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'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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Super cool!
...But helium, so not super scalable, right?
They could make it hydrogen, for extra fun when one fails around all that electricity...
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.
I'm pretty sure Hindenburg would have been able to land somewhere instead of crashing out of the air if it used Helium. The surface catching fire wouldn't spread nearly as quickly as the cells exploding with hydrogen gas. I'm not sure what material the cells were made out of, but I doubt it burns like flash paper.