CurvedSpace Forums: New Aged Blimps - CurvedSpace Forums

I was just watching something on TV about blimps, and I got a little curious. Originally, blimps were made out of hydrogen. Hydrogen was a lot lighter than air, but it was very flammable, so we took a step backwards and made blimps use helium. Helium is a ton safer than hydrogen, but twice as heavy. Then I thought to myself, hey, whats lighter than hydrogen? The answer: nothing. There are no elements lighter than hydrogen, but nothing seemed to be the logical answer. Airships don't rise because they are filled with lighter-than-air gasses, they rise because they displace more air than they weigh. I then thought to myself, "why don't they just make an airship that displaces a lot of air, but contains no gas. Make a vacuum blimb!" Does anyone know if these things exist? *waits for Cspace to come here and find a related livescience article*

It would probably work if one could keep the blimp shell from sucking in.
My understanding of vacuums is pretty simple though, so... there's probably a physics law that I'd need to know.

Weeeeird...Alllllllpha!

Does sound pretty odd... I don't know how far we've come in... um... advances in vacuum technology... But, well, if it was possible to make a vacuum of that size without any complications, I think that you could revolutionize the blimp industry.

Too late. Popular Mechanics reported on new age blimps that instead use air intake engines to stay afloat about 5000 feet off the ground. They're big enough to house about 1000 people, a casino, living compartments, shops, and cars. They're, for lack of a better word, uberhuge. And they can land on a dime. Well, a dime the size of a mall.

PS: Hyper, there IS no blimp industry.

Yay, casino!
Now I can gamble and drink to my hearts content IN THE AIR, so I can just jump off if I get too depressed!
But really, that's not such a good idea to have a casino in the sky.

creating a sufficient vacuum to float a blimp is probably possible, but i think people would rather just pump it full of helium cos helium is dirt cheap and it works.

Well, you'd need to develop a light material that will hold its shape. The problem is the same as when you suck the air out of a bottle: it'll crush itself. The thing with filling the blimps with a light gas is that it can still provide enough pressure to keep the, uh, bubble in its shape. If someone develops a strong, light material that has memory and can stay in its shape with the weight of the atmosphere on it, I would assume that it could work. I don't think we have a material like that at the moment that won't weigh the blimp down, but who knows what's coming.

It's a neat idea though

WOMG! Let's put lots of hydrogen in dragons. That'd help them fly.. And they could make fire with it! ^^

Good idea, but not an a original one. The book Passarola Rising by Azhar Abidi has a ship which floats suspended by four metal 'vacuum spheres'. I have never heard of it being done outside fiction though.

Yeah, pretty much what Cspace says. Theoretically possible, but it'd suck.

*runs from the pun-police*

Yeah. Find something that is able to support the weight (Or non-weight.. O.o) of a complete vacuum and you have it. But the plausibility of that idea just doesn't seem right.

Also, the vacuum would have to surpass they weight of the material holding it, or else it wouldn't float.

Example: Say you sucked every last bit of air out of a metal tank.. Like a keg!!. The tank could still hold its shape, but couldn't float because of the weight of the material. Anything strong enough to support a full vacuum would have to be pretty chunky. =S So the weight of the container would have to be less than than the stuff inside, which seems impossible, because a vacuum weighs.. well.. nothing.

Rofl. Yes, it would suck

The weight of the container doesn't have to be less than the weight of what it contains, otherwise nothing would ever float. Bouyancy (the ability of something to float) depends on only one thing: the object must displace more air than it weighs. Balloons displace a ton of air, whether filled with hydrogen, or filled with lead. The only difference is that hydrogen weighs around 200 times less than lead. A balloon filled with hydrogen weighs a lot less than lead, and displaces enough air to float. A balloon filled with lead weighs so much, that it would need to displace more air than the balloon could. This makes it sink.

Shape is also a huge factor. Ever notice how tiny pebbles, that weigh nearly nothing sink when giant battleships weighing thousands of tons can float? It's all because a boat can displace more water than it weighs, whereas a pebble lacks the required shape to float.

True. I misworded. Scusi.

What I was getting at, was that the vacuum must overcome the weight of the container for it to float.

Like filling an aforementioned metal tank (Keg, lolz) with helium, it would not float, because the container weighs too much for the helium to lift it. The Vacuum Container must be 2 things: Large enough to be overtaken by the vacuum inside, and tough enough to not collapse under the pressure and implode.

Like a blimp. The balloon part of a blimp is so massive because it must contain enough hydrogen to make it fly. You can't use a party balloon amount of helium to lift a hydrogen blimp. The Vacuum container must be large enough to support the notingness inside, but still be strong enough to hold together.

I'd really love to try this out.. SEND IT TO MYTHBUSTERS!!!