What the Blimp! It’s a Pedal Powered White Dwarf
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 11. 7.06
This cute little conveyance is nothing new. It once set a FAI world record for it’s class of airship, flying 58 miles (93km). But that was 14 years ago. Now the White Dwarf is in the sky once more, thanks to the determination of two enthusiasts, Reed Gleason and Bill Arras. They are on a mission to develop small helium filled blimps, which use a combination of pedal power and gas engines for propulsion. They’ve had the White Dwarf cruising up 15 mph (24kph), but are hopeful of arriving at a design that will manage 25 mph (40kph) for at least two hours. Read about their adventures in getting the White Dwarf airborne again, and where they want to go from here. ::White Dwarf, via tip from Graham. (See also our previous post on the high flying hopes of bringing airships back for commercial use.)
How is this green? Isn't helium production, compression, transportation energy intensive?
Making a bike is energy intensive, riding one in lieu of a car is not (well, it's energy intensive for me but I'm happy for the exercise).
Whilst I imagine that helium will leak from the balloon at some rate and will need to be replaced, I seriously doubt that this is after every trip. Otherwise, the storage issue he mentioned would not be a problem.
A slow but steady blimp is a great means of transport: it needs little infrastructure (no roads), doesn't pollute anything near as much as an aeroplane would and yet performs the same function.
Personally, I'd love to see fleets of pedal or solar powered blimps transporting people and goods about. Sure, separating helium (or hydrogen) is energy intensive but I'll bet that you get a lot more lift for your buck than in any conventional aircraft.
i would definitely commute by mini blimp. even at 15mph, that's nearly as fast as my average speed in the car. not to mention i could drop bombs on hummers.
surely cities should have no problem with allowing privateer blimps to fly, considering they couldn't really damage anything in a crash.
I'd imagine they qualify as ultralights, but I recently floating something with helium, I spent over $100 bucks in just helium to float about 7 pounds.