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The idea is for a dirigible, moored at any height you wish below about 12,000ft ASL (rather than have to pressurise the cabin) and out of the flight paths of aircraft, as a home dwelling. Spacious enough for living but no grand palaces unless you're very wealthy indeed.
Views are extraordinary
Parachute
to work
Great mobile 'phone reception
Entertain your guests in real style
Rappel up the rope with a bunch of weather balloons, to get home, then use the helium to replenish your home's buoyancy reserves.
I'd buy one in an instant.
BTW, credit where it's due. My 7 y.o. son and I were today discussing kites when he said he'd like one big enough to live in. After we had agreed that would be a bad thing on a day with no wind, I suggested a helium dirigible. Now it's on here.
UB - Master of the World
http://img463.image.../2364/masteryj9.jpg
[skinflaps, Jan 14 2008]
Larry Walters's cut down version that went a bit wrong
http://www.ssqq.com...IVE/stupidity04.htm
you might want to read this [xenzag, Jan 14 2008]
Strato Cruiser
http://www.elitecho...ce-for-filthy-rich/
[skinflaps, Jan 14 2008]
A whole city of air balloons and dirigibles
City_20in_20the_20Skies_20above
[quantum_flux, Jan 14 2008]
[link]
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I was thinking about mentioning water, power, drainage and so on, but the best advantages would be the complete absence of neighbourhood cats and dogs; salesmen; religious pedlars; grass and floods: One hell of a penthouse suite. |
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Partial funding could be arranged by adverts on the sides. |
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The Larry Walters story gave rise to an extreme sport. |
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You'd need one of those big circular tin flanges on the tether, to stop possums and mormons. And be careful how you put the cat out. |
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Egad, you're right! Maybe just several hundred metres of the rope, slathered in axle grease? |
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Moustache wax. After all, one would need the full Otto von Bismark style makeover to feel really at home in ones dirigible. |
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Is there a big roundel painted on the side, sort of like.. a... you know.. giant target? |
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You betcha! We have roasted wild duck at least once a week. Little buggers fly straight into the target and land in the duckplucking machine. |
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Well as long as you are not mooring above me, (+). How high do you have to go to be above most weather? Because lightning would be troublesome, though maybe not as long as you are not electrically grounded by the mooring line. |
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Other than that it seems workable. Rainwater collection for water (unless you are too high or too dry), wind power for electric, solar for heat and for career you could do cell phone retransmission or traffic broadcasts. Waste is an issue, maybe parachutes down the mooring line? Food would have come back up the mooring line or grown on board using aeroponic gardens and then add in some chickens for protein in case the ducks don't come. |
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What sort of waste, though ? |
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For wastewater, simply emulsify it and spray it as an atomised cloud, downwind; at that altitude, it will be so dispersed by the time it reaches the surface as to be negligible. Vegetable wastes can be similarly emulsified ... packaging can be burned for fuel and the ashes scattered. |
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Foodstuffs can be run up the zipline / mooring cable in exactly the same way I suggested you might get up to the dirigible. There's no need to be self-sufficient in food production, that I can see. |
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Water supply might be a bit of an issue but a small water recycling plant can keep most of it on board. The water that is not fit to be recycled can be atomised, as [8/7] suggests. Organic wastes can be burned for heating (it gets pretty cool at altitude). Metallic waste can be run back down the line in a basket, for disposal / recycling. |
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In fact, it occurs to me that this sort of style of living would tend to make us far less profligate with our waste generation habits. It is not recommended that drunken rednecks be allowed to take beer in glass bottles up, as the potential for a "Gods Must Be Crazy" moment is high. |
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Power is easy to generate at higher altitude, especially wind and solar. There's a BIG area on top of the blimp, for solar collection and wind at altitude are usually reasonably strong and constant. |
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Is there a clear flexible plastic that will stand up to the UV long term and contain the lifting gas reasonably well? |
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The waste I was referring to was human waste, which I guess you could cook and use as fertilizer or dry and burn. |
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Why do I need this clear, flexible plastic? |
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So that you can watch [MisterQED] slowly suffocate after you zip him inside the envelope ? |
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[Unabubba] (8th] you guys never wanted to look up? Think skylights, greenhouse, etc. |
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Poor Larry. But I like this child's dream anyways, especially because it involves ginormous quantities of inflatable materials. My area of expertise. Hunormous!! |
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Why would you want a skylight at 12,000ft, [MQED]? I'd settle for a solar panelled roof on the dirigible and the ability to sleep in late. Skylights are kinda hard to cope with when the sun is almost always ON from early in the morning and you're trying to sleep. Try living in the tropics, where the light from the sun is really bright after a 1/2hr wakeup period. |
