Speaker 1: Hey, you Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. We had a scheduling change with
Speaker 1: an interview today, so we are going to run a
Speaker 1: vault episode while we reschedule that. This is going to
Speaker 1: be an episode that originally published eight eighteen, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: It is on the idea of the null ship, the
Speaker 1: principles of the vacuum airship. This is a pretty fun
Speaker 1: one where we talked about futuristic materials in seventeenth century
Speaker 1: flight concepts. So without further ado, let's dive right into
Speaker 1: the episode.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Wecome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And in today's episode, we're going to be looking at
Speaker 1: a spectacular bit of hypothetical air travel that has intrigued
Speaker 1: us for centuries. The vacuum airship or null ship as
Speaker 1: I've seen it referred and that's such a cool name
Speaker 1: for something that I think I had a front loaded
Speaker 1: on this episode, but usually it's just referred to as
Speaker 1: a vacuum airship. And the basic principle, as we'll discuss
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. Hydrogen, helium or hot air filled balloons
Speaker 1: allow an airship to traverse the skies because these gases
Speaker 1: are lighter than the surrounding air. An even lighter gas
Speaker 1: is the absence of any gas at all, the vacuum.
Speaker 1: If one could create a vacuum chamber or bladder that
Speaker 1: was itself light enough, then this could be used to
Speaker 1: provide lift for airships on Earth or even on other planets.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's such an obvious extension of the idea
Speaker 3: underlying balloon indirigibles all lighter than their flight craft. You
Speaker 3: would have to assume that if you don't see things
Speaker 3: like this being used all the time, there must be
Speaker 3: a pretty good reason, And I guess we'll get to
Speaker 3: that in a little bit. But yeah, it's like an
Speaker 3: obvious place to take the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so yeah, it's ultimately such a fascinating
Speaker 1: topic because, yeah, there's the basic underlying science of it,
Speaker 1: The principles of it are pretty sound, there are material
Speaker 1: challenges in place, but then the history of the concept
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting as well. Thus far, however, the main
Speaker 1: place you'll see these vacuum airships deployed are going to
Speaker 1: be within the pages of science fiction and fantasy. And
Speaker 1: one of the main examples of this, and you'll see
Speaker 1: this widely cited, is a novel that was serialized between
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine and nineteen thirty by Edgar Reis Burroughs
Speaker 1: titled Tarzan at the Earth's Core, not to be confused
Speaker 1: with At the Earth's Core, which was his ninth fourteen
Speaker 1: novel that established the hollow Earth world of Pellucidar, which
Speaker 1: is this like it sounds, It's like a world within
Speaker 1: our world. It has a race of intelligent and I
Speaker 1: think psychic Terasaar overlords called the Mahar or the Mahar,
Speaker 1: and that novel prominently features a Subterarine. So we've actually
Speaker 1: mentioned that book on the show before in our episode
Speaker 1: about Subdarenes, which is another sort of fantastic hypothetical means
Speaker 1: of traversing the natural environment. But this Tarzan at the
Speaker 1: Earth's Core, is a crossover novel which features Tarzan traveling
Speaker 1: to the inner world via a vacuum airship. And I
Speaker 1: had to dive into this one a little bit. I
Speaker 1: assume you haven't read this one either.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't read it. I do remember it was
Speaker 3: mentioned in that earlier episode but also it just got
Speaker 3: me thinking about, like, wait, where do all of these
Speaker 3: science fiction books about a hollow earth with like a
Speaker 3: different biosphere or some kind of archaic state. Where does
Speaker 3: all that come from? Because this isn't the first one.
Speaker 3: This is in what nineteen twenty nine thirty, But like
Speaker 3: as far back as the eighteen sixties you had Jules
Speaker 3: Vern with Journey to the Center of the Earth, which
Speaker 3: is very similar concept. I don't think it has like
Speaker 3: psychic pterosaurs, but it does have a hollow earth with
Speaker 3: like essentially a mirror biosphere on the inside that has
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
Speaker 1: Well, it makes me think we should come back and
Speaker 1: do a proper episode on the concept of the hollow earth.
Speaker 1: You know why it wouldn't work a quiet individuals thought
Speaker 1: that it could have worked, and why it has you
Speaker 1: know why it has captivated people's imagination for so long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know of anything older than Jules Vern,
Speaker 3: but there may be.
Speaker 1: So I had not read this book either. I think
Speaker 1: the only Edgar Reis Burrough's novel that I have read
Speaker 1: is one called The Monster Men, which Memory serves is largely.
Speaker 1: It seems very inspired by the Eye in an island
Speaker 1: of Doctor Moreau, but it was pretty fun, as I
Speaker 1: remember it, and so I went ahead and dove into
Speaker 1: this one, and I was reading through it trying to
Speaker 1: find some good examples of them talking about vacuum airships.
