From: The Butterfly (salsbury_at_bootstrap.sculptors.com)
Date: 04/17/98
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 15:38:11 -0700 Message-Id: <199804172238.PAA18725@bootstrap.sculptors.com> From: The Butterfly <salsbury_at_bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Re: Been kinda quiet, lately...
-From: Chris_McCoy_at_sigmanet.com
-Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 09:59:56 -0700
-Reply-To: airships_at_sculptors.com
-
-In an airship form, there have been far larger payloads than 13.5 tons.
-If I recall correctly, the Hind.. had a helium lift of 65 tons, and a
-hydrogen lift of about
-70 tons. If you build a ship that size today, with modern materials, you
-would have
-far more payload.
Excellent. I figured it would be possible, but wasn't sure of the
particulars.
-Concievable, you could put a small community of 5-10 families up
-indefinitely.
-The difficulties are maintenance, long-lasting materials, and power.
-
-Maintenance could be performed by the collective, but if you have 20
-adults and you need to run a hydroponics farm, service equipment and
-maintain materials, you pretty-much max out your workload. If you add
-families, you add weight, but could probably gain more leisure time.
I don't think hydroponics would cause that much workload. In fact,
once the setup is there, it's relatively low maintenance. And being several
miles in the air might have added benefits of no pests (although you'd need
to supply your own insects for pollenation...)
-Materials are the big question, as I am not sure how long mylar would last
-in a high UV, low-pressure environment 30-40k ft up. Keeping a pressurized
-living area up presents no problem, MIR has been in vacume for 10 years,
-and most airliners are designed to make 40-50k takeoffs and landings in thier
-lifetime.
-Thats a lot of stress, and these lightweight, aluminum chambers do just
-fine. Just don't fly on a deHaviland Comet!
I'm starting to research the "tefzel" material which I think comes
from DuPont. It's the focus material of J. Baldwin's "Pillow Dome"
concept. Apparently, the material was designed to be the separator for
cells in car batteries, and was designed for a lifetime immersion in
acid. (Ergo, it's hardy stuff.) It's also apparently immune to UV. One of
the few plastics that are.
-Power ideally would be collected by solar, stored in large flywheels, and
-backed
-up with a methane-burning generator. The generator fuel can be produced by
-the hydroponics farm's waste.
Flywheels seem heavy and complex to use for energy storage. Why not
use a compact fuel-cell that runs hydrogen or other hydrocarbons? (Methane,
ethane, propane, etc...)
-An atomic reactor is also an excellent power
-source, as
-helium is the by-product of a fission reaction, power and lifting gas from
-one source.
Actually, I think helium is the by-product of FUSION reactions,
which are difficult to sustain, still not economical, and once again,
heavy.
But using solar cells to run hydrolysis on water gives you oodles
of hydrogen for fuel cell use, or lifting gas (with 4x more lift than
helium). There's just that combustion problem... Still, probably less of an
engineering problem than flying an atomic reactor. :-)
-Chris McCoy
--
Pat
___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury - http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
Check out the Reality Sculptors Project: http://www.sculptors.com/
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