This piqued my interest:

“Although back in 2017 the word on the street was that Brin intended the aircraft to serve at least in part as a luxurious “air yacht” for his family and friends, the LTA website states only humanitarian goals: “LTA airships will have the ability to complement — and even speed up — humanitarian disaster response and relief efforts, especially in remote areas that cannot be easily accessed by plane and boat due to limited or destroyed infrastructure.”

“Unlike jet planes, airships have the ability to land or deliver goods almost anywhere.

“In addition, the LTA site says that their airships are intended to serve as a zero emissions alternative to airplanes, used for both shipping goods and moving people. Climate change has made airships sound more appealing to scientists in recent years — while slower than airplanes, airships are faster than cargo ships and have fewer emissions than both boats and planes. In fact, airships produce 80% to 90% fewer emissions than conventional aircraft.”

I wonder whether the humanitarian stuff is just a smokescreen and he’s actually aiming to transform flying as we know it.

He appears to be to use a hydrogen cell for propulsion and helium for lift. The other option would have been a battery, but that would have been too heavy, as far as I can tell.

A question floating in the air is how do you obtain the hydrogen? What emissions are involved in that? The current trend seems to be building renewables (wind, solar), then using them to produce hydrogen. So it ends up being a complicated calculation between the payoff of building renewables today (using a mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy) and how fast we tend towards a fully-renewable future.

Another practical question when it comes to passenger transport is: 'How fast do these babies fly?’ A quick online look suggests they glide at around 1/5 the speed of today’s planes.

What would that mean for example for flights between New Zealand and Australia? It’s currently around three hours from coast to coast. The airship would therefore take around fifteen hours. Set up with beds for everyone, it could be a simple overnight flight.

One last thing: hopefully they’ve also discovered how to stop hydrogen-fueled airships blowing up!

[Cover photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images. Above photo: The Hindenburg exploding]