Speaker 1: And I think I wasted a good like twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes just scanning through the book trying to do
Speaker 1: some searches. And then I realized that I was looking
Speaker 1: at the wrong one. I was looking at the Earth's
Speaker 1: Core instead of Tarzan at the Earth's Core. But I
Speaker 1: switched to the correct book, and they talk about the
Speaker 1: vacuum airship a lot in that one. So I can't
Speaker 1: just find like the one spot where they're talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's a frequent topic of conversation. But I do want
Speaker 1: to read just a fragment here from it where they
Speaker 1: touch on it. So this is Edgar Reisburrough's from Tarzan
Speaker 1: at the Earth's Core again from nineteen twenty nine and
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. The greatest risk that we would have to
Speaker 1: face would be a possible inability to return to the
Speaker 1: outer crust owing to the depletion of our helium gas
Speaker 1: that might be made necessary by the maneuvering of the ship.
Speaker 1: But that is only the same chance of life or
Speaker 1: death that every explorer and scientific investigator must be willing
Speaker 1: to assume in the prosecution of his labors. If it
Speaker 1: were but possible to build a whole sufficiently light and
Speaker 1: at the same time sufficiently strong to withstand atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 1: we could dispense with both the dangerous hydrogen gas and
Speaker 1: the rare and expensive helium gas, and have the assurance
Speaker 1: of the utmost safety and maximum of buoyancy in a
Speaker 1: ship supported entirely by vacuum tanks. Perhaps even that is possible,
Speaker 1: said Tarzan, who was now evincing increasing interest in Gridley's proposition.
Speaker 1: The American shook his head. It may be possible someday,
Speaker 1: he said, but not at present with any known material.
Speaker 1: Any receptacle having sufficient strength to withstand the atmospheric pressure
Speaker 1: upon a vacuum would have a weight far too great
Speaker 1: for the vacuum to lift.
Speaker 3: Okay, so, first of all, I am definitely picturing this
Speaker 3: as the Christoff Lambert Tarzan from Graystoke. This has got
Speaker 3: to be it, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, the gentleman Tarzan here mild spoiler for the book.
Speaker 1: Obviously they figure it out. I believe some sort of
Speaker 1: rare element or metal is introduced that it makes the
Speaker 1: impossible possible, because otherwise, how are you going to get
Speaker 1: Tarzan to the Inner Earth to battle psychic terosaurs.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's funny how this Psychic Terosaur book does
Speaker 3: correctly diagnose some of the problems with existing lighter than
Speaker 3: air craft. So one problem is needing to have continued
Speaker 3: access to your lighter than air gas so that you
Speaker 3: can refill the balloon or the tank do because there's
Speaker 3: always going to be some kind of leakage or potentially
Speaker 3: even damage that would allow the gas to escape. You'd
Speaker 3: have to have a way to get more helium in there.
Speaker 3: If it's helium. Of course, if it's hydrogen, you run
Speaker 3: into a whole raft of other problems, as one can
Speaker 3: see with the history of the hinden Burgens of forth,
Speaker 3: hydrogen very flammable and having the same fixed access problems
Speaker 3: as helium. But yeah, with a vacuum like you don't
Speaker 3: need to carry vacuum around with you. All you would
Speaker 3: need to do is find a way to pump out
Speaker 3: to the chamber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can see why it's such an attractive option,
Speaker 1: and this passage kind of encapsulates all that I was
Speaker 1: looking around. Two, I noticed that it's been noted that
Speaker 1: at least two other authors that we've mentioned on the
Speaker 1: show before have also employed vacuum airship principles. Peter Watts
Speaker 1: makes use of them in his Rifters books as a
Speaker 1: means of enabling flying machines. I'd totally forgotten about this,
Speaker 1: and then Ian M. Banks invoked them in at least
Speaker 1: three different novels, including at least one that I definitely read.
Speaker 1: But I also don't remember mention of them. I guess
Speaker 1: I just wasn't My mind wasn't as open to the
Speaker 1: idea of vacuum airships when I was reading these books.
Speaker 1: And I've also read that they factor into Neil Stevens
Speaker 1: since The Diamond Age, which I have not read, but
Speaker 1: I've heard good things about.
Speaker 3: So wait a minute, I actually know almost nothing about Tarzan.
Speaker 3: Where all does Tarzan go? Is he like the Leprechaun
Speaker 3: or like he goes to space? He goes to the ocean,
Speaker 3: he goes to the Hollow Earth? Does does he go
Speaker 3: to Las Vegas at some point? What are all his adventures?
Speaker 1: Well, Joe, there are twenty four Tarzan novels by by
Speaker 1: Edgar W Reis Burroughs, so you know he ultimately gets around.
Speaker 1: I have not read any of them, but you can
Speaker 1: just when you start scanning the titles, you realize that
Speaker 1: he maybe starts running out of jungle and he has
Speaker 1: to has to go to lost Empires in the Earth's
Speaker 1: core and a city of gold Forbidden City. Looks like
Speaker 1: he may join the Foreign Legion at one point, so
Speaker 1: you know, he's got to get out there and travel
Speaker 1: around and explore the outer world. But I think generally speaking,
Speaker 1: he's always going to battle or befriends some sort of
Speaker 1: a large animal.
