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The world's largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The world's largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley::As dawn breaks over Silicon Valley, the world is getting its first look at Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship that its maker LTA Research hopes

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That massive size and slowness and expensive material and depleting helium can only haul 8,000 pounds beyond its crew. For comparison, the most common passenger jet there is; the Boeing 737 can haul around like 50,000 pounds depending on how much fuel is on board.

It's a cool concept, but I can't fathom it ever doing a whole lot of good. The more carbon neutral appropriate thing to do that would be a viable option would be for jets to use a different fuel source. Maybe massive solar arrays at airports used to create liquid hydrogen and craft designed to run on that instead of jet fuel. I don't really know myself, but I know there's no way anything other than very niche scenarios will crazy huge expensive zeppelins be used.