From: Josh Geller (dclxvi_at_dclxvi.best.vwh.net)
Date: 08/07/02
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 17:35:39 +0000 (GMT) From: Josh Geller <dclxvi_at_dclxvi.best.vwh.net> Subject: Re: Wetzone Engineering: Airships providing artificial rain for f ighting fires. (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.40.0208071726300.51819-100000@dclxvi.best.vwh.net>
On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Patrick Salsbury wrote:
> the SkyCat 1000 (not yet built) could hold 1000 metric tons of water, or
> 2,200,000 pounds. That's about 275,000 gallons. I think I saw something about
> "one quarter million gallons", so they might, in fact, be thinking about
> dropping the whole load. (I thought maybe they'd retain half to retain weight,
> but that's not really good for firefighting... "Sorry, we can't put out any
> more fire, even though we have another 125,000 gallons." That would go over
> like the proverbial lead balloon! :-) )
What does it matter that you retain half your load? You are already half a
load light.
> However, I think I see another way around it, maybe. The Zeppelins
> of old, and some of the more recent airship designs too, I think, were
> rigid-frame airships. Not simple balloons with one giant inflated
> bladder, but a skin around a rigid frame, with individual gas bladders
> inside. With a setup like that, and some simple (yet large)
> compressors,
How much do you actually know about compressing helium?
Have you ever done it?
> you could vary the buoyancy of the airship on demand, and
> fairly quickly. It'd be like letting helium out of a balloon, except
> they'd be storing it in compressed form to re-deploy as needed (when a
> helicopter or plane dropped a load of water.)
This idea was patented by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky around the year 1900.
There are two con men in Nevada (or to put it charitable, a con man and a
kook) who have been scamming money from idiots proposing this kind of
thing for at least 20 years.
It has never been done.
Compressing helium not simple, Kemo Sabe. Require great big cryogenic type
pumps. You have to make it colder while you compress it, you see: it
doesn't want to compress. Helium is very peculiar stuff.
.