Speaker 3: Thank you for correcting my tarzan ignorance. Now I know,
Speaker 3: all right, But I guess before we go any further
Speaker 3: exploring the history of proposals for vacuum airships, it would
Speaker 3: be worth briefly explaining the underlying reasoning, and that is
Speaker 3: that whether you're talking about a lighter than air gas
Speaker 3: inside a balloon or a rigid chamber containing a vacuum,
Speaker 3: the physics phenomenon that would cause this balloon or chamber
Speaker 3: to fly is what's known as Archimedes principle, named after
Speaker 3: the ancient Greek inventor and mathematician, And I think the
Speaker 3: core idea you really need to understand in order to
Speaker 3: grasp archimedes principle at a gut level is the idea
Speaker 3: of fluid displacement. Fluid displacement so a few extreme experimental
Speaker 3: conditions aside. Basically, if you are on Earth, you are
Speaker 3: submerged within a fluid. So if you're a barracuda or
Speaker 3: a jellyfish, that fluid is going to be water. If
Speaker 3: you are a human standing in line at burger king,
Speaker 3: that fluid is the atmosphere. Both gases and liquids are
Speaker 3: fluids because they both flow to fill containing environments. And
Speaker 3: when you occupy space within a mass of either kind
Speaker 3: of fluid, whether it's liquid or gas, you are taking
Speaker 3: up space that this fluid would otherwise fill, would otherwise
Speaker 3: rush in to fill, So in other words, you are
Speaker 3: displacing gas or liquid. The inside about physics that Archimedes
Speaker 3: had is that objects submerged within a fluid are pushed upward,
Speaker 3: meaning in the opposite direction of gravity, by a force
Speaker 3: that is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced
Speaker 3: by that object. And this is why boats float. I mean,
Speaker 3: humans have been making boats for a long time, but
Speaker 3: it took us a while to figure out what is
Speaker 3: the exact physics principle governing the floatation of boats. So
Speaker 3: a boat, for example, may have a steel hull, and
Speaker 3: steel is very dense, so you would think that a
Speaker 3: steel boat should sink, right, I remember wondering about this
Speaker 3: when I was a little kid. How does metal sink?
Speaker 3: So how does a metal boat float? A metal boat
Speaker 3: floats because the hull of the boat displaces a lot
Speaker 3: of water, an amount of water that is as heavy
Speaker 3: as the boat itself. So when a boat gets launched
Speaker 3: out into the ocean, it sinks down in the water
Speaker 3: until the amount of water it displaces is the same
Speaker 3: as the weight of the boat overall. And then after
Speaker 3: it reaches this equilibrium, it's held up on the surface
Speaker 3: of the water by that buoyancy, that force pushing upward
Speaker 3: on the boat equivalent to the weight of the water
Speaker 3: it displaces. And this, of course is also why a
Speaker 3: ship sinks when water leaks into its hull. It's water
Speaker 3: that is denser than air filling that void that was
Speaker 3: otherwise filled with air. So a kind of weird, but
Speaker 3: I think accurate way to think of a ship on
Speaker 3: the ocean is a rigid balloon filled with air. Now,
Speaker 3: the same principles that apply in water also hold true
Speaker 3: in the fluid of the atmosphere. There is a force
Speaker 3: pushing up on an object that is equivalent to the
Speaker 3: weight of the air that that object displaces. Now, for
Speaker 3: most objects around us, the atmospheric buoyancy is negligible because
Speaker 3: objects are way more dense than the atmosphere that they're displacing.
Speaker 3: Though technically it is true that your body has a
Speaker 3: measurable buoyancy within the air, it's not enough to make
Speaker 3: you float up off the ground because human bodies are
Speaker 3: pretty massive. But based on some rough calculations I looked up,
Speaker 3: it seems like it's probably a fraction of a pound
Speaker 3: at sea level for the typical range of human body weights.
Speaker 3: One estimate I saw was that it's like zero point
Speaker 3: two pounds for one hundred and seventy pound adult. So,
Speaker 3: how can you change an object in order to take
Speaker 3: advantage of that atmospheric buoyancy and make it float up
Speaker 3: in the atmosphere like a boat floats on the water. Well,
Speaker 3: as demonstrated by balloons and dirigibles, what you can do
Speaker 3: is make that object take up a lot of space,
Speaker 3: mostly with material that is lighter than the atmosphere itself,
Speaker 3: which is usually going to be a lighter than air
Speaker 3: gas like hydrogen or helium. But of course it could
Speaker 3: also be a chamber that has no gas in it
Speaker 3: at all, nothing in it at all, which would be
Speaker 3: the lightest possible way of taking up space. Now here's
Speaker 3: a weird fact. I was just wondering about which of
Speaker 3: the fundamental forces actually causes the force of buoyancy. Where
Speaker 3: is that force pushing up on a boat or pushing
Speaker 3: up on a balloon coming from? Counterintuitively, that force originates
Speaker 3: with gravity, which is kind of strange because the force
Speaker 3: of buoyancy is going in the opposite direction of gravity, Right,
Speaker 3: Why would gravity cause something to rise up from the
Speaker 3: ground instead of sinking down. But you have to think
Speaker 3: about a sort of chain of causes here. So whether
Speaker 3: you're talking about the atmosphere or the ocean, gravity is
Speaker 3: pulling all that fluid toward the Earth's center of mass.
