Comments on: Human-Powered Mini-Blimp Races

By: pL

pL — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:41:34 +0000

Jo Jerry! It’s time to take Blimp Racing to a new level:

World’s Largest Airship Inflated to Create Monster ‘Stratellite’

By: squirrely joe

squirrely joe — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:45:37 +0000

Apparently not. Latest I heard was that the French are claiming that his cancer was a big lie to cover up his doping experimentation.

/I hate them damn frogs.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:43:01 +0000

Anyone have Lance Armstrong’s number?

By: John

John — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 00:01:03 +0000

Fill the bags with methane and put altitude-controlled pyrotechnic devices inside. If your blimp goes too high, kaboom! That would prevent crashes into the sky, add some suspense, and appeal to the “I only watch the Indy 500 for the crashes” crowd.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:31:50 +0000

No, no, no! Crashes must be in full view of the spectators. The sponsors will insist that a crash have a decent amount of TV time to allow the gawkers to absorb the advertising on the vehicle uninterrupted. Fading from sight would be right out.

I suggest giving the pilot a pellet pistol, yet no parachute. You might think that this would be a turn off for obtaining pilots. Safety takes a back seat when you are suppposed to be a rough and tumble he-man.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 20:45:45 +0000

Serban, you have produced numbers where I had always feared to tread, and the results are much better than I had feared. When compared to the cost of putting a racecar on the track, or even putting a bike in the Tour de France, five large is nothing. That will be dwarfed by the cost of hiring a truly great athlete as the pilot.

The size of the blimp I’m trying to put my brain around, but I think that’s actually smaller that what I imagined. And it’s all advertising space, baby.

I hadn’t thought of the crash toward the sky problem. It seems in the end you could easily make a manually-operated valve that lets the buoyant gasses out. But still, a blimp skyrocketing out of control, shooting up to meet God, would certainly make good TV.

By: Serban

Serban — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 13:44:11 +0000

Blimps are very expensive because of helium, even small ones. For 100kg (one person, envelope, stuff) you need about 100m3 of helium that costs about 5000$ (not sure but anyway, very much). And that also means an ellipse of 4m * 4m * 12m (pretty big, huh?). The whole machine would have a height of about 6-7m. I think blimps should use methane – don’t shoot me for this, please! – and the volume for one person, 100kg, should be double or even more (due to heavier envelope) so the ellipse should be about 5m * 5m * 15m.

The biggest danger I see is not explosion but accidental negative buoyancy, valve blocking and reversed crash towards the sky.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 15:15:50 +0000

The tricky part about sail blimps is the keel. There’s a reason kites fly better when the string is pulling them. Would a weight hanging below the blimp on a long pole provide the required torque? Some experimentation is in order.

The beanbag idea is excellent. You could even replace the hoops with a drop contest, so pilots have to choose whether to keep altitude and risk missing the target or go down but then have to climb back up. Maybe one blimp could try to block the target from blimps above.

In fact, you could have all sorts of skill contests along the way. Heck, why not really appeal to southerners and have racers shoot road signs as they sail by?

By: Dean

Dean — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 03:50:40 +0000

How about cross country racing. Place the hoops to fly through at several points on the course. Or a series of pylons to fly around. Add bullseyes on the ground for the pilots to toss bean bags at for extra points.

By: pL

pL — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 01:41:35 +0000

There you go, how do you design a blimp that goes by sail? Sail bilmp races. Moderate on the violence, but better than baseball.

The Intercontental Sail Blimp Association. ISBA, baby! Rock the ISBA!