Skip to main content

Zeppelins could make a comeback with this solar-powered airship cargo mover

Varialift Airships

Zeppelins, the rigid airships most famously epitomized by the Hindenburg, now seem kind of retro, rather than the image of futurity they represented in the 1930s. But they could be about to make a comeback in a big way — courtesy of a new aluminum-shelled, solar-powered airship that’s being built by the U.K.-based company Varialift Airships.

According to the company’s CEO Alan Handley, the airship will be capable of making a transatlantic flight from the United Kingdom to the United States, consuming just 8% of the fuel of a regular airplane. It will be powered by a pair of solar-powered engines and two conventional jet engines.

While its lack of onboard battery would limit travel to daylight hours, and its speed will only be approximately half that of a Boeing 747, the Varialift airship does promise to be a useful cargo carrier. Its creators claim that it will be able to carry loads ranging from 50 to 250 tons. Larger models with payloads up to 3,000 tons aren’t out of the question either. Bulky cargo such as electricity pylons, wind turbine blades, and towers, or even prefabricated structures such as oil rigs could be carried underneath using cables. That means that cargo will have a weight limit, but no practical size limit.

Because it is an airship, which lifts off more like a balloon than an airplane, the Varialift airship could also be useful in this capacity since it doesn’t require a dedicated runway. This could make it valuable as a delivery vehicle in places with poor infrastructure.

“Variable lift airships will ultimately secure a significant percentage (possibly the bulk) of the global air freight business, and a small, but still extremely valuable portion of existing road freight business, particularly for long distance, bulky or lightweight goods,” the company claims on its website. “… The Varialift lands vertically and becomes heavier than air through compression of the lifting gas, [helium,] making it stable for loading and unloading.”

Varialift hasn’t yet begun construction on its production model. However, a prototype measuring 459 feet in length, 85 feet wide and 85 feet high is currently being built in France. New Scientist notes that it will be completed in the next nine months.

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
DeLorean could could make a comeback as an electric car

The DeLorean DMC-12 sports car made famous by the Back to the Future franchise could make a comeback as an electric vehicle. A Texas-based company currently owns the rights to the stainless-steel sports car, and has been working for years to bring it back. The original plan was to use a conventional gasoline engine, but now an electric DeLorean is a real possibility, the company said in a blog post.

DeLorean production ended in 1982, and bringing back a car from that period would normally be impossible, because it wouldn't meet current safety and emissions standards. However, the new DeLorean Motor Company has lobbied for the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act — which is part of the  Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act — which allows boutique companies to build limited numbers of replica vehicles. The rules were just finalized, but that still left the revived DeLorean firm with a problem.

Read more
RDNA 3 could make AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT successor 250% more powerful
amd ryzen 5000 announcement radeon oct 2020

Despite the fact that AMD had barely just announced its Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards at the end of 2020 and the GPUs are still hard to find because of supply issues, innovation isn't stopping. AMD is already rumored to be working on its next-gen GPU that uses the company's RDNA 3 microarchitecture, which could give the graphics cards a performance lift of 2.5 times what is currently capable on the company's high-end Radeon RX 6900 XT today. The Radeon RX 6900 XT uses the same RDNA 2 architecture found on AMD's chips for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles.

The RDNA 3 microarchitecture is also known by Navi 31. Previously, it's been speculated that AMD could be adapting its use of chiplets from its Ryzen processors to its Radeon graphics chips to get more performance. This would be the first time that AMD would use chiplets on a graphics card, if these rumors prove accurate. The chiplet design is known as MCM, or multi-chip module.

Read more
Personal power generator harvests energy from the breeze you make when you walk
Walking

Wind power is an exciting and efficient method for generating sustainable energy. But while most of us aren’t going to be getting personal wind turbines anytime soon, a small device developed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing promises to turn wind power into a personal energy generating solution -- by harvesting energy from the breeze created when you go for a brisk walk. Yes, seriously.

Rather than being a wind turbine, the device is a nanogenerator composed of twin plastic strips in a tube that moves when exposed to airflow. Through a process called the triboelectric effect, the two plastic strips brush against each other and generate an electric current. This is similar to the way that static makes your hair stand on end when you rub a balloon on your head. This current is then sent via silver electrodes to a miniature generator. While the wind-to-energy conversion efficiency is lower than an average wind turbine, it is higher than previous devices trying to do similar wind scavenging.

Read more