Speaker 3: It's pulling all the water or the gas down. So
Speaker 3: gravity is the cause of air pressure and water pressure,
Speaker 3: and it is the downward pressure of the surrounding fluid
Speaker 3: that causes buoyant objects within that fluid to rise. To
Speaker 3: use some kind of approximate and anthropomorphic terms, when a
Speaker 3: balloon floats, it's because the heavier gas of the atmosphere
Speaker 3: around it is all rushing down to get to the surface,
Speaker 3: and it has to push the balloon out of the
Speaker 3: way to get there, and it can push the balloon
Speaker 3: out of the way because the balloon is less dense
Speaker 3: than it is.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if asking, well, hey, why if
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to get to the TV section of the
Speaker 1: big box store on Black Friday. If everybody's trying to
Speaker 1: get there, then why is the four Why am I
Speaker 1: being pushed out of the store? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Because everybody else is pushing harder than you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But to come to real world proposals for vacuum airships,
Speaker 3: one thing I was shocked about was how far back
Speaker 3: this idea goes. I would have imagined it was something
Speaker 3: dreamed up in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was very much the same. But then I
Speaker 1: started looking into it, and sure enough, the roots go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the seventeenth century. So our
Speaker 1: story here begins with an Italian Jesuit priest by the
Speaker 1: name of Francesco Lana de Terzi, who lived sixteen thirty
Speaker 1: one through sixteen eighty seven, sometimes called the father of aeronautics.
Speaker 1: His groundbreaking book from sixteen seventy, titled pro Dromo de
Speaker 1: l'arte mastre, was apparently the first to discuss the possibility
Speaker 1: of human flight via mathematical calculations and an understanding of physics.
Speaker 1: These were no mere lost speculations either. This was a
Speaker 1: work that was translated and then circulated throughout Europe, and
Speaker 1: subsequent advancements in ballooning, for example, are often directly linked
Speaker 1: to this work, namely thinking of the Montegaffier brothers a
Speaker 1: flight in seventeen eighty three, which was an unmanned balloon
Speaker 1: flight lasting about ten minutes. Now, want to stress we're
Speaker 1: largely talking with the Western and European sphere of exploration here.
Speaker 1: If you get into say Eastern accounts, there are some
Speaker 1: older accounts of possible you know, unmanned hot air balloon
Speaker 1: experimentation in China for example, going back to I think
Speaker 1: like the third century see wow, but again unmanned. Now,
Speaker 1: in this particular book, Lana covered many subjects, and I
Speaker 1: was reading about this in a paper titled the Jessuwit
Speaker 1: Contribution to Written Art Technological Sources in the seventeenth and
Speaker 1: eighteenth centuries by Karina Gramatki from twenty sixteen. Apparently, the
Speaker 1: topics include invention itself, drawing, design, pigments, chemistry, medicine, arithmetic,
Speaker 1: the production of telescopes, microscopes, and finally aeronautics.
Speaker 3: Pick a lane.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was an age where, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: were into stuff, you were into everything. Yeah, So of
Speaker 1: particular interest to Lana here though, were recent advancements in
Speaker 1: the creation of the vacuum pump. This had, of course
Speaker 1: been a continuation of suction pump technology. The idea of
Speaker 1: the vacuum pump. The first vacuum pump was invented in
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty by the German scientist Auto von Gerriki and
Speaker 1: subsequently experimented on by others. Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've talked about Auto von Gerriki before in I
Speaker 3: think in an episode that we did about atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 3: specifically reference to his experiments with the so called Magdeburg hemispheres,
Speaker 3: which was a really interesting experiment that took place in
Speaker 3: the sixteen fifties, I believe, And it's been while since
Speaker 3: we talked about it, so I may be forgetting some
Speaker 3: of the details, but basically, from what I recall, they
Speaker 3: took two brass hemispheres half spheres, and then greased the
Speaker 3: edges of them with lard and then pressed them together
Speaker 3: and then used the invent of the air pump to
Speaker 3: remove air from inside these two hemispheres, creating a vacuum within,
Speaker 3: of course, a partial vacuum. You know, they're not going
Speaker 3: to get every single molecule out, but yeah, getting most
Speaker 3: of the gas out of them. And then they hooked
Speaker 3: these hemispheres up to horses and had the horses pull
Speaker 3: in opposite directions to try to pull them apart, and
Speaker 3: they couldn't. Like that, even horses could not separate them.
Speaker 3: What they were demonstrating there was how heavy the atmosphere is.
