How Collaborative Expertise Launched the Airlander Project

A video from The Institution of Engineering and Technology explaining how Hybrid Air Vehicles has been working with Forward Composites to apply decades of race-bred British carbon composite expertise in the development and manufacture of the revolutionary Airlander.
The helium-filled Airlander is the creation of Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), a company that itself was born out of decades of British innovation and research in Lighter Than Air (LTA) craft.
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[@rjc0234]

Wow! i remember when this was just the small RC model! cant belive they made a full sized one

[@zuutlmna]

I'm for developing any kind of LTA craft, for commercial uses. My personal preference is the conventional style large rigid airship (updated), where sheds are for construction, and major maintenance, etc. Otherwise the airships remain operationally airborne, arriving/departing mostly from mooring-mast towers (think Seattle Space Needle style towers), where stopovers for payloads, passengers, servicing, etc. are brief, several hours at most. The old British Airship Program had the right idea, I think. The appropriate materials and technologies just weren't in place back then, unfortunately. What do ya get with a surface ocean cruise...Ocean and more ocean, and maybe sea sick. But an airship cruise! Over land, over sea, the spectacle, the vistas, they're limitless!