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rain shield blimp

 encircle cities with cloud destroying blimps to protect from rain
 
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Remember looking out of an airplane window as you take off on a cloudy day? Pretty soon you're above the cloud layer that persistently hovers over England during the winter months and ITS SUNNY UP THERE! Either we all live in floating cities or we find some way to punch a hole in the cloud layer during winter and brighten up dingy old blighty:

Along the lines of Portable cloud and RainAway we should encircle our cities with helium filled blimps. These would be thethered to the ground with millions of water absorbing fibres, each containing a hollow tube filled with cooled water. Power for cooling the water would come from solar cells on the top surface of the blimps.

The blimps should fly at cloud height and will condendense all the moisture from the cloud. This will trickle down to ground level along the fibres and can be used for market gardens around the city's periphery. Cheap irrigation and guaranteed sunshine all in one!!

—yaffle, Sep 19 2003

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       hey dude, we don't all live in england :)
—po, Sep 19 2003
   

       If we dumped whole clouds in one place, wouldn't we get some serious flooding?
—oxen crossing, Sep 19 2003
   

       This is actually not that bad an idea, just maybe not for the people you have in mind. See, if you did that in a city and got your irrigation water, you'd HAVE to use it or you would kill every green thing in the town. Now a desert community on the other hand would probably love these things.
—Madcat, Sep 19 2003
   

       i was thinking something more along the lines of a giant umbrella which can be rented for emergencies, like if it rains at a wedding or something
—0_owaffleo_0, Sep 19 2003
   

       In the UK the clouds tend to keep things warmer than they would otherwise be, by stopping trapped heat brought up by the gulfstream from being dissipated.   

       No clouds in the winter means weather conditions on a par with Moscow.   

       (nice if you like to ski)
—suctionpad, Sep 22 2003
   

       If the blimp was at lets say 35,000 feet of altitute and you had these water tubes at 35,000 feet and condensing water at that altitute, the speed of the water could also propel turbines perhaps allowing to generate electricty just like a waterfall generator works. At 32 Feet/sec^2 you could probably get the water to fall at around 6 thousand miles an hour not factoring in friction and other variables. This could potentialy make some need invention. As well you could fill the blimp with Hydrogen collected from the water and using electrolysis and electricty to extract the hydrogen allowing to have a long sustaining airship. this idea reminds me of the Aircraft shields they had in WWII over england.
—JoeLounsbury, Oct 15 2003
   


 

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