Speaker 3: That when you take all of the atmosphere out of
Speaker 3: the inside of these two half spheres, you create such
Speaker 3: a disequilibrium that the you know, the atmosphere is essentially
Speaker 3: reaching down and clutching these two things and pressing them
Speaker 3: together so that even great force cannot pull them apart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a couple of papers on this topic
Speaker 1: that I was reading from New Scientists actually, like I
Speaker 1: was kind of getting the impression that maybe the editor
Speaker 1: at New Scientists is like pounding the desk that I
Speaker 1: need more vacuum airship stories. But one of them was
Speaker 1: from two thousand and nine by Paul Collins, titled The
Speaker 1: Rise and Fall of the Metal Airship, which is ultimately
Speaker 1: about metal airships in general and not just the vacuum
Speaker 1: airship concept. But he mentions this experiment, writing quote, Otto
Speaker 1: von Gerriki had drawn together small copper hemispheres with such
Speaker 1: a strong vacuum that teams of horses could not pull
Speaker 1: them apart. But you mentioned some other things of note here.
Speaker 1: Collins also writes that the concept of a vacuum airship
Speaker 1: appears in a German interplanetary travelogue of seventeen forty four,
Speaker 1: envisioning trips to Mars. So another example of something ultimately
Speaker 1: far earlier than I would have had guessed it. If
Speaker 1: I was to guess, well, when were people first thinking
Speaker 1: about vacuum airships in the atmosphere of Mars, I would
Speaker 1: not have gone with the mid seventeen hundreds. Right now
Speaker 1: is a brief detour. I want to touch on another
Speaker 1: thing that Collins mentions here to get to the title
Speaker 1: of his paper. There actually was eventually a metal non
Speaker 1: vacuum airship, and this was in eighteen ninety seven. The
Speaker 1: first one was a thirty eight meter airship designed by
Speaker 1: David Schwartz and helped into the sky by the Prussian
Speaker 1: Airship Battalion, and it was It was blimp shaped, but
Speaker 1: its skin was riveted aluminum plates, and it traveled about
Speaker 1: six kilometers total before it stopped. They put the brakes
Speaker 1: on and it caused the thing to crumble due to
Speaker 1: its rigid construction. But the advantage of a fully functional
Speaker 1: metal airship would be speed, though, so the idea didn't
Speaker 1: go completely away, and in nineteen twenty nine, good Year's
Speaker 1: original airship designer Ralph Ubson quote formed the Metal Clad
Speaker 1: Airship Corporation to build an aluminum clad helium airship, the
Speaker 1: ZMC two for the US Navy. Although notoriously difficult to handle,
Speaker 1: the quote unquote ten Bubble as it was dubbed, could
Speaker 1: reach a speed of one hundred kilometers an hour and
Speaker 1: it put in twenty two one hundred flight hours before
Speaker 1: it was decommissioned in nineteen forty one, and that was
Speaker 1: it for metal airships that was the last one that
Speaker 1: took to the skies here on Earth. And yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the Detroit ZMC two Angel. I include a picture
Speaker 1: of it here for you. If one was looking at
Speaker 1: you might not guess that what you're looking at is
Speaker 1: a metal structure, aluminum clad helium airship.
Speaker 3: That I mean, if I've ever seen a tin bubble,
Speaker 3: that is the ten bubble. But to clarify again the
Speaker 3: actual examples we've just been talking about that people got
Speaker 3: up in the air flying, even if they were even
Speaker 3: if they failed early on, these were not vacuum airships.
Speaker 3: These were airships that you even though they had rigid
Speaker 3: outer hulls, they did use some form of gas inside.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So ultimately, as we'll discuss, the vacuum airship
Speaker 1: is still a concept that individuals are still chasing today. Now,
Speaker 1: coming back to Lana's book here, another important connection here
Speaker 1: would be to Robert Boyle's work proving that air has weight. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was proven that all of the atmosphere could be
Speaker 1: mechanically drawn out of a volume. Maybe the nature didn't
Speaker 1: abhor a vacuum quite as much as previously supposed. And
Speaker 1: Lina is taking the next step by speculating one exciting
Speaker 1: way that such a vacuum could be made to work
Speaker 1: for us. So what Lna does here is he basically
Speaker 1: applies what was known at the time regarding the nature
Speaker 1: of air, vacuum and cylinders to devise a means by
Speaker 1: which first vacuum spheres would be made that would float
Speaker 1: up through the air, and secondly that with enough vacuum
Speaker 1: you could also float a vessel. So he proposed a
Speaker 1: vessel consisting of a basket with a sail and rudder,
Speaker 1: held aloft by four large twenty five foot spheres made
Speaker 1: of thin copper sheeting and bound together by rigging. This
Speaker 1: was of course, never actually built, but there have been
Speaker 1: various illustrations of what this would have looked like. I
Speaker 1: included one here for you, Joe.
Speaker 3: It looks positively whimsical. Why does it have an ore?
Speaker 3: I guess that's some kind of rudder.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, this is some sort of rudder device to
Speaker 1: steer it.
Speaker 3: Though it really does look like a paddle for the air.
Speaker 1: Now again, Now again, Lana was a very serious individual,
Speaker 1: so he's not just dreaming here. He's applying what was
Speaker 1: known about the atmosphere and current understanding of physics, and
Speaker 1: so he was serious about the underlying principles at work here.
Speaker 1: So he discusses not only how this concept might work,
Speaker 1: but he also gets into some of the objections to it.
Speaker 1: For instance, do you might ask, well, wouldn't this just
Speaker 1: float up into outer space until the people aboard died
Speaker 1: and it would just be completely uncontrollable. Well, he describes
Speaker 1: how controlling the air vacuum levels would allow you to
Speaker 1: make adjustments and keep yourself from just floating up to
Speaker 1: heights altitudes beyond which you had intention of traveling to.
Speaker 3: Right, So, I guess the fear is that, you know,
Speaker 3: if the vacuum is potent enough that it would just
Speaker 3: float you up to the top of the atmosp sphere
Speaker 3: and you'd sit on it like a boat floats on
Speaker 3: top of the water. Now, of course, you have to
Speaker 3: remember that even the wa a vacuum chamber would have
Speaker 3: buoyancy within the atmosphere. It also, again, there is weight,
Speaker 3: you know, there is weight made up of the shell
Speaker 3: surrounding the chamber and the boat and all that, So
Speaker 3: that would counterbalance that to some extent. But then also, yeah,
Speaker 3: the other thing is that you could control altitude just
Speaker 3: by allowing some amount of gas back into these partial
Speaker 3: vacuum chambers, and then so that would help you sink
Speaker 3: back down and then if you want to float up again,
Speaker 3: you would once again pump that gas out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the big problem here, of course, is the
Speaker 1: notion of containing that vacuum. The big question would be
Speaker 1: wouldn't it crush the copper spheres that are containing that
Speaker 1: vacuum or you know, that are allowing the whole system
Speaker 1: to supposedly float to begin with. And the correct answer
Speaker 1: we know now is yes, it would have just crushed
Speaker 1: those spheres. But at the time Lana contended that no,
Speaker 1: this is the perfect shape of the sphere would hold
Speaker 1: to the equal pressure of the vacuum within it. Again,
Speaker 1: we know now this wouldn't work, but his hypothesis was
Speaker 1: that it could possibly function.
Speaker 3: Right, So, I guess here you're getting into the idea
Speaker 3: of a balancing act, right, so that you can of
Speaker 3: course create a pretty pretty strong vacuum within a sealed
Speaker 3: chamber without the weight of the atmosphere crushing it, just
Speaker 3: you know, turning smashing that chamber like a tin can.
Speaker 3: But in order to do that, you have to make
Speaker 3: the outsides of the chamber pretty darn strong, and in
Speaker 3: order to make them that strong, you have to add
Speaker 3: more and more weight to the chamber, thus counteracting the
Speaker 3: buoyancy effect of the vacuum within.
Speaker 1: Right, So you're chasing the buoyancy here, and can you
Speaker 1: achieve it without adding so much metal that you lose
Speaker 1: any buoyancy you might be seeking after? And can you
Speaker 1: make the materials thin enough without just causing it to
Speaker 1: collapse anyway? And this will remain important when we get
Speaker 1: into subsequent attempts to make this hypothesis and or a reality.
Speaker 1: But here's another little bit of interesting, ultimately speculation by
Speaker 1: Lana on the use of aerial technology, because he ends
Speaker 1: up concluding in the book that God would never allow
Speaker 1: such a vessel to actually be built, as it could
Speaker 1: then be used to attack cities and towns from above,
Speaker 1: and that there would be absolutely no stopping such vessels.
Speaker 1: So you know, God would just shut that down. It
Speaker 1: would be like a tower of Babbel situation.
Speaker 3: Oh, this theological prediction must have been very well vindicated
Speaker 3: then when later people came along, I think Leibniz was
Speaker 3: one of them, showing that like no materials we know
Speaker 3: about are strong enough to make this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, this idea of aerial dominance seat that
Speaker 1: would be possible in a military situation, to a large
Speaker 1: extent line was correct here about just how devastating this
Speaker 1: would be because, of course, during World War One, Zeppelin
Speaker 1: served as the world's first long range bombers, though their
Speaker 1: dominance would be short lived due to their weakness versus
Speaker 1: interceptor aircraft. But aerial bombardment would indeed be a defining
Speaker 1: factor of warfare from the twentieth century onward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the invention of air power, I guess I would
Speaker 3: say airpower, along with like long range artillery, completely changed
Speaker 3: war in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Now, on that note, let's move to the next chapter
Speaker 1: in our history of the vacuum airship or our pursuit
Speaker 1: of the vacuum airship, because this will take us to
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century right up until the dawn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Because there was at least one spirited
Speaker 1: individual who thought, yes, the vacuum airship can work, it
Speaker 1: will work, and that is one author Debas Set and
Speaker 1: this is detailed in Balloons to Jets, A Century of
Speaker 1: Aeronautics in Illinois eighteen fifty five through nineteen fifty five
Speaker 1: by one Howard L. Scame Horn so author debasit here
Speaker 1: was a Chicago doctor who quote designed an electorally powered
Speaker 1: vacum balloon which he intended to use for transporting passengers
Speaker 1: and freight over vast distances at high speeds. And this
Speaker 1: is described as an air tight tube cone shaped at
Speaker 1: either end, and it was going to be made of
Speaker 1: thin steel sheets and it would stay aloft when all
Speaker 1: of the air had been pumped out of it. And
Speaker 1: again it would be used for high speed transportation of
Speaker 1: passengers and freight, presumably from Chicago two other important cities.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you can create that without the atmosphere
Speaker 3: crushing it, good on you. But I am doubtful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so at this point you might think, okay,
Speaker 1: Chicago doctor daydreaming about his airships. Well, no, he went
Speaker 1: a step further. The good doctor actually organized a company
Speaker 1: with three associates, the Aerial Navigation Company of Chicago, and
Speaker 1: they raised one hundred and thirty thousand dollars at the
Speaker 1: time through the sale of stock to construct one of
Speaker 1: the ships. So already it's sounding a bit more like
Speaker 1: a legitimate effort now, right, And there's more when they
Speaker 1: hadn't produced anything with these funds. They turned to Congress
Speaker 1: for more funds and funding. Bills were introduced in both
Speaker 1: houses of Congress by then a representative Ransom W. Dunham
Speaker 1: of Chicago, and there was apparently some traction or momentum here,
Speaker 1: but both bills failed to pass.
Speaker 3: Why does this sound like something that should be associated
Speaker 3: with the Chicago World's Fair.
Speaker 1: I know, I was thinking of the same thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and I guess to a certain extent, we are talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the same sort of you know,
Speaker 1: futuristic technological optimistic ideas that were circulating at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, we have the technology, but we can do this.
Speaker 1: We can make these airships of reality and they're going
Speaker 1: to fundamentally change the way we travel and the way
Speaker 1: we move cargos. This is great, Let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: get the funding. Okay, well, maybe we need a little
Speaker 1: more funding. Let's get Congress on the Horn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really it sounds like there should be a
Speaker 3: chapter about the fact humorship and devil in the White City.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, Skamehorn writes that the fight for the Chicago
Speaker 1: Void Vessel here went on for a good twenty years
Speaker 1: up until the dawn of the new century with the
Speaker 1: debasit trying in vain to raise enough money to build
Speaker 1: one of these ships, all the while dealing with scientific
Speaker 1: critics that he just insisted would be proved wrong if
Speaker 1: they would just let him build one. He was like, look,
Speaker 1: just fund it, Just let me build one, and then
Speaker 1: you'll see, you'll see that this is possible. But it
Speaker 1: sounds like the real nail in the coffin was that
Speaker 1: one of a couple of leading US aeronautical authorities of
Speaker 1: the time, Octave Cheneu and Albery Francis Zahm, quote publicly
Speaker 1: denounced and mathematically prove the fallacy of the vacuum principle.
Speaker 3: Now, I don't know the basis of the fallacy they're
Speaker 3: talking about there, but I would have to assume that
Speaker 3: again it's going to be it's going to be rooted
Speaker 3: in the lack of a material strong enough and light
Speaker 3: enough to create this kind of vacuum shell. That if
Speaker 3: you're going to create a rigid shell to contain a vacuum,
Speaker 3: the atmosphere is always going to crush it unless you
Speaker 3: make it so thick and so heavy that it that
Speaker 3: it again outdoes the buoyancy effect of the vacuum and
Speaker 3: makes it unable to fly.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean that has always been and still
Speaker 1: is largely the Achilles heel of the whole concept. By
Speaker 1: the way, that same book also reveals that during this
Speaker 1: same time period there was at least one other Illinois
Speaker 1: based inventor trying to raise funds for an airship. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a vacuum airship, but still airships were very much
Speaker 1: on the brain. And it does sound like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: the people of the White City at the time were
Speaker 1: sharing some of the same dreams for what the future
Speaker 1: of air travel looked like.
Speaker 3: What if HH Holmes, instead of operating like a murder hotel,
Speaker 3: had operated a murder airship.
Speaker 1: God, a good movie, pitch, We haven't had a I
Speaker 1: don't think we've had a good airship movie recently. Right,
Speaker 1: it could be like a haunted airship or a murder airship.
Speaker 3: I can't think of one. I think of that scene
Speaker 3: in Indiana Jones in the Last carse that's about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there was. There was another one.
Speaker 3: When he punches the Nazi out of the window no ticket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a and that had some some
Speaker 1: very neat scenes with the Zeppelin. There there was also
Speaker 1: a movie called Zeppelin that had Michael Yorck in it.
