*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by vaporlock.

omg they created a real-life prototype of Google's App Engine logo!

http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/70000/70210/google-app-engine-1.jpg

>> ^doogle:

omg they created a real-life prototype of Google's App Engine logo.
http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/70000/70210/google-app-en
gine-1.jpg


OMGZ ! ! ! ! !

I do not get the "breakthrough" aspect of it, I seen this in popular mechanics over ten years ago. The concept is not new.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Cool stuff.

What a waste of perfectly good helium.

A common final year exam question (one of the short questions on one paper) in our physics dept is "would it be possible to power Ireland solely on Wind energy given that total consumption is x KWh". There's one professor who hates and derides wind energy and keeps throwing it in. The basic outline solution is that even if there were turbines on every step of the coastline you still wouldn't create enough energy.

I bet the bastard never thought of helium. Hah!

I wonder how closely together these things can be safely and effectively bunched. If it's better than mounted turbines, this could be good. Something tells me they have to be really far apart so their tethers don't get entangled.

>> ^sillma:

What a waste of perfectly good helium.


Right. Helium is not a good choice. Should have used hydrogen because it's renewable. They can use the energy to make more from water and if it explodes no harm no foul since there are no people on board.

I've heard that helium is getting quite expensive. Something about supply being limited.

Wouldn't that have to factor in to the feasibility of this being financially practical?

>> ^zor:

>> ^sillma:
What a waste of perfectly good helium.

Right. Helium is not a good choice. Should have used hydrogen because it's renewable. They can use the energy to make more from water and if it explodes no harm no foul since there are no people on board.


But a 35 foot wide burning anything crashing to the earth has got to be bothersome.

i'm not sold on the concept. "twice the power of a tower mounted turbine"? but this one has a puny little rotor, whereas the bigges turbines have a rotor alone of more than 400ft in diameter. and this little thing only floats 1000ft in the air (at least they plan to do so, only having achieved 350ft up until now). granted, there's surely more wind "up there" but then what? compare a 400ft rotor (the whole thing is 600ft in total height) to this little plastic sucker in 1000ft? the E-126 turbine i'm taling about generates 6MW. i want to see 12MW coming out of this little blimp thing :-)

http://videosift.com/video/Liquid-Helium-And-Party-Balloons
>> ^brycewi19:

I've heard that helium is getting quite expensive. Something about supply being limited.
Wouldn't that have to factor in to the feasibility of this being financially practical?

Awesome, but only useful until we run out of our supply of helium, which I heard recently is dwindling very rapidly.