In a radio interview in 2013, Weston described plans for an airship that could be used to haul cargo. The idea is that airships could be more fuel-efficient than planes and could carry loads directly to where they're needed, rather than to transport centers like airports or shipping stations.
"New airship technologies have the promise to reduce the cost of moving things per ton-mile by up to an order of magnitude," Weston said in the interview. "It depends on the size of the airship. A larger airship can reduce costs a lot more than a smaller ship, but there’s design of a class of vehicles that can lift up to 500 tons that could be actually more fuel-efficient than even a truck."
He went on to describe a prototype he was considering of a helium-based craft that appeared to breathe. "And so the way that works is that the helium in the main envelope is taken and stored in bags inside the airship at a slightly higher pressure," he said. "As you do that, air is taken in from the outside into essentially like lungs that are attached in the side of the vehicle. So the analogy of breathing is a good one. And the overall lift of the vehicle is equal to the weight of the air that is being displaced by the helium. And as you change that, you can control the amount of buoyancy that the vehicle has."
This technique, according to Weston, would allow the airship to carry 500 tons without the need for a ballast. After being contacted about the airship, Weston changed his profile on LinkedIn to list his current job as chief executive officer of ``Ltare.'' He then removed the post.
There have been many attempts to build airships of this type in recent years. It's fitting for such a project to take place in Silicon Valley, which seems to have entered a steampunk phase, as people race to build things ranging from flying cars to tiny reusable rockets.
Brin’s airship is separate from a freight project called Calcifer that was shelved by Google X, the company’s experimental research lab, in 2014.
Alphabet CEO Page, Brin’s Google co-founder, has funded at least two secretive flying-car projects – startups Kitty Hawk and Zee.Aero, also separate from Alphabet. Page has begun to take the wraps off one of these efforts – on Monday, Kitty Hawk released a video showing one of its all-electric vehicles taking off and soaring over a lake with the driver perched on top.
With assistance from Mark Bergen.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.