Having not watched the video, obviously hydrogen is a bad idea, but I’d also say no to helium airships until it becomes a replenishable resource through nuclear fusion.
Kerosene in airplanes is actually significantly more dangerous. Airships with hydrogen are the only realistic option and the safety of it is only a minor engineering problem today.
Hydrogen is a nuisance of a gas, though - it has a very wide combustible range of mixtures.
But an airship envelope containing multiple lifting units of hydrogen could be passivated by filling the envelope with a non-combustible gas like helium.
So, there’s a big sausage providing structure and that’s full of helium (or nitrogen, or CO2, or anything else which doesn’t react with hydrogen in normal conditions)… and it contains balloons full of hydrogen. If one of them springs a leak, the leak won’t be going into an environment that supports fire. And if the leak then proceeds into surrounding air, the hydrogen is hopefully diluted beyond its combustible range.
Considerably less expensive than using helium only. But considerably safer than using hydrogen among air.
Having not watched the video, obviously hydrogen is a bad idea, but I’d also say no to helium airships until it becomes a replenishable resource through nuclear fusion.
Kerosene in airplanes is actually significantly more dangerous. Airships with hydrogen are the only realistic option and the safety of it is only a minor engineering problem today.
Hydrogen is a nuisance of a gas, though - it has a very wide combustible range of mixtures.
But an airship envelope containing multiple lifting units of hydrogen could be passivated by filling the envelope with a non-combustible gas like helium.
So, there’s a big sausage providing structure and that’s full of helium (or nitrogen, or CO2, or anything else which doesn’t react with hydrogen in normal conditions)… and it contains balloons full of hydrogen. If one of them springs a leak, the leak won’t be going into an environment that supports fire. And if the leak then proceeds into surrounding air, the hydrogen is hopefully diluted beyond its combustible range.
Considerably less expensive than using helium only. But considerably safer than using hydrogen among air.