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Transportation Businesses

New Details On Sergey Brin's Plan For The World's Largest Aircraft (theguardian.com) 153

An anonymous reader shares The Guardian's report on plans for a new aircraft that's two-and-a-half times the size of a 747. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is building a hi-tech airship in Silicon Valley destined to be the largest aircraft in the world, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the project. "It's going to be massive on a grand scale," said one, adding that the airship is likely to be nearly 200 meters [656 feet] long... Brin wants the gargantuan airship, funded personally by the billionaire, to be able to deliver supplies and food on humanitarian missions to remote locations. However, it will also serve as a luxurious intercontinental "air yacht" for Brin's friends and family.

One source put the project's price tag at $100m to $150m. Igor Pasternak, an airship designer who was involved in the early stages of the project, believes airships could be as revolutionary for the trillion-dollar global cargo market as the internet was for communications. "Sergey is pretty innovative and forward looking," he said. "Trucks are only as good as your roads, trains can only go where you have rails, and planes need airports. Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between."

The Guardian quips that while Brin's plans may stay secret for a while, "the good news is that the first flight test of such an enormous aircraft will be impossible to hide."
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New Details On Sergey Brin's Plan For The World's Largest Aircraft

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  • by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Sunday May 28, 2017 @12:39PM (#54501599)

    Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between.

    Except when there's a storm in A or Z.

    • Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between.

      Or a hostile force. They're big, ultra-fragile, slow-moving targets....basically every fighter pilot's wet dream.

      • Actually airships are not fragile at all but super resilient.
        However against a modern missile they probably stand no big chance either.

        • Depends on what you fill them with...

          • Depends on what you fill them with...

            Even when filled with hydrogen, airships are not particularly flammable. With proper compartmentalization, they can take some hits and keep flying. Germany conducted many Zeppelin bombing raids on Britain [wikipedia.org] during WW1. They were mostly successful, although they had to switch from daylight to nighttime raids in 1917 because of improved defenses.

            • With proper compartmentalization, they can take some hits and keep flying.

              Hits from what? The weapons on any modern air-combat platform will quickly turn an airship into a ground-level memorial site.

              A-10 versus an airship? Airship loses.
              F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22 against an airship? Airship loses.
              Apache against an airship? Airship loses.

              Actually I'm not sure what you could attack an airship with that wouldn't succeed. BB gun, maybe?

              • I really don't think anybody would plan on attacking this thing other than maybe a muslim terrorist, and at best they'd be carrying an rpg.

                Either way, just stay out of the regions that they have any political influence in and you'll be fine.

                • I really don't think anybody would plan on attacking this thing

                  That's kind of shortsighted. No one thought anybody would plan on attacking the World Trade Centers, or crowds in France, or nightclubs, etc.

                  -

                  other than maybe a muslim terrorist, and at best they'd be carrying an rpg.

                  Really? Have you seen the shit these fuckers are carrying these days? Perhaps you should brush on current events. They're well beyond the "RPG" stage.

                  -

                  Either way, just stay out of the regions that they have any political influence in and you'll be fine.

                  Wow, that's a brilliant fucking plan. Do you know more than all the generals too, or did you get this bit of wisdom from the Discovery Channel?

                  • That's kind of shortsighted. No one thought anybody would plan on attacking the World Trade Centers, or crowds in France, or nightclubs, etc.

                    The night club attacks were certainly predictable. WTC had already been attacked prior to 9/11, and another attack was predictable. The problem with 9/11 was that nobody figured aircraft hijackers would not only take control of the aircraft (as opposed to simply coercing the pilot) but also go on a suicide mission.

                    And at the end of the day, anything can happen, but what's the likelihood? If you're really that paranoid, then go out in the woods, live in a tree, and wipe your ass with leaves.

                    Really? Have you seen the shit these fuckers are carrying these days? Perhaps you should brush on current events. They're well beyond the "RPG" stage.

