"High-altitude winds between 1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters) above the ground are stronger and steadier than surface winds. These winds are abundant, widely available, and carbon-free.
"The physics of wind power makes this resource extremely valuable. “When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold, triple the speed, and you have 27 times the energy,” explained Gong Zeqi "
Super cool!
…But helium, so not super scalable, right?
They could make it hydrogen, for extra fun when one fails around all that electricity…
The fact that helium is such a rare, irreplaceable, and scientifically useful material makes it wild to me that we use it to fill kids’ party balloons.
Tom Scott visited the US National Helium Reserve and talked to the field manager of the facility. According to him, it’s not that big of a deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOy8Xjaa_o8
(Relevant bit starts around 2:58)
There are two grades of helium wells in terms of purity. Medical and kids’ parties… so that’s why it’s is still used for balloons.
Good news, it’s not that rare that that would make a difference. There’s plenty of it, just need different extraction techniques to further up the supply (unfortunately, that’s fracking lately iirc)
Hydrogen wouldn’t burn inside the balloon, because there’s no oxygen. If a fire started on the surface of the balloon, then it doesn’t really matter if it’s helium or hydrogen. Hindenburg would have happened no matter what it was filled with. IIRC, there’s an argument out there that hydrogen actually saved people in that case, though I don’t remember the physics of it all.
There’s some safety issues involving working with it on the ground, but you can mitigate that with procedures. Helium has an asphyxiation risk, especially when you’re working with enough to fill a blimp, so it’s not like it’s totally safe there, either.
Historically, the really bad thing with blimps/dirigibles is how the ground crew can get thrown into the air when they’re holding it down with rope and a gust of wind suddenly picks up. Hard to find numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more deaths involving ground crew operations of dirigibles than the 35 people who died on the Hindenburg.
Late reply, but you… may not be wrong.
However, I think this is a ‘nuclear power’ like situation.
Even if the failure modes are generally technically safe, they’re so spectacular that it’s going to freak people (and authorities) out to the point of being problematic. Hence, dirigible development basically died from that one incident, heh.
Could you use hot air? It might require some of the energy being generated be consumed, but its much more sustainable.
So it’s a 100kW generator and you would need around 60kW to float the weight of a hot air balloon basket with a couple of people. My math is probably way off though.
As cool as this is, I"m also super interested in what happens
ifwhen the cable breaks.Same as if you let go of a kite. It’ll just tumble back down to Earth over some distance.
Pretty sure they have more than one cable on this thing.
Ok.
As cool as this is, I"m also super interested in what happens if when the cables breaks.
Like, how far will it go? A hundred kilometers? a thousand? Ten thousand? I just imagine one of things getting lose and it circling half the globe.
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