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'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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The fact that helium is such a rare, irreplaceable, and scientifically useful material makes it wild to me that we use it to fill kids' party balloons.
It's not even being collected at the source (natural gas deposits) because it's too cheap to be worth the extraction. This is because of the US liquidating its strategic reserve that it had been holding since the age of Zeppelins.
Also for unmanned aircraft, using helium instead of hydrogen is just crazy
Is it? Hydrogen is about half the mass of helium, but the trick is what you're displacing to generate lift.
1 cubic meter of air is around 1.2 kilograms, depending on a variety of factors.
1 cubic meter of helium is around 0.18 kilograms, displacing the atmosphere to generate about 1.02 kilograms of lift.
1 cubic meter of hydrogen is around 0.08 kilograms, displacing the atmosphere to generate about 1.12 kilograms of lift, a shade under a 10% increase over helium.
That can be significant, depending on other engineering constraints; but is it "crazy" different?
(Numbers will vary with temperature and pressure, back of envelope calculations, etc. etc.)
H2 being 10% more lift while 500% cheaper still makes it the choice. A H2 economy is the path to 100% renewable energy, with a transportable fuel that in a fuel cell is also much more efficient than combustion engines/turbines. Lifting gas, chemicals, agriculture, rocket fuel, all of the existing uses for H2 is just icing on the cake.
True, I hadn't considered the economic angle at all!
0.18 to 0.08 is a gigantic difference, less than half the weight per cubic meter of displacement !!
Not only is cost an issue, but the larger the volume of displaced air, the bigger the dirigible, the harder it becomes to move through the atmosphere, more friction, more air resistance etc..
Fair points, I hadn't considered the economic side of it; or even the mass beyond how it affects lift.
Tom Scott visited the US National Helium Reserve and talked to the field manager of the facility. According to him, it's not that big of a deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOy8Xjaa_o8
(Relevant bit starts around 2:58)
There are two grades of helium wells in terms of purity. Medical and kids' parties.. so that's why it's is still used for balloons.
Good news, it’s not that rare that that would make a difference. There’s plenty of it, just need different extraction techniques to further up the supply (unfortunately, that’s fracking lately iirc)