                    You mean like a 5

                    • This isn't a military aircraft

                      Exactly. I rest my case.

                    • Yes, the maximum effective range of both of these weapons is about 2km, but not if they have to go upwards. Stinger missile might do some damage, but still survivable.

                      You're confused. In military parlance "maximum effective range" means the distance at which you can't use the weapon effectively. For a .50 cal that means your bullets are going to be spread out too far apart to be useful against a truck or a few soldiers. It does not mean that the bullet can't go any further, or do any damage to a soft target.

                      The actual maximum range for a .50 is more like 10km. And given that this airship is significantly larger than a truck, hitting it wouldn't exactly require great

                    • Bullets also don't go as far up as they do laterally, and they hit with greatly reduced force. I don't know how much force would be needed to get to and penetrate a gas cell.

                    • Air resistance slows a bullet significantly more than gravity does. Actual ballistics vary greatly, but we can say as a broad generalization that a bullet loses about 1/3rd of it's speed in the first half second of flight. For a muzzle velocity of 2700 fps, that's 900 fps lost in half a second. In metric that's a deceleration of about 550 m/s^2. Firing it straight up would add another 10 m/s^2 to that loss.

                      To put it another way, fired in a vacuum straight up, the bullet would travel more than 35 km befo

                    • The actual maximum range for a .50 is more like 10km.

                      When its fired straight upwards? I really doubt that.

                  • Good point. Henceforth, by decree of JustAnotherOldGuy, all civilian aircraft must have full armour hulls capable of withstanding direct impact from ground-to-air and air-to-air weapon systems, and pilots must be able to out-manoeuvre combat aircraft in a dog fight. Also, all civilian buildings must be defended by anti-aircraft guns installed on every corner of the roof, bullet-proof glass on all windows, anti-artillery armour on all walls, and must have underground bomb-proof bunkers large enough to house
                  • That's kind of shortsighted. No one thought anybody would plan on attacking the World Trade Centers, or crowds in France, or nightclubs, etc.

                    Great point: that's why we need to stop making tall buildings and nightclubs, and quickly retire all current ones from service. Then we can stop making airships too and be totally safe in our mud huts.

              • Most of the planes you mention can not even fly high enough to tough an Airship, most noteable the Apache.
                I suggest to google what an Airship actually is and how they are build up from the inside, then come again.

                The other planes are completely meaningless, as they carry the same weaponary anway.

                And a gattling gun of the A10 (or the machine gubs of the Fxx) nearly does not harm an Airship at all, unless it hits a beam, it only hits thin air, what is so hard to grasp in that?

                • And a gattling gun of the A10 (or the machine gubs of the Fxx) nearly does not harm an Airship at all, unless it hits a beam

                  Oh well then I guess there's nothing to worry about. As long as nothing shoots at it then there's no problem!

                  But what if they aim for the gondola or the engines? Uh-oh.

                  Seriously, do you really think an F-15/F-16/F-18 couldn't shoot one of these things down?

                  And if they're so great, why isn't every air force fielding them?

                  • The US Navy used blimps in WWII as convoy escorts, apparently with some success. They aren't real useful for most typical Air Force roles.

                    • They aren't real useful for most typical Air Force roles.

                      Exactly.

                      And they're probably a lot less useful today than they were 50 years ago, given the advances in weapons technology. Otherwise, they'd be using them, as would every other military force.

          • Depends on what you fill them with...

            Well I suppose if they were filled with concrete they'd have a fighting chance, but getting them into the air would be a challenge, no?

        • Actually airships are not fragile at all but super resilient.

          Perhaps for very small values of "resilient". An A-10 would take any airship out with a 0.5 second burst, more than that would just be overkill. In fact, any modern fighter jet would shred an airship before it even knew it was under attack. Guns, missiles, they'd all make quick work of a reinforced balloon.

          However against a modern missile they probably stand no big chance either.

