Tom James @ 25-09-2008
As Charles Stross says, “Zeppelins have always been an icon of futurism” and I’ve always wondered why the heck we haven’t gotten over the Hindenburg and moved in to our Bright New Future. The Register gives us the lowdown on all the various engineering problems that need to be overcome for airships to be viable as a mass transport system, and how engineers are trying to solve them:
A Ukrainian airship visionary based in California has won further US military funding to develop his miraculous “Aeroscraft” sky-leviathan design. However, some question marks remain over the craft’s unique - almost miraculous - buoyancy-control technology.
[image from the Register story]
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Tom James @ 22-07-2008
Combining two of the most compelling tropes from science fiction: floating cities and colonising other planets, Geoffrey Landis, a scientist at the NASA Glenn Research Center (who also writes science fiction, apparently) suggest the idea that humans could live in aerostatic cities in the upper atmosphere of Venus:
50 km above the surface, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0°C-50°C range, a quite comfortable environment for humans. Humans wouldn’t require pressurized suits when outside, but it wouldn’t quite be a shirtsleeves environment. We’d need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.
My first thoughts were of Charlie Stross’ depiction of the (post-)human colonisation of Saturn in the brilliant Accelerando series, which uses huge aerostatic structures to create a human-friendly environment in the upper atmosphere of Saturn.
This is a compelling idea - although speculative - but there are many technical difficulties to look at:
The biggest challenge would be using a substance resistant to sulfuric acid to form the outer layer of the bubble; ceramics or metal sulfates could possibly serve in this role, but of course, you’d want to be able to see outside, as well. “Just think of the great pictures you could get,” said Landis.
Indeed. I’d love to see some artwork depicting this…
[story via Slashdot][image by fdecomite on flickr]
Related posts
As Charles Stross says, “Zeppelins have always been an icon of futurism” and I’ve always wondered why the heck we haven’t gotten over the Hindenburg and moved in to our Bright New Future. The Register gives us the lowdown on all the various engineering problems that need to be overcome for airships to be viable as a mass transport system, and how engineers are trying to solve them:
