Brin Balloons His Bet on Buoyancy
March 22, 2021
I spotted the story “Is Sergey Brin Really Building the World’s Biggest Aircraft? Here’s Everything We Know.” Darned uplifting. The drift of the write up is:
… the ninth richest person in the world’s focus has been on exactly that: building a giant “sky yacht.”
As the IRS might term it, this is a hobby.
The write up explains:
… the LTA [Lighter Than Air] website states only humanitarian goals: “LTA airships will have the ability to complement — and even speed up — humanitarian disaster response and relief efforts, especially in remote areas that cannot be easily accessed by plane and boat due to limited or destroyed infrastructure.
Ah, ha. Tax deduction maybe?
How big you ask?
At this size [650 feet or two soccer pitches], the flying machine would definitely be the world’s largest aircraft today — although it would still be smaller than the ill-fated Hindenburg zeppelin of the 1930s, which was 804 feet long. For context, that’s more than three times the length of a Boeing 747 and more than four times the length of your typical Goodyear Blimp.
Several observations:
- The write up does not explore the Loon balloon initiative. It drifted into oblivion by the way.
- The airship’s size is bigger than Roman Abramovich’s Solaris super yacht which is about 200 feet smaller in the length department. But the ship is fungible; the balloon is plein d’air chaud.
- The science club project will prove that buoyancy is a verifiable phenomenon.
Soon the uplifting impact of the world’s largest humanitarian balloon will cast its long shadow over the land. Quick question: Will Mr. Abramovich undertake an even larger inflatable object with a possible tax deduction. Solaris is difficult to shape into tax benefit, but it could be done with surplus Loon balloons.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2021
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