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I guess it is up to individual taste, but I see a Dirigible Home as something that could have a lot of space, but serious weight limitations. Delivery of supplies are possible but not easy, so self sufficiency would be a bonus. If you started with a basic starting point of something like the Goodyear Blimp and removed the engines and the fuel and added helium tanks to lengthen the flight time to hopefully years. You’d loose some lift by supporting the mooring cable, but you should have a ton or two left over. The basic lower cabin is rather small, really just enough room for 6 people and controls. So if you enlarged the lower cabin by say 6 times your have a passable amount of living space, you’d then have to add water tanks, the wind generator, PV arrays and some backup batteries. I think it would be handy to have a an on board aeroponic garden and some chickens to provide food. The weight would be reasonably low for the output, but you either need to build a greenhouse on top of the blimp, or allow the light to shine through the top and the gas bags to the greenhouse on your level. If you set it up right, you might provide enough oxygen to allow higher altitude flights to rise over storms. Heck if you switch from wind power to pure solar, you might be able to drop the mooring and fly free. I guess you could do the same with PV arrays and LED grow lights (I think these are still in development), or mirrors and light guides to pump the sunlight down to the greenhouse level. You then could sleep on the lower level and then go up a level to the greenhouse to gather meals. |
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A transparent floor would be more scenic, both for you and those looking up. Solar and wind power are all very nice but tend to be rather heavy, cutting down on your living space. It might be better to use the mooring cables as power lines as this would also take care of your religious rodent visitors. |
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Thinking that deliveries (and, indeed, the daily commute) are more easily handled by winching the tether in to the point where the dirigible touches the ground. |
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Do you keep chickens in your home, [MQ]? I'll concede the chickens only if we electrify their roost so they stay airborne all of the time. :) |
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There is no need for self-sufficiency here unless you're some kind of Montana survivalist nut. You go to work in the morning, do your shopping in the afternoon and go home. The fact that your commute is vertical rather than horizontal is purely incidental. |
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As for weight... there are already many examples of inflatable furniture. Add some of those here. |
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I thought of winching it in, [DC]. It didn't seem as much fun as zipping up the tether under a cluster of weather balloons. |
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I'd live in it. But I'd refer to it as an "aerostat" or as a "moored balloon"--"dirigible" means directable, as in controlled flight of a powered balloon. I'd also worry about storms, as any breathable altitude would not be "above the weather". |
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The first name was Homballoon but that attracted the ire of early annotators, so I changed it to something more descriptive. |
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So what is the solution for lighting? Higher sacrificial baloons on conductive tethers? Are there places with no lightning? Do all of these need hangers to hide in during bad weather? I guess you make hangers that have clamshell roofs that open to allow the baloon to rise controlled by an onboard winch. |
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No I have no chickens, (just 3 dogs & 2 cats) though I spent several summers in Iowa tending a chicken coop so understand your revulsion. In my mind, this idea took off in a different direction, I'll have to submit it as a separate idea. |
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Oh, weather the storm, you big girl! |
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Didn't Dolly Parton have a couple of these? |
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//baked in 'stardust'...//
I just saw that the other day; not the same as the book, but anyways that was a ship not a stationary house. |
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Well, 'dirigible' is kinda shippy. |
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I see the child's idea as a kite that is big enough to live in. This would be awesome.
UB's idea is for a dirigible well decorated on the interior so as to give the impression of actually living in a home, which would be awesome [+].
and Mr.Dynamics is vying for some ultratechy greenhouse earth museum in the sky.. I'm a little weary on this one. |
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Because of the tether, one could do this with hot air, and run gas to keep the fires burning up to the balloon. |
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The tether cable is described as up to 4000 metres long. While running a flexible telecoms, fibre optic or even power cable up 4000 metres might be practical (with a corresponding weight penalty), 4000 metres of exposed flexible pipe carrying fuel gas would be a bit more of a problem. There's going to be a fair bit of lex and lash in the cable, particularly in windy conditions. Leak detection's easy enough, but then the leak has to be patched. And you've got all these baskets and things running up and down the cable. |
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Having said all that, using hydrogen as the lifting gas and pumping it up the tether isn't too bad an idea, since if there was a leak hydrogen diffuses away very rapidly. |
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A flame retardant envelope, no naked lights and hydrogen would probably work out very well. There's little reason for hydrogen to create real problems if the gas envelope is properly insulated (especially with an inert gas envelope around the hydrogen envelope) and good safety measures are observed. |
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//baked in 'stardust'...//
David Essex and Led Zeppelin? |
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//David Essex and Led Zeppelin?//
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novel by Neil Gaiman; the movie featured a reasonably star-studded cast, and one of the locations was basically an upscale pirate ship cum dirigible. |
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