          "Probably"? Show me an airship that will withstand even the smallest current-issue missile. I'll wait.

          • Actually airships are not fragile at all but super resilient.

            Perhaps for very small values of "resilient". An A-10 would take any airship out with a 0.5 second burst

            That would poke a line of holes through one set of ballonets. Depending on the design of the ballonets, it may or or may not destroy the ones it hits. They may just start leaking, perhaps even fairly slowly for their size. A modern airship designed for combat (assuming such a thing made sense, in a world of missile combat) could even have automatic self-patching features to stop the leaks, and would definitely carry supplies of compressed gas to replace losses.

            Show me an airship that will withstand even the smallest current-issue missile.

            Yeah, 1000 pounds of high explosive will do a n

            • That would poke a line of holes through one set of ballonets. Depending on the design of the ballonets, it may or or may not destroy the ones it hits.

              Dude, an A-10 gun run on an airship would practically turn it into confetti. It's extreme overkill and it would do more than just cause "leaks".

              -

              Yeah, 1000 pounds of high explosive will do a number on pretty much anything short of a reinforced bunker.

              50 pounds of explosives would do the trick, and probably a lot less. I honestly can't think of a current issue missile that could be fired at an airship that wouldn't result in an instant kill shot.

              I think airships are cool, but there's no denying that they're big, fat targets lumbering their way around in the sky. Shit, you could probably bring one down with a mor

              • Dude, an A-10 gun run on an airship would practically turn it into confetti. It's extreme overkill and it would do more than just cause "leaks".

                Unless it hits a huge amount of vital parts of the frame: no.
                An Airship consists mostly out of air. Figuratively speaking. As long as you don't hit the main beams it flights just fine. And even if you break it into two parts the teo parts likely would gracefully slow down to earth.
                You seem not to have a clue what an Airship is versus a Blimb ....

                If you really are ta

                • If you really are talking about war fare, then I suggest to imagine a Airship that has weapons to fire back, or like in WWI is actually an air craft carrier.

                  Well, if armed airships are such a practical idea, why isn't anyone in the world using them? Why doesn't every country have a fleet of armed airships?

                  The answer is because airships are little more than big, slow, vulnerable targets compared to any other modern air combat platform.

                  • Like a fleet of on the water ships are? Which are even slower ...

                    The point we made about your posts was that you have absurd ideas how an airship works and what its vulnerabilities are.

                    It is most certainly not vulnerable to an A10 gattling gun ...

                    I suggest to read up how a gattlin gun works, what kind of ammunition it uses, why that ammunition is deadly for a simple tank, and why that amunition makes nearly no damage to an Airship, unless you hit a beam inside of its frame.

                    To break the ship appart you need

                    • Do you yerk off when you write insulting posts like this?
                      No worries, if it givrs you relive, I have no objections.

                • The only airships to actually serve as flying aircraft carriers were the US Akron and Macon. There's no way a modern airship would carry something useful in modern air-to-air warfare, and I'm not sure how useful the F9C parasite fighters would have been in a fight.

                  Service ceiling on an A-10 would be about 45,000 feet, and that sounds rather high to send an airship.

                  • Acording to Wikipedia an A10 reaches less than 30,000 feet.
                    An Airship is only limited by the pressure of its cabines.
                    In WWI the british had biplane carrying Airships. Long befor the two American ones you mention.

                    • According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the A-10 service ceiling is about 45,000 feet. I'm not sure where you're getting your cite from.

                      Airships are limited in altitude by the expansion ability of their gasbags, since as the air gets thinner the cells give less lift if they can't expand. Late WWI German Zeppelins could get up to about 20,0000 feet. Presumably we could do better today, but there's going to be limits.

                      Got a reference to Zeppelins with biplanes? I didn't find one in a quick look.

                    • Ah, I thought I had seen the A!0 is flying about 33k feet hight, I was actually also checking wikipedia ... but perhaps looked wrong or the german and english do not agree.

