Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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gas turbine powered hot air dirigible

gas-turbine powered hot air dirigible
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why not build an airship powered by one or more gas turbine engines? the engine could be used to power the propellers and the gas turbine exhaust should be plenty hot enough to provide lift! the engines could be housed inside the craft to provide more heat and to also deaden the noise produced by their operation.another idea is to pass exhaust through heat exchangers or to use turbofans and duct the thrust for propulsion and manuvering.

an even more radical idea would be to use engines like the quantum-nucleic thrusters proposed for predator drones to make hot air and thrust

bobenhotep, Mar 12 2004

Advanced Micro Turbines http://www.amtjets.com/
I don't see that anyone has tried these engines to fire up a hot air balloon. [dpsyplc, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

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       (picturing a blimp spinning on a horizontal axis)
Worldgineer, Mar 12 2004
  

       Wouldn't there be some kind of weight issue, as in too much of it?
DrCurry, Mar 12 2004
  

       Airships get lift from helium not hot air don't they? I don't think you have to heat it. Of course they used to use hydrogen and you must not heat that. - Oh the humanity!!!
k9island, Mar 12 2004
  

       Worldgineer, what, you mean like all single engine aircraft do?   

       DrCurry, not sure how you can say that, gas turbine engines have a much better power to weight ratio than the petrol engines used on most airships and are quite a bit lighter than the diesels of the R101.   

       K9island, true, most 'airships' have used hydrogen or helium, some used coal gas. But hot air baloons use hot air, I guess you could build a hot air airship.   

       I believe this idea has merit and get my vote.
KiwiJohn, Mar 13 2004
  

       if you have ever stood behind an M1 tank while its running, you would understand how much heat a turbine engine makes...
bobenhotep, Mar 13 2004
  

       I've flown an hot air airship, powered by a single cylinder IC engine. Very slow and nice. Tried to cover a marathon event but the runners overtaked me (¿?). With turbines it should go much better, of course. No problem with propeller torque, use two counter-rotating. Nice idea to use the hot exhaust gas to inflate the bag. BUN BUN BUN.
finflazo, May 24 2004
  
      
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