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makes sense over deserts and large bodies of water, ideally they'd find ways to redirect lightning strikes, or be able to channel them and use hydrogen instead of helium - maybe individual H bags enclosed within a larger envelope of the lighter inert
What movie is that again?
Big Hero 6
Literally the first thing that came to mind when I saw the article thumbnail
Super underrated flick!
Now make it cool looking like a dragon or silly like whale or ufo
That would be so fun if everyone made one that celebrates local customs
Feels very much like the future is finally here. We're accelerating
Renewable tech is accelerating
I'm curious about helium leakage from the envelope and how that will be managed. I can understand why they chose helium to lift it, but it is notoriously hard to contain. If this scales up, they are going to need a constant source to replenish losses.
I think you could probably refill them by pumping new helium in but what I'm wondering is how you deal with the air pollution problem. No matter where you are in the world you're going to have some degree of corrosive and toxic materials in the air, but all across China there are smog clouds that already pose maintenance issues for tall buildings.
Fascinating, I would have assumed there this wasnt a big issue with air pollution and corrosion but that would just be my ignorance on the subject.
I do wonder how sustainable this would be from the helium perspective, it has a high potential for supply constraints and is largely dependant on gas/oil extraction currently. Hydrogen, doesnt have that limit but brings a whole lot of engineering and safety issues with it.
I wonder how it compares in size to a traditional windmill of similar power, and how densely they hope to pack them (units per acre). I bet you can barely notice it 2 km away even though it's almost 200 feet long
2km are 1.2miles
Interesting but i have a number of serious doubts about this ever becoming a viable technology. Foremost of which is what happens if the helium container bursts? It would result in a massive building-size object crashing to the ground anywhere within a 6500 foot radius of the ground tether point.
I would imagine that you would segment the lifting bodies so that a leak or rupture in one or even a couple wouldn't bring the whole thing crashing down. Ships don't sink from a couple leaks here and there. You would also monitor buoyancy. The tether site needs to have some sort of reel in capability for servicing.
All of your concerns seem to be addressable through proper engineering considerations.
As long as the crash rate isnt higher than those of airplanes i think there shouldnt be any complaints. Or are you constantly scared of a plane full of much more dangerous kerosine crashing into your house? And i dont see why it shouldnt be possible to make them as secure as or more than planes. They will surely be inspected regularly just like normal wind turbines so its just not an argument at all i think. Their location being fixed also makes them much less dangerous because you can just put them on mountains where nothing much exists.
Just tether them all together. Make a midair mesh.
There is so many problems with that concept: What do you do when there is a strong storm? What happens if lightning strikes? How do you do maintenance and how pricey is that? How do you get the power down properly? You also have to keep a ton of space clear from buildings/people if that thing somehow starts flying away/down...
Normal wind turbines can likely do a better more efficient job - at a fraction of the cost of this public relations stunt.
I think this is a technology demonstrator. They're figuring out the answers to the exact questions you are asking. This was the first test of putting it up, getting the power down properly, and then bringing the system back down. Following one of the links inside that article shows that they've previously tested the mechanical design out in the desert to test deployment, station keeping, and retrieval under high winds. As for cost, I'm sure they did analysis and have some use cases where they can compete, though I doubt that it's in urban areas because it's gonna have to be pretty far from airports and houses in "drop in on" range
They got the idea from Big Hero Six.