GAWDA Edge Blog 
  

In today’s GAWDAwiki headlines, you will see that a staff member at the University of Iowa, Dale Stille, was injured in transporting hydrogen-filled balloons to give a science demonstration. The demonstration involved exploding the balloons under safe conditions, but unfortunately, this time they exploded too soon. Stille attempted to fill the balloons at the college before transporting them to the school, and the result was disastrous.

Before the accident, Stille was doing a great service by getting students interested in gases through his demonstrations. Anytime someone promotes the industry in schools, they are doing a great thing. While Stille probably learned his lesson from the explosion, there’s a lesson here that distributors can take away from this: you can never stress safety enough. You can say he should have known better, but there is a responsibility for the school’s distributor to make sure he does know better.

The unfortunate side-effect is that the event creates a negative image of gases as being unsafe. How many parents do you think will be happy and willing to let Stille demonstrate to children now? The best case scenario, at this point, is that Stille takes the mishap and uses it to teach others about safety.

It’s easy to preach safety, but it’s more important to practice it. Just because there are no accidents, it’s no excuse to become lax about safety. When many work hard to educate about the usefulness of gases and welding, it’s a shame for an incident like this to undo all of that work.

When you think of the future of flight, you probably think fast. But lately I’ve been noticing a trend in the opposite direction. It seems aircraft companies are thinking slow. The good news is they are turning to gases such as hydrogen and helium to make this happen.

The U.S. Army and Boeing both recently announced projects for aircrafts capable of hovering at a standstill for use with surveillance and communications. The Army paid half a billion dollars for the development of helium airships to hover unseen, miles above hostile area. From there, the unmanned vehicle can relay information to the military.

It could just be that air travel is cyclical, but airships appear to be making a comeback. However, these airships are definitely not for anyone who is in a hurry. An airship built by E-Green Technologies tops out at 80 mph (Watch the inflation of the airship). Their airship, at least, can support a 2,000 lb payload, but that only adds up to little more than a handful of people with small luggage.

Apart from a military contract here or there, is there really a future in airships? Sight-seeing might be a novel application. I imagine they might find their way into the Super Bowl and other sporting events—the surveillance capabilities can provide some good replay angles. The concept of a virtual floating billboard, at low altitudes, could be attractive to advertisers (Think souped-up Goodyear Blimp that can float for 4 days without landing). Among other “practical applications” listed on the E-Green Technologies website are “forest fire monitoring” and “agriculture assessments.” Is there anything I’m missing?

There are a few applications, but it’s still hard to see this catching on. Transportation is probably not a large market for airships. These days, people want to get around faster, not slower. But then again, half a billion dollars from the military will work wonders for the advancement of technology. It’s kind of like a slower, lower altitude space race. Although it would be fun to ride in an airship, do you think it’s worth the hefty investment?