Electric Blimp?

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Combwork

I wonder how much R & D it would need to get something with the ability to carry say, 100 people (including crew) past safety requirements into the air. The Hindenburg had very heavy diesel engines, had to carry fuel for the engines plus food for passengers and crew.

I don't see a significant difference between the weight of conventional fossil fuel engines and the powerful electric motors a PV LTA (don't you love acronyms?) would need. No weight of fuel to consider, of course, but there are batteries to consider. Need a lot of those to fly through the night.

Then there's the amount of generation required for charging all those batteries versus the amount required on-demand for propulsion. These things have been dealt with on manned and unmanned solar-powered HTA aircraft but, at least at present, these things are very, very slow.

John