BAA is Buoyancy Assisted Aircraft. Not a true airship. It is heavier than air, rigid and not blimp shaped. Best configurations might be a Tri-hull or a Delta Wing. Saucer shape might work, but I’m trying to avoid the Foil Helmet stigma.
Photo-cells have functioned on aircraft before. Lockheed’s High Altitude Airship uses one.
My best guesstimates tell me that a supertanker sized BAA flying around the World in an Easterly direction might stop to UN-FUEL rather than REFUEL.
Can you think of a better place to produce Hydrogen fuel than above the clouds?
Imagine a Hydrogen Factory Airship that also functions as a Luxury Skyliner.
I’m not obsessed with hydrogen. I figured out for myself that it was an energy storage device and not a source of energy long age.
But it is a cheap lifting gas that can also be used as fuel.
I need some help crunching these numbers. I could build the thing faster that I could crunch the numbers to prove it can be built.
And when the Buoyancy is increased due to heavy hydrogen load, we glide in for a landing.
The altitude loss would provide forward motion.
Engine downward thrust would control landing. Vertival take-offs and landings wuld be possible on water.
Many Caostal Facilities may be in shallow water soon enough.
Thanks John. If one were using compressed hydrogen as fuel, would the fuel tank itself not function as a Variable Buoyancy Device?
Clearly the idea of building a hydrogen factory ship is foil hat, but the concept of building a fleet of “Round the World Easterly” Airships might be an inevitability, in due time.
HYDROGEN IS NOT AN ENERGY SOURCE, but as an energy storage device, it would be better than batteries on an airship.
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A good idea It wouldn’t be practical though. You would need to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. Which basically means you would need a tank of water floating in the air. You also need quite alot of electricity do do it. The more electricity you have the more hydrogen you get. I doubt solar panels would produce enough.
It might work on a space craft or something like that to get the oxygen as a by product to breathe. But it would be too heavy to fly about.
A critical component to high altitude airships is that they have to unload buoyant gas as they gain altitude otherwise the pressure drop places too much stress on the skin fabric. Since helium is expensive, most blimps do this by venting air from internal balloonets. The size of the balloonets determine the maximum of pressure altitude. The consequence would be that at altitude, you could not afford to take on any more hydrogen so just when you are where you can produce the hydrogen, you can’t take on any more due to the low volumetric density of hydrogen. Using aerodynamic lift to extend this can work to some extent but requires energy to provide the thrust needed to develop the lift. Keep in mind that at higher altitudes, there would be less air to develop lift from. Also the more aerodynamics that you need, the more the weight to volume ratio increases due to the shape required. Semi-rigid and rigid designs merely allows for a lower pressure to be used in the gas envelope but to store hydrogen you would be increasing said pressure.
Descending to land would also be problematic, this is when you need to take on more gas to increase pressure but the available power to produce more hydrogen decreases with altitude so you’ll be taking on air which decreases your buoyancy faster than you would like. The situation could very well be that the only excess gas that you have when you get to ground level will be air not fuel as you’ll need buoyant gas and fuel to take off again. There are physical limits to your proposal which will probably make it impractical, however go ahead and crunch the numbers, maybe you’ll prove the airship designers wrong.
Current photo-voltaic airship designs are limited to surveillance and communication platforms though there is some hope of microwave beaming the excess power down instead of producing hydrogen. The unmanned requirements are likely for safety reasons as hydrogen would be stored within the gas envelope as well as weight. Because of this, stationary ability is more valuable than producing aerodynamic lift so they are not designed as BAA’s.
Basically, when you are at the best altitude to produce the hydrogen, you can’t store it or you would have to use it for thrust for the excess storage capacity but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. There is a break even point in the equations and the designs are not being developed because either because no one thought of the idea (doubtful) or the break even point is not commercially viable (bingo).
Besides, what’s this obsession with hydrogen? It’s simply not a good fuel period.