                      Regarding the Airships I'm a bit wondering, it is hard to find stuff. But I saw around age of 14 a movie happening during WWI and the enemy side had Airships with planes. I assumed that would be historically accurate. A huge deal was about the problem that the german Airships flew about 1000m higher and the enemy (I believe british) Airsh

              • Dude, an A-10 gun run on an airship would practically turn it into confetti

                A couple dozen one-inch holes does not make "confetti" of a 500-foot airship.

      • But, we live in sunshine and rainbows land. If anyone dares put a scratch on Sergei's US flagged airship, they risk the wrath of the US military - outspending the rest of the world for decades now, these are the kinds of values it delivers.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Helium is scarce and wasting more of it on a billionaire's hobby won't help future generations who will need it more.

    • How much hydrogen do we have?

      • We can make as much hydrogen as he needs. And it's lighter than helium too.

        • Good idea, let him know - I bet they haven't considered it yet.

      • Fear not; the two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity ;)

        Hydrogen combines well with Oxygen, so you end up H20 (two Hydrogen atoms with one Oxygen = water).

        All you need to break the hydrogen free is electricity.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • For what? Their party balloons? Please. We've haven't gone five miles beneath the surface. We got another 3995 to go to see what's in there. Otherwise we'll just have to learn how to fuse hydrogen and collect the residue.

    • Perhaps he can develop super-strong materials and fill it with ... wait for it ... vacuum! The lightest airship filler available.
    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      If you read the article, you'll see where they wanted to use Hydrogen but the government said No.

      • If you read the article, you'll see where they wanted to use Hydrogen but the government said No.

        That's got to be the only time the government has said no to hydrogen. It looks more and more like hydrogen is What Is Coming Next, for example for motor fuel. California is making it happen, and now you can get a really bitchin' deal on a lease on a hydrogen car as a result. But add to that the fact that the military is looking at going to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as well and it really looks like a done deal. If GM is sure that they will get to deliver their Colorado-based hydrogen-powered vehicle (and

    • Someone probably Googled "helium" and read that it's the second most abundant element, not realizing that it's all trapped inside the Sun.

  • Split Take (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday May 28, 2017 @12:54PM (#54501645)

    The Spruce Goose of our time, or the Hindenburg of our time? Cannot decide.

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday May 28, 2017 @01:17PM (#54501765) Journal
      These quotes from the article are precious though:

      “Sergey is pretty innovative and forward looking,” -----> Yeap, that's why he he decided on a technology that was discarded over half a century ago

      “Trucks are only as good as your roads, trains can only go where you have rails, and planes need airports." --------> If only someone had invented helicopters. Nah, that'd never work

      “Personally, I’d love to have airships going back and forth across the Atlantic. I couldn’t think of any better way of doing that journey.” ----------> No, airplane is better. Really. In fact, make it supersonic. There is nothing in the Atlantic that you want to see and storms suck.

      The only reason to cross the Atlantic by zeppelin is because you hate people and your private island isn't doing it for you anymore.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        “Sergey is pretty innovative and forward looking,” -----> Yeap, that's why he he decided on a technology that was discarded over half a century ago

        Actually, it has received regular usage, and remains quite functional and effective, the real problem is there wasn't enough money thrown at it, mostly because airships make poor weapons in war.

        Thus they don't benefit from all the glorious spending that comes from having the biggest dick to wag.

        “Trucks are only as good as your roads, trains can only go where you have rails, and planes need airports." --------> If only someone had invented helicopters. Nah, that'd never work

        Helicopters have their own sets of problem, including range limitation, weight capacity, and more.

        They just won't scale well enough. Sorry Nick.

        “Personally, I’d love to have airships going back and forth across the Atlantic. I couldn’t think of any better way of doing that journey.” ----------> No, airplane is better. Really. In fact, make it supersonic. There is nothing in the Atlantic that you want to see and storms suck.

