Technology

Twelve electric motors powered by diesel generators and batteries enable vertical take-off and landing. They can propel the Pathfinder 1 at up to 65 knots (75 mph), although its initial flights will be at much lower speeds.

Who the hell wants a 2-day ride to London?

Archer apparently got the math on that right too, in 2010. New York to London is about 3500 miles, which would take about 47 hours at the top speed of 75 mph.

I can't believe they actually got enough money to build this thing. It's like a vaporware project that somehow made it.

The market for this must be literally dozens of people.

It's not like the world is running out of Helium or anything and maybe it would be better used in scientific and medical applications than a big fuckoff airship.

For everyone saying it has no market.... some googling finds it is intended for slow cargo delivery to places that have no existing infrastructure. Also this is a prototype, so the bigger ones will have a much larger capacity. They also say it is for disaster relief, similarly to places with no infra, or where that infrastructure has been destroyed like in an earthquake or what not.

It's made of indestructible materials, not even god can sink it!

I do believe those are traditionally called airships rather than aircraft or is the renaming of lighter-than-air dirigibles to "aircraft" yet another example of Silicon Valley Marketing spinning yet-another-reinventing-of-the-wheel as innovation.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

As dawn breaks over Silicon Valley, the world is getting its first look at Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship that its maker LTA Research hopes will kickstart a new era in climate-friendly air travel, and accelerate the humanitarian work of its funder, Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

The airship — its snow-white steampunk profile visible from the busy 101 highway — has taken drone technology such as fly-by-wire controls, electric motors and lidar sensing, and supersized them to something longer than three Boeing 737s, potentially able to carry tons of cargo over many hundreds of miles.

This morning, the airship floated silently from its WW2-era hangar at NASA’s Moffett Field at walking pace, steered by ropes held by dozens of the company’s engineers, technicians and ground crew.

The first lesson its engineers hope to learn is how Pathfinder 1’s approximately one million cubic feet of helium and weather resistant polymer skin will respond to the warming effect of Californian sunshine.

At the start of September, the FAA issued a special airworthiness certificate for the Pathfinder 1 allowing test flights in and around Moffett Field and the nearby Palo Alto airport, and over the southern part of the San Francisco Bay.

That will involve a long, slow slog to validate the new technologies and to demonstrate, to the FAA and paying customers, that a new generation of super-large airships can match the generally excellent safety and reliability record of today’s commercial jets.

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Straight out of Bloons 😂