Google’s Sergey Brin Will Splash $100M On ‘Air Yacht’ — Will It Also Ferry Humanitarian Aid?
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is in the midst of constructing what will become the world’s largest aircraft, a blimp that will supposedly double as both a luxury “air yacht” and a humanitarian aid carrier able to bypass road traffic and airport congestion. Sources close to the project peg the eventual cost at up to $150 million.
The blimp, according to the Washington Post, is being built at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif, and will reach a length of more than 200 yards.
Original plans for the blimp included hydrogen as a lifting gas, a cheaper and more effective alternative to helium. Hydrogen, of course, was the lifting gas used on the Hindenburg, the notorious 1937 aircraft that claimed 36 lives. Today, FAA regulations require all airships to use non-flammable lifting gasses, so the hydrogen plan was scrapped, and helium will be used in its place.
Whether Brin’s luxury blimp is a yacht disguised as a humanitarian vehicle has become a subject of debate.
“A flying yacht that’s also going to do deliver assistance is long on the yacht part and a little short on the humanitarian aid part,” said Rob Enderle, technology industry analyst at the analysis firm Enderle Group, told the Washington Post. “I guess [Brin] was looking for a tax deduction. Maybe he can cut back on taxes and operational costs.”
__
Contact Jesse Bernstein at [email protected] or on Twitter @__jbernstein
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO