (by pointing them upwards a bit). Otherwise the blimp would be caught in the sky when the engines die.
Secondly, all cars float on 4 compressed air-packages that seperate them from the ground. That is, unless one of these tyres runs flat.

Vain

Quote from Captain Slow :

same reason they wont ban ciggarettes IMHO

Most likely.

Quote from TiJay :

I'm with Bob on this.

Did anyone see that Dr Who (10th Dr) about the parallel world where everyone had airships? That's what our world would be like had the Hindenberg disaster not happened. That one crash destroyed the world's faith in a form of travel that was only in its infancy and could have been great. Same as Concorde and the Paris crash. Instead we get stuck with the polluting (yes, yes, less pollution than a truck per passenger or something but still more so than an airship) and crowded jet airliner because it's statistically, relatively, safer.

I would love for the SkyCat to restore our faith in airships not just because I have a soft spot for the idea of airships but so we can make true progress and replace the stop-gap solution the jet airliner seems to be.

Yeah, that pissed me off. Concorde had the lowest crash rate out of all jet liners, but because of what happened they had to change the tryes on the whole fleet, which cost so much people couldn't afford to fly with them and they went belly up.

But if it wasn't for some stupid french greese monkey who put the wrong size bolt into some other cruddy french plane which left trash on the run way which did what it did. >: (

Blimps are very weird to operate; they need particular weather conditions.

We had one visiting us at the Olympic games 2 years ago, for surveillance reasons: article.

This is an extremely interesting story ... got that beast to Athens. Truly entertaining read, I highly recommend it!

I remember there were many days where the wind was strong enough to disallow the blimp from taking off; and considering that we are talking about Athens in August here, you can imagine how little wind it can endure.