Work has begun on an extraordinary “vacuum” balloon: fast as an airplane

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are working on a “vacuum” balloon with a solid shell that could eventually carry people and travel “as fast as a passenger airliner.”

Miles Boe, a physicist at the lab, told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview that if his experiments are successful, the device could be used for transportation, surveillance and even delivery of packages by unmanned aerial vehicles.

According to the Daily Mail, Bo and fellow chemist Chris Hamilton made small, hollow spheres from an ultra-light material called aerogel, then pumped the air out of them in an attempt to create a solid ball that was lighter than the surrounding atmosphere and allowed it to float.

“Vacuum” tanks will outperform traditional helium or hydrogen tanks, which slowly lose their lift and can potentially lift objects into the air indefinitely.

Patents filed for the potential craft contain designs that are intriguingly reminiscent of the tic-tac-toe UFO encountered by Navy pilots in 2004, which hovered over the ocean and sped away at incredible speed.

But Miles Boe says that while he has made rapid progress since early 2019 and is confident of eventual success, actually creating a floating ball – let alone a supersonic tic-tac-toe – is still a couple of years away from his research.

“We haven’t been able to make anything float yet. But we have tested vessels that are 34 times as dense as air,” says Bo. “And we have demonstrated a proof of concept for creating vessels that are 10 times as dense as air. So, we are within one order of magnitude of actually achieving aerial buoyancy.”

The physicist told DailyMail.com that he had been dreaming about vacuum balloons since he first heard about the ultra-light material airgel.

“They’re at least 98% empty space. So they’re basically made of nothing. I’ve always had the idea that maybe you could make one of these with a low enough density that it would float.” in the air,” Bo says.

“The only way to create a structure that is less dense than air is to create a shell of the material and remove the air from the inside,” says Miles Boe. “And that’s what we explored in these projects.”

He compared the spheres filled with air to sunken ships filled with water.

“These are sunken ships at the bottom of the ocean of air. And only by removing the air from inside the ship will they be able to float,” he said.

The models Beau experimented with were only a few inches wide, too small to float. But he calculated that a sphere the size of a basketball, made of polyimide airgel and reinforced with a lattice of tiny threads, would be enough to take off at sea level.

He said lifting in the thinner air at Los Alamos, where the altitude is 7,500 feet above sea level, would require a sphere about 4.5 feet in diameter.

The physicist is currently seeking funding to continue his research.

And although this is cutting-edge science, the idea of ​​vacuum cylinders is far from new, notes the Daily Mail. In 1670, the Italian Jesuit priest Francesco Lana de Terzi published plans for a flying airship held in the air by vacuum balls of copper.

Bo’s research brings us closer to turning these outdated plans into reality, opening up the possibility of a steampunk future with vacuum airships as the main mode of transport, writes the Daily Mail.

Helium, a gas used in conventional airships, is in short supply. It is produced primarily in just four countries: the United States, Russia, Qatar and Algeria, and its price has soared from less than $2 per cubic meter in 2020 to more than $10 last year. Once in the atmosphere, it continues to rise until it flies off into space and cannot be recovered.

Hydrogen is easily produced but dangerously flammable – as most clearly demonstrated by the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, when a German airship caught fire while landing in New Jersey, killing 36 of the 97 people on board.

Bo said his vacuum tank could eventually be used by companies like Amazon and Walmart, which have filed patents for floating warehouses and delivery drones.

He noted that gas-filled balloons last no more than two years before settling on the ground, while a solid vacuum balloon can remain aloft indefinitely, making it ideal for scientific weather research, cell phone broadcasts, or satellite surveillance. spy agency side.

A Chinese helium spy balloon flew over nuclear missile bases in January before being shot down off the coast of South Carolina by American fighters, the Daily Mail recalls.

Bo’s patent, filed in June 2018, includes a circuit with propellers for his theoretical apparatus. “I don’t really have a good idea of ​​how fast they can fly,” he said. “I know there are some industrial partners interested in achieving speeds comparable to commercial airliners.”

Military and intelligence officials around the world have reported sightings of spherical objects, and they are the most common form of UFO, according to the Pentagon’s All Area Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

Statistics on the department’s website say that 34% of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (the government term for UFOs) are spherical.

In 2004, former Navy aerobatic commander Dave Fravor and his unit famously reported a white tic-tac-toe-shaped object that descended 80,000 feet in less than a second, hovered over the ocean off the coast of Southern California, and then took off at thousands of miles per hour.

“I would have a hard time imagining that this technology could explain these things,” says Bo. “It seems like they’re more mechanical lifting mechanisms based on lift or force, as opposed to buoyancy.”

One company, Aerospherical Systems, has hinted at the supposed ability to create flying balls. According to the company’s website, their technology involves a “specialized sphere” that spins at 22,000 times per minute, churning the air around it to create lift – a technique called the Magnus effect.

The mysterious firm claims on its website that since 2012, “the technology has been proven for use in military operations, public sports facilities and government space agencies on 3 continents,” but also says it is still seeking funding to “support increasing systems sizes , additional analytical equipment and more advanced modeling analysis.’

The website states that “concept testing and engineering studies are conducted using computer simulation systems and actual scaled-down assemblies.”

It also claims that Aerospherical Systems has patents “issued and pending,” although the firm’s name is not listed in the U.S. Patent Database, Google’s International Patent Database, or international corporate registries.