Blimps are certainly fascinating and more so with the colourful commercial ones. But how essential are they? Current commercial airplane operations spend $100 Billion each year on fuel. Giving it a brief thought, is it worth all the money and energy spent, now that fossil-fuel is in the verge of acute depletion and we don’t have enough of it to fuel our vehicles? May be not, but those are the conventional blimps. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have, eco-friendly one like the Turtle Airship that Darrell Campbell, the designer of Millennium Airship is working on. The picture is that of a Millenium Airship. Eco-friendly Features : • The outer frame-work of the Airship to be made of titanium, aluminum or stainless steel would be incorporated with amorphous thin films of photovoltaic cells to harness solar energy. • The electricity produced runs the electric motors and propellers of the Airship. • The electric motors use lighter super conducting magnets rather than copper wires. • The excess energy produced in the day is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, to function as fuel cell as an alternate during night and cloudy conditions. • Bio-diesel powered generators are also built-in to circumvent any remote chances of solar and fuel cells’ failure. Although, Airships are usually not designed to carry passengers or goods, this one is. in addition it can land almost anywhere – on mountains, desert, glaciers, wherever. By all means, the Turtle Airship is far better and nature friendly that I hope fuel would no longer be wasted on conventional blimps. via : Good Clean Tech
