Produce an "aerogel" evacuating the air fill in order to enclose vacuum in the process. Maybe other matter would compound the struture (as for example aluminum) sufficiently to avoid shrinking but enough ligher-weight to create a effective light-than-air lattice. Let's suppose we can produce at low cost (overwhelming a formidable phalanx of technological barriers) large quatities of Hiper Light Silica (HLS). By synthetizing it massively will permit gather and storage amount of enormous volume of critical cummulating mass in a huge flying assemblage looking forwardly to apply a Trans"Air"tlantic ship construction.
-- Yesearch, Feb 23 2010

Develop a lighter-than-air solid Develop_20a_20lighter-than-air_20solid
[xaviergisz, Feb 24 2010]

lightest aerogel *is* LTA http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Aerogel#Silica
and it's evacuated. [FlyingToaster, Feb 27 2010]

Real Vacuum Airship http://en.wikipedia...airship#cite_note-1
Hey guys I found a interest address (anyway thanks for meet me the reality) [Yesearch, Apr 05 2010]

Aerogel podcast http://www.aerogel.org/?p=1250
which claims to mention the making of thermite aerogel, although I've not actually played the 'cast [lurch, Nov 08 2010]

I hate it when sand gets stuck to my lolly.
-- afinehowdoyoudo, Feb 23 2010


why Silica ?
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 23 2010


Why not? Silica (or silicon) is the most abundant element on earth crust, sufficiently enough to produce large quantities in order to build blocks of such hypothetical material.
-- Yesearch, Feb 24 2010


the <link> will 'help' you.
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 24 2010


This is what I call helpful and quality member: thanks a lot! Glad for that reference.
-- Yesearch, Feb 24 2010


<sigh> subtlety, wherefore art thou.... does 'help' translate as 'do not read' in other languages/cultures ?
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 24 2010


sounds more foreigner/potential-HB'er who's got the wrong impression.

LTA-aerogel would be neat, but from what impression I've got of the stuff, it's sorta crumbly, so you'd still need a way of distributing the weight to avoid crushing it which means an envelope anyways... on the other hand I thought of a way to overcome the problem of the H2 dissipation... just 'soak' the substance in H2 when you're not using it. [edit] but not the problem of turning a nicely flammable H2 into a nicely explosive H2+Air which is what the composition of a solid matrix would be after a few hours exposure to the atmosphere.
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 24 2010


Okay guys, I meet the reality of being foreing in a english site (thanks to you). However, is that contribution all you've got? C'mon, show me what you got!
-- Yesearch, Feb 24 2010


[marked-for-deletion] not an idea.
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 24 2010


FlyingToaster, I made a acreation of matter to the idea. Please, check it out (I think finally we got an idea).
-- Yesearch, Feb 26 2010


//I think we finally got an idea//
really ? maybe you should post it on a site where people go to post their ideas.

I'm not actually against the idea theoretically, but what advantages would a solid have over H2 or He in a bag ?

(interesting fact: the blue colour is from the size of the bubbles)
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 26 2010


//what advantages//

You may not be aware of this, but you can actually make an aerogel out of thermite.
-- lurch, Feb 26 2010


Hi Yesearch, and welcome to the HalfBakery! Ignore the grumpy locals - they are bots. But I think "lighter-than-air aerogel" has been thought of before....
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2010


The ligtest aerogel is about 4 times as dense as air. If you took all the air out, it would still weigh 3 times as much. And if you replaced the air with hydrogen, it's about the same--3 times as much. By the same measure, hydrogen without the aerogel weights .07 times as much as air. So if you want to be hyper light, use a hydrogen balloon.
-- ldischler, Feb 26 2010


The lightest solid is an evacuated silica nanofoam at 1mg/c3... air weighs in at 1.2mg/c3 <link>
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 27 2010


If I wanted to build something lightweight, even from //The lightest solid//, I probably wouldn't use in solid form. Just as if I were building a ship from steel, it would work as long as I didn't try to make it *solid* steel.

A honeycombed aerogel structure with a low-permeability skin would likely hold quite nicely against atmospheric pressure, particularly with a bit of support from a partial-pressure low-density gas.
-- lurch, Apr 05 2010


what you *could* do is use an evacuated aerogel, but to avoid immigration of air which would bring it from 1.0 to 1.9 mg/c3, immerse it in hydrogen in between runs.

but you'd still need lots more aerogel than you would H2 or He.
-- FlyingToaster, Apr 05 2010


Essentially, you require a skin to keep the air out. Then you have to establish that the aerogel has crush resistance above 14.5 psi (air pressure). While that seems feasible, you still have, in essence, a gas-proof bag full of aerogel.

Density of the lighest aerogel = 1mg/cm3.
Density of hydrogen at STP = 0.089 mg/cm3.
(STP - standard temperature and pressure)

Therefore, your aerogel-bag is 11 times heavier than the same bag full of hydrogen.

Therefore, best to throw away the aerogel and fill your bag with H2.
-- BunsenHoneydew, Apr 07 2010


Perhaps the aerogel could be used structurally?
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 08 2010


More on the Thermite aerogel please, good [lurch}. A blimp made of thermite hydrogen aerogel offers certain advantages, it seems to me.
-- bungston, Nov 08 2010


'k, there's a link. If you just google "aerogel recipe thermite", it actually comes up with quite a few hits.
-- lurch, Nov 08 2010



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