Get this – they’re making a blimp as long as two football fields. A BLIMP.
The thing would be huge, but it needs to be since it will carry up to 250 TONS of cargo.
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| Image courtesy Worldwide Aeros |
It’s ridiculously amazing and though it’s way off in the future, with just the little version in testing right now, it’s still really incredible. Thank God that people are ingenious.
Here’s the scoop – It’s called Aeroscraft and the little version, the one currently in testing, is about 255 feet long. Nearly a football field. It carries about 50 tons of cargo. A car can weigh about one ton, or a hippo, or a whale. So put a bunch of those on board and off you go.
The real deal with the Aeroscraft is that it can land, offload cargo and take off again, which blimps can’t do. They need ballast to match the offloaded cargo or they start lifting off as things are offloaded. The Aeroscraft – which looks a lot like a JiffyPop container – has the capability to compress helium and keep the ship on the ground. This is revolutionary for things like transportable life support or rescue. Currently, blimps can get places that aircraft can’t (think Haiti post earthquake when the airport was destroyed) but their inability to land and off load cargo without existing infrastructure makes them useless. The Aeroscraft could take off from Florida and deliver a complete mobile hospital to somewhere like Haiti in about 24 hours.
Lacking disaster scenarios, the Aeroscraft could land in a field to pick up fresh picked produce and deliver it to it’s destination in about 12-18 hours, much less than the current 3-5 days delivery by train.
Think of it, a sky filled with Jiffy popcorn ships! Um, cargo blimps that is. People are amazing.
The full lowdown on the Aeroscraft “The Flying Submarine” is here.
Karen Marya 