[wipfli]

That's a very cool project! I am a hot-air balloon pilot and I love everything that flies with the lighter-than-air principle.

One limitation I could see for your business model is that airships can only be flown in a controlled direction at rather slow wind speeds. That is because they just have such a huge attack surface and the motors have limited thrust.

Did you do an estimate how many days per year you could fly your vehicle in a given economic area of interest? I fly balloons in Switzerland and I think you can get at most 100 days of good flight conditions a year. But yeah, with some climate data and your operational limitations you can probably estimate how many days you get in a given area...

[ThomasLaporte]

Thank you very much for your support!

We've made research and we aim to resist to 10 to 11m/s of wind speed. This would allow us to fly in 80% of regions of Europe, 80% of the time!

[japanuspus]

Also: for inspecting wind turbines (which I imagine would be a use-case), the operators usually want to work on low-wind days anyway.

I used to work at a large offshore wind operator, and the approach we used there for leading-edge inspection of blades was a telephoto lens from a neighboring turbine. As anything involving technicians off-shore, this was very expensive.

[ThomasLaporte]

thank you for the insight that's so interesting

[ToDougie]

That sounds like a very enjoyable endeavor! I was wondering, what are the benefits and drawbacks to flying a lighter-than-air ship under 1,000 feet? Or even closer to the ground/tops of buildings? <500 feet? Are there simply too many regulatory issues?

I have a dream that some day there will be airships floating around cities, ferrying passengers and freight, and they will float only 30-100 meters above the tallest buildings.

[rtkwe]

The issue is they’re quite slow and not exactly nimble craft so flying low you need to be very sure you’re well clear of the surrounding hazards.

[Cthulhu_]

What tolerances can helicopters operate at, for comparison? I can imagine you don't want what looks like an inherently unstable aircraft to be close to power lines at higher winds.

[minitoar]

More has to do with gusts for helicopters, partly because they can point into the wind which is no different from forward flight if it’s steady.