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Tech NewsFakesThis Amazon Mothership is Terrifying as Hell, Even If It’s Completely Fake
Have you seen that viral video of an Amazon blimp that deploys delivery drones? Twitter users are calling it “borderline dystopian” and “what the last human alive will see.” In reality, the blimp is totally fake, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. There’s still reason to be unnerved by what you’re seeing. The … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsNewsAirlander 10, Butt-Shaped Airship Prototype and World’s Longest Aircraft, to Be Retired
Hybrid Air Vehicles, the company behind the Airlander 10 airship (the world’s longest aircraft and also known as the “flying bum” for its resemblance to a butt), said on Sunday that its current prototype will not be rebuilt but that it plans to build a new generation of airships, the Guardian reported. HAV, which is … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsPrivacy and SecurityMiami Beach Cops Use Tethered Blimp for Surveillance to Get Around Drone Ban
The state of Florida passed a law in 2015 banning the use of drones to monitor citizens from the air. But police in Miami Beach, Florida have come up with a clever workaround: They’re using a tethered blimp, called an aerostat, for crowd surveillance and they argue that it’s not a drone. The Miami New … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsLockheed Built a Blimp-Crawling Robot That Finds and Fixes Leaks
Satellites and autonomous drones have reduced our need for cutting-edge spy planes and stealth fighters. So Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works, creators of the SR-71 Blackbird, have now built a unique robot called the Spider that can crawl over the surface of blimps to find and fix tiny pinhole leaks. Inspecting an airship’s fabric inflatable envelope … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsGiant Delivery Blimp Sucks Stuff Up and Then Poops It Out
It’s inevitable that one day drones will be tasked with handling deliveries, but instead of sending an expensive autonomous robot out into the world with a package in tow, Festo suggests a helium-filled blimp might be a safer and cheaper way to go. Called the FreeMotionHandling, the flying craft is actually a merger of two … Continued
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Tech News
Our First Look at Airlander 10, the Largest Aircraft in the World
Here it is, folks, our first glimpse of the fully constructed Airlander 10. This floating behemoth measures 302-feet-long, which is 60 feet longer than a jumbo jet. If all goes well, the British-designed hybrid vehicle could see its inaugural test flight later this summer. British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles has been working on the $35.6 … Continued
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Tech NewsPepsi Made a Blimp That Helps Friends Find Each Other at a Music Festival
When you’re truly enjoying yourself at a music festival, it’s all but guaranteed that at some point you’ll get separated from your friends. So to make it easier to find them again, Pepsi made an app-connected blimp that helps guide lost and lonely revelers back to their pals. Created by UK ad agency AMV BBDO, … Continued
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Tech NewsThe World’s Biggest Aircraft Could Launch a New Age of Airships
Airships lost much of their popularity after the fiery Hindenburg disaster in 1937. But one company’s looking to revive the technology with thebiggest aircraft on Earth. It’s called the Airlander 10: over 300 feet long, it’s a floating airship that’s 25 percent bigger than a Boeing 747. It’s 1,340,000 cubic feet in volume, and can … Continued
By Bryan Lufkin -
Tech News
The First Blimp in Washington DC’s New Missile Shield Is Aloft
After years of anticipation, the United States Army has finally floated the first of two football field-sized blimps that will serve as a missile shield for Washington DC. The tethered, helium-filled aerostat is equipped with anti-missile and anti-drone radar to protect the capital from attacks. It also looks like a cartoon. There’s nothing cartoonish about … Continued
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Tech News
Ohio’s Using a Drone to Spy on Prisoners (and Their Smuggling Friends)
Ever heard of the Panopticon? It’s a type of prison design that enables a single watchman to see everyone. Now, Ohiois experimenting with an interesting twist on that idea by putting the watchman in the sky with an infrared camera. The state’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction plans to launch a type of drone into … Continued
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Tech News
I Floated 1,000 Feet Above NYC In the MetLife Blimp
We’ve all seen the MetLife blimp, emblazoned with Snoopy, floating slowly along the NYC skyline once a year every summer. Far fewer have seen the view from inside the blimp. But this month, I was lucky enough to ride along with British-born pilot Mark Finney as he steered MetLife’s 20-year-old Snoopy 1 along this exact … Continued
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Tech News
These Massive Hangars in Orange County Once Housed WWII Airships
Rising conspicuously above the red-tile roofs and big-box stores of suburban Tustin, California, these two massive hangars stand as monuments to a lost age of aviation, built when lighter-than-air dirigibles held promise as the future of air travel—and air warfare. They rank among the largest wooden structures in the world. Step inside one, and the … Continued
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Tech NewsThese High-Flying Drones Almost Hit Satellite Status
Low earth orbit is becoming increasingly crowded with satellite traffic and, as Gravity showed us, increasingly treacherous. So rather than try to squeeze yet another spacecraft into the mix, a French consortium has begun development on a super-high altitude, autonomous dirigible that will skim along the edge of the stratosphere. The Stratobus, which is still … Continued
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Tech News
Goodyear’s Newest Blimp Isn’t Actually a Blimp
This ain’t no blimp. The first new dirigible in nearly a half century to bear the the iconic Goodyear logo is actually a rigid airship—a safer, more efficient, far less explodey form of air travel than conventional blimps. Though orders of magnitude safer than the ill-fated Hindenberg—switching the lifting agent from explosive hydrogen helped to … Continued
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io9
People once wanted to mine the air
Say you live in an age of balloons and explosives. Perhaps, you think, it is time to start putting those two things together. Today global humanitarian efforts continue to deal with the land mines leftover from past wars. At one point in history, it looked like they were going to have to deal with air … Continued
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Tech NewsCheck Out This Army of Bizarre Flying Machines Built By Dyson Engineers
Dyson has some kick-ass vacuum engineers, but even the most passionate vacuum designer needs a little break now and then. That’s why Dyson’s team took a break to work on something completely different for a change of pace: weird, hacked-together flying (and crashing!) machines. This insanity was part of an initiative called “Challenge Dyson” and … Continued
By Eric Limer -
Tech News
A Fleet of Blimps Will Soon Serve as a Missile Shield Over Washington
A still-chilling consequence of post-9/11 America is that we remain all too aware of the fact that we could be attacked at any moment. And so with worst case scenarios in mind, the military is constantly upgrading our defense systems in increasingly creative ways. Washington DC is next in line. It’s getting blimps. To call … Continued
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Tech NewsWatch Goodyear Build Its New Blimp-Replacing Zeppelin
The current Goodyear Blimps have been watching NFL games from the sky since 1969, and now, just like a player who’s been on the receiving end of too many bad tackles, it’s time to retire in favor of something younger and faster. So taking the place of the aging GZ-20 blimps are three new Zeppelin … Continued
By Leslie Horn -
Tech NewsGadgets
It’s Completely Safe to Crash This Fake RC Blimp In Your Living Room
Taking a few notes from the Hindenburg disaster, China’s Amax Toys has created what appears to be a remote control flying zeppelin letting you recreate the glory days air travel. But upon closer examination, it’s actually a dual-rotor RC helicopter with a rollcage designed to only look like a blimp. So not only is there … Continued
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Tech NewsThis DIY LEGO Drone Blimp Could Be Watching You From The Sky
If you thought that private, LEGO surveillance blimps were something from some kind of bizarre steampunk dystopia, you’d only be half-right. Two endeavoring LEGO tinkerers, Tyler Westmoreland and Chris Shepard, have brought such a thing into being using nothing but Mindstorms and a couple of balloons. It’s not the most menacing drone there ever was, … Continued
By Eric Limer