• Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    People think mainly of the Hindenberg when you mention airships, but there were a lot of other ones that met tragic ends. The US Navy’s Akron and Macon both crashed due to storms, the former with the loss of all but three sailors.

    I think the troposphere is just too turbulent for big fragile bubbles like this to work. Maybe if we had blimps like Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age - where they are made of diamond and use vacuum for lift - they could be strong and small enough to work. But the idea of using something like this to deploy wind turbines is just asking for trouble.