        Supersonic planes suck, there's a reason they never prospered. And the

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Problem is that it will be filled with HELIUM, which is an IRREPLACEABLE RARE ELEMENT that is used in SCIENCE RESEARCH that advances humanity and helps get us off this rock.
      Not only will it be FILLED with helium, ALL balloons LEAK like a SIEVE, so out into the atmosphere and from there into space the helium goes in massive quantities, never to be seen again.
      That's fucking stupid.

      If they want to do something, they should do the RESEARCH on Hydrogen fill such that any risk of fire is minimized, including vari

      • ALL balloons LEAK like a SIEVE, so out into the atmosphere and from there into space the helium goes

        Pretty sure Sergey is also building a helium recapture net to cover the upper atmosphere with so that should be fine.

        If they want to do something, they should do the RESEARCH on Hydrogen fill such that any risk of fire is minimized, including various forms of "ejection seat / cabin" style apparatus.

        "Ladies and gentlemen, we should be arriving at our destination shortly. The captain has prepared the charges a

        • Actually, the military piles of depleted uranium and other alpha emitters would be a good place to start a helium capture operation, just need some shielding...

      • Lots and lots of helium available as a by product of lots and lots of natural gas.

        It will, however, cost more than just pumping it out of helium wells [wikipedia.org] that have a relatively high concentration of the gas.

        Not to worry,

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Sergey Brin is a Russian! And if you Google "Seth Rich," it still returns pro-Trump lies beyond page seven.

      Coincidence, or another evidence of Russian conspiracy to undermine Hillary's elections?
      Demand investigations into Russia. Go to http://marchfortruth.info to learn how you can fight for her!

  • I doubt that it will go anywhere. There are numerous big problems with the concept. Helium is scarce and costly to collect in nature - and there is not enough for a global transportation system. Airships are susceptible to storms, rains and other weather issues - much more so than ships and trucks. Hydrogen is better as a lifting gas and can easily be produced from water - but it is hugely dangerous. Having a 200m sized target filled with an explosive substance flying close to the ground is every terrori
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Stuff like this tends to happen if some people just have more money than they know what to do with ...

      Stuff like this tends to happen when government neglects to tax rich people. When they feel the pinch of taxes, suddenly they think of more productive ways to spend their money.

      • by Kohath ( 38547 )

        Yeah, they invent things.

        • Yeah, they invent things.

          No they take ideas invented by others without much understanding of whether they are viable or not, no matter how crackpot, and blow some money on it. When you have got a few billion dollars it does not matter if you waste a few million, as long as you get a quick thrill and your name into the news.

    • I doubt that it will go anywhere.

      Back in the Zeppelin days they found that the safest way to anchor one was to attach the nose to a mast. That way it could trail downwind. This thing is going to need an anchor mast the size of the Eiffel tower ... well perhaps not quite that big, but you are not going to find one of those "anywhere".

      • Fly a bit upwind and drop a hook from the nose, lower/raise cargo on ropes. You shouldn't need to hover much more than 50' above the treetops.

    • Hydrogen is the least of the potential problems. The Hindenburg burned because of its flammable skin; the highly flammable accelerant may or may not have been removed from the paint, but its metallic constituents made it exotically flammable once ignited. Most of the passengers and crew of the Hindenburg actually survived; once it had reached a sufficiently low altitude they were able to simply jump to the ground and run away.

      All of the real, potentially insurmountable problems are related to weather.

  • Lol, this is similar to what Howard Hughes did, pouring tons of money into building a giant-ass albatross of a plane that no one wanted or could afford. Hughes' monster plane was the the Spruce Goose, which flew precisely once before being retired.

    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      that no one wanted or could afford

      Didn't US Navy money go into the Spruce Goose?
      From wikipedia:

      Howard Hughes was called to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee in 1947 over the use of government funds for the aircraft

      There was a lot of that sort of thing going on at the time such as the deathtrap "Liberty Ships" build dirt cheap and sold the the government for a fortune. Not quite so funny anymore is it?

