London-based design and innovation company Seymourpowell has whizzed up an incredible vision of a giant, elegant ‘clipper in the clouds’ airship that’s got us scrambling for our passports and monogrammed leather luggage.
Well, it would if it existed, and even if it did, we’d be unlikely to afford to waltz through the air in these beautiful creations.
Called the ‘Aircruise,’ the craft is powered by solar energy with a primary hydrogen fuel cell drive that can cruise across the skies at a leisurely 90mph, leaving no carbon footprint behind.
An intriguing mix of cruise ship and a floating hotel, the 30m high airship could breeze 100 people from London to New York in 37 hours or from Los Angeles to Shanghai in under four days, with all those onboard wallowing in maximum luxury and enjoying views through glass bottomed floors.
Offering four duplex apartments and five smaller apartments together with a penthouse apartment and bar/lounge/communal zone, the Aircruise would offer capacious spaces with a low density of passengers, creating a floating five star hotel in the skies.
According to Nick Talbot, design director at Seymourpowell, the craft’s four external envelopes would come with modular self-sealing lifting bags to ensure a safe flight, even with a major external skin tear.
“The Aircruise concept questions whether the future of luxury travel should be based around space-constrained, resource-hungry, and all too often stressful airline travel. In a world where speed is an almost universal obsession, the idea of making a leisurely journey in comfort is a welcome contrast.”
[Via]
Wow. But can will people *ever* trust hydrogen airships again? In raw logical percentage terms they are proberbly less dangerous than flying in an aeroplane, but people are rarely logical.