This is one of those stupid questions

Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:44 am

This was a goofy brain storming deal. I was thinking of aircraft saftey and such things as saftey chutes that some planes can be equipped with.
Then got thinking about something like a C97 or larger plane flying over a large body of water. Could a large plane carry enough pressurized helium in bottles to fill a large ballon to keep it in the air and out of the water? I can see it now someone will get a patent on my idea. :lol:

I guess the hard part would be slowing it enough and deploying the blimp bag.

Fri Oct 23, 2009 4:51 am

how many blondes can you stuff in a c-97? budah-bum

Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:11 am

JimH...........its: 'budda-bing'.........watsamattawitu? (HA!)

Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:52 am

what else have you been inhaling, or do you like talking like a munchkin??

Fri Oct 23, 2009 11:47 am

I have a better idea how about some tanks of expanding foam that could deploy in the case of a water landing. Kind of like how Disney destroyed a B-29.

Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:04 pm

wwrw2007 wrote:I have a better idea how about some tanks of expanding foam that could deploy in the case of a water landing. Kind of like how Disney destroyed a B-29.

What was the disposition of the Noah's Ark floating airframe? Is it one of the survivors?

Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:21 pm

The question is how much helium does it take to lift around 82-175K lbs?
(Empty weight vs. Gross weight)

What happens to the lifting properties of helium when you pressurize it? Does it decrease with more pressure?

Sounds like you have quite the engineering question there.

Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:26 pm

Airlift48 wrote:What happens to the lifting properties of helium when you pressurize it? Does it decrease with more pressure?

I would think so...lest your pressurized bottles would float away! :lol:

Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:21 pm

Right. So you're limited to atmospheric pressure at the volume of a C-97.

I don't think its possible due to the tremendous weights. I think you'd need something much thinner and larger to hold that amount of gas.

Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:05 pm

Airlift48 wrote:

What happens to the lifting properties of helium when you pressurize it? Does it decrease with more pressure?

Helium is still lighter than air no matter how compressed it is. If you could make a cylinder that would hold 2000psi and be light enough, it would float.

Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:06 pm

What AC had all the wing cavities filled with ping pong balls to make it buoyant in case it went down in the drink?

Never mind, found it, Vultee V1-A

Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:22 pm

Edward Sheetmetalhands wrote:
wwrw2007 wrote:I have a better idea how about some tanks of expanding foam that could deploy in the case of a water landing. Kind of like how Disney destroyed a B-29.

What was the disposition of the Noah's Ark floating airframe? Is it one of the survivors?

One of the "Noah's Ark" airframes is stored in Boreggo Springs with Aero Trader. The flying B-29 was "Fertile Mertyle" and that's with Kermit Weeks.
Check out this thread for more info:
http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/p ... =noahs+ark

There was a third one and I'm not sure if that survived.
Jerry

Sat Oct 24, 2009 3:02 am

Wow I see I got all the engineers thinking on this one. I meant having compressed air tanks filled on the aircraft, or even in cryostat form, and filling a huge blimp or balloon, as the aircraft is desending with its saftey chutes. Yeah funny stuff, but on a serious note, I would hate to see one of those nice airplanes go down and turn into dust. I guess the question is how many cubic feet of helium would it take to support that sort of weight. And no the area in the aircraft is not enough to support it, I knew that. I've seen other such STUPID dreams of heavy lift balloons in periodicals like popular science etc. in the past. So other than figuring out flying saucer technology of antigravity and such, a helium balloon is the next best thing.
For real does anyone know blimps and how much weight they will support with how much cubic feet of helium? And since I've read a blimp has maybe .07 psi of helium and somewhere near 250k cu ft in a large one, how many cu ft of helium are in one gallon of helium?

Hmm its looking like about 750K cu ft to lift 50K pounds.
So thats what about a 100 foot cube of helium, right? Hey sounds do able, and that gas is cheaper than trying to replace that precious airplane, now can that much be held in dewars or what ever to deploy that balloon?
Would it even fill fast enough? Fun stuff huh?

Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:06 am

Hi Engguy:

What is the purpose of your idea? Are you trying to create a 50 mile long blow up doll to stop g.w.? If so, pm me on that one. To answer your question about how many C.F. are in 1 gal of helium: 1 gal of helium or any other substance is .134 C.F. That's about 7.5 gal per C.F.

Sun Oct 25, 2009 2:38 am

A2C wrote:Hi Engguy:

What is the purpose of your idea? Are you trying to create a 50 mile long blow up doll to stop g.w.? If so, pm me on that one. To answer your question about how many C.F. are in 1 gal of helium: 1 gal of helium or any other substance is .134 C.F. That's about 7.5 gal per C.F.

????
I don't think so. 1 gallon of liquid helium is much more than that.
If a cryo liquid gas wasn't condensed like that then there would be no reason to contain it in that form.
I just read a site that said 2700 cubic feet of gaseous helium would fit into
a 26 gallon liquid container.