From: Chris_McCoy_at_sigmanet.com
Date: 04/22/98
From: Chris_McCoy_at_sigmanet.com Message-ID: <882565EE.007C5AEB.00@sweb_notes.sigmanet.com> Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 15:49:43 -0700 Subject: Re: Been kinda quiet, lately...
> nah, it's really elegant the way they make these structures. you bend
> the skeleton out of rebar and pour the whole structure around it. or
> you can, anyway.
Well then you are also spending a lot of money on a solid mold that would
be as
large as the airship itself, why not fly the mold.I my be wrong here though
I am
not that familiar with construction using concrete on this scale.
***Actually Don, reinforced concrete is even easier than that. You could
build
a mold that was half a sphere, pour the first section with the rebarr
sticking out
the ends. Move the dry section over, pour another section attached to the
first, then
slide it again. Each section is attached to the last by the rebarr. When
you finish, the
rebarr is a single skeleton held together by the concrete. You end up with
a sphere
that acts like a single molded piece, and a mold you can use over and over
The beauty is that your allowable internal temperatures are like
450degrees F.
You end up losing little of your payload because you can heat to such a
high temp.
> > What about natural wood or engineered reinforced wood or other
recyclable
> > materials, maybe cardboard!
>
> for something a couple miles across?
Here I was just throwing out ideas, you know brainstorming. They have
built a
lot of amazing things out of wood or carboard, I am sure they could do
something, but steel is probably the best mentioned so far. The nice thing
about this wood idea if you were a writer of historical fantasy or if you
were
like C.S. Lewis you could say some sort of Atlantis like city built a large
balloon out of some special wood and goldbeaters skin or rice paper, were
this
society lived up in the clouds. But we are engineers here, so I will stop
on
this possible kids story.
***I think that light-weight geodesic sections give you this possibility.
The stress
is evenly distributed. As long as your calcs are dead-on balls accurate,
you end up with
a strong structure that could have an aluminium frame with foam or
cardboard
skin.