Thanks for the blog post in reply to my original question, and yes it was the mention of superheat on the goodyear blimp blog that got me thinking about this.
I have been trawling through my recent internet history to try and find the source of a related question, but can't seem to find it. The question...
Why don't we use heated helium to provide increased lift?It would seem that, as helium is an inert gas, there would be no reason why it couldn't be heated within an envelope. Not just in the superheat sense, but in a similar way to hot-air balloons or hot-air airships - why not hot-helium airships?
Would it not be possible to increase the temperature of the lift gas in proporsion to the extra lift needed based on the weight of the cargo being carried?It seems so obvious now, there must be a reason that it wouldn't work or surely we would have done it long ago.