      • Not quite so funny anymore is it?

        Who said it was "funny"?

        • by dbIII ( 701233 )

          Not quite so funny anymore is it?

          Who said it was "funny"?

          The term you started with, "lol" usually indicates such a thing, but I was really writing about the general attitude to the thing of people thinking it's funny that a millionaire squandered his own money on a vanity project. It's not so funny when the vast amount of padding in a job unwanted by the supposed client is picked up by a taxpayer.

  • The inside word is that it's going to be named the USS Invincible aka "the unpoppable airship". With a name like that, you know nothing could possibly go wrong! ;)

  • Those sorry Google people are using US Government owned Moffitt Field in Mountain View CA as their own personal playground.

    We have quite a population of Burrowing Owls, an endangered species, on that facility.

    Sergei Brin could care less that his personal 767 is disturbing those owls every time he makes a takeoff or landing at that facility. Not to mention how many owls the engines in that aircraft have chewed into coyote fodder.

    Irritates the crap out of me that Google is probably building this "balloon" in

    • Does Google get use of that hangar for free?

      If you really want it, you could try to outbid them when their current lease is up. Meanwhile, I'm kinda glad that _my_ hangar is at least generating some rental income instead of just rotting away sucking down maintenance and security expenses.

    • by kqs ( 1038910 )

      Irritates the crap out of me that Google is probably building this "balloon" in MY hangar at Moffitt.

      Yeah, it was better back when NASA ran the hangar and used magic owl-dodging aircraft.

      I'm pretty sure that when someone leases your hangar for decades [space.com], it's a bit disingenuous to call it YOUR hangar.

  • Do they mean the development cost or the unit cost? The A380 cost 15 Billion euros to develop, and has a unit cost of $440 million to buy.
  • Up to 350 million dollars.

  • by PinkyGigglebrain ( 730753 ) on Sunday May 28, 2017 @04:21PM (#54502529)

    While I think his intent to use the craft for disaster and emergency situations is laudable his plan of a single huge airship is ill conceived at best, idiotic at worst.

    A single ship is a single point of failure, anything goes wrong with it, a mechanical failure in an engine, an issue with it's control systems, bad weather at it's launch site and it is grounded. Plus you have the "time to site" to consider, to wit: An Earthquake in central India, how long will it take the airship to get there from California? Airships are not all that fast.

    A better plan would be a fleet of smaller airships stationed at bases around the world. Redundancy in numbers. When a disaster happens they all load up and move out. The ships from closer bases get there first and can start helping while the ships from farther out are in transit, and the ships in transit can be redirected to depending on local need. Something you would not be able to do with a single ship.

    Unless the idea isn't really to help others, but more about getting into the record books for having the biggest something in the world.

  • ... it wants its idea back.
  • by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Sunday May 28, 2017 @04:57PM (#54502673)
    Just wait for Sergey Brin to enter into the shoe design and production world!
  • by stinkydog ( 191778 ) <sd@s t r angedog.net> on Sunday May 28, 2017 @08:20PM (#54503245) Homepage

    Set in a future where a failed climate-change experiment kills all life on the planet except for a lucky few who boarded the Airpiercer, a plane that travels around the globe, where a class system emerges.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt17... [imdb.com]

    I welcome serving my Google overlords...

    SD

  • Could you use it as a mobile base for delivering small packages via drone to destinations as you slowly pass over?
  • Why not a hydrogen/helium mixture? Everyone seems to be treating this as either/or proposition when it doesn't need to be. For example, helium is a neutral gas, so wouldn't it serve to reduce the flammability of hydrogen?

    One immediate problem I can think of would be separation of the gases in to layers, meaning an inconsistent mix. If that's a problem - and I'm not sure that it is - it could be tackled by limiting the height of the gas cells: just make them thinner and flatter. A simple fan could also keep

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