Speaker 1: This would have come out in nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 1: I remember seeing bits of this. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: watched it in its entirety, but I remember catching bits
Speaker 1: of it on like America Movie Classics or something, and
Speaker 1: him being impressed by some of the scenes of people
Speaker 1: aboard these these airships. All right, well, let's take things
Speaker 1: into the twenty first century. Another New Scientist article. Again,
Speaker 1: New Scientist is your go to place for articles about
Speaker 1: vacuum airships. Noted science writer Philip Ball discussed in a
Speaker 1: New Scientist article titled flying on Empty from twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and as Ball discusses, yeah, this idea has never quite
Speaker 1: gone away, in part because if it could be pulled
Speaker 1: off again, you don't need hot air or flammable hydrogen
Speaker 1: or precious helium to keep the ship afloat. It's not
Speaker 1: about pump putting something in. It's about just taking atmosphere out.
Speaker 1: And if you could only figure out the materials problem,
Speaker 1: then you know the world is your oyster.
Speaker 3: And again, the materials problem is designing an outer shell
Speaker 3: that would be strong enough to withstand the atmospheric pressure
Speaker 3: trying to crush it in, but also light enough to
Speaker 3: stay afloat right.
Speaker 1: And of course, as we get into the modern era,
Speaker 1: we're in this age of special nanomaterials and new ways
Speaker 1: of looking at how these materials can be put together.
Speaker 1: And of course this has led to a number of
Speaker 1: ideas that haven't been possible yet. We've been able to
Speaker 1: look to the future and say, well, what might we
Speaker 1: be able to do if we can just create something
Speaker 1: that's strong and flexible enough, you know, space elevators can
Speaker 1: become a reality then, as well as things potentially like
Speaker 1: the vacuum airship. And so Ball mentions an individual by
Speaker 1: the name of Ben Jenett, who at the time of
Speaker 1: publication was working on his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute
Speaker 1: of Technologies Center for Bits and Atoms, and Genet devised
Speaker 1: the use of lightweight quote unquote lattice materials to make
Speaker 1: the shell of a vacuum ship possible. So Ball points
Speaker 1: out that Genet calculated that even with currently available materials,
Speaker 1: a shell with a thickness one tenth of the radius
Speaker 1: of the sphere it contains would be able to withstand
Speaker 1: the air pressure without buckling, and this would then have
Speaker 1: to be covered with a thin, impermeable skin. Genet's idea
Speaker 1: would also involve creating the vacuum at a higher altitude,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting where air pressure is lower
Speaker 1: and so you would have some I think what it
Speaker 1: was discussed here is solar powered hot air would be
Speaker 1: used to allow the vessel to rise up to that
Speaker 1: initial altitude, and then you would begin the vacuum process
Speaker 1: when it's easier to pull that off, and then you
Speaker 1: would have a theoretical operating altitude of something like twenty
Speaker 1: thousand meters or sixty five six hundred and sixteen feet.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that makes sense. Up at a higher altitude,
Speaker 3: the air pressure is going to be reduced, which means
Speaker 3: there's less crushing force on the outside of the chamber.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's my understanding here. So Ball points out
Speaker 1: the Gendit and his collaborators here were in at least
Speaker 1: we're in perhaps still are in contact with Boeings Aurora
Speaker 1: Flight Sciences on the concept, and then an Italian company
Speaker 1: called oh Boot was also looking into vacuum ship ideas.
Speaker 1: Ball reported that while most of the emphasis was on
Speaker 1: shipping with these modern concepts, the idea of at least
Speaker 1: some level of human travel wasn't beyond possibilities as well,
Speaker 1: at least for short jaunts. And again you come back
Speaker 1: to this sort of the romanticism of airships. I can
Speaker 1: imagine where this would be the case.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing you mentioned that operating altitude you said,
Speaker 3: twenty thousand meters or like sixty five thousand feet, is
Speaker 3: well above the normal operating altitude of fixed wing aircraft.
Speaker 3: So I wonder what does it look like once you
Speaker 3: get up that high? Are you starting to get into
Speaker 3: like looking at seeing the curve of the Earth territory?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like a situation where you could easily
Speaker 1: get into this area where you're pretty selling the tickets
Speaker 1: to celebrities and so forth, kind of like we've seen
Speaker 1: with these other high altitude flight near space travel scenarios.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. It'd be interesting to see where
Speaker 1: things go in the decades ahead, But I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised at all to see one of these concepts sort
Speaker 1: of come to fruition in at least in that scenario.
Speaker 1: But I know when it happens, I'll be able to
Speaker 1: turned a new scientist to read an article.
Speaker 3: About it for all your nullship needs.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: So one thing I looked into is that vacuum airships
Speaker 3: have also been proposed in various ways for exploring other planets,
Speaker 3: particularly Mars. I think there have been a few ideas
Speaker 3: along these lines, but the main one I was reading
Speaker 3: about was linked to a U T. Austin aerospace engineering
Speaker 3: professor named John Paul Clark, who I think until just
Speaker 3: recently was here in town at Georgia Tech. But Clark
Speaker 3: and colleagues submitted a paper that I saw published under
Speaker 3: the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program or in IAC. This
Speaker 3: was a Phase one proposal called Evacuated Airship for Mars missions.
Speaker 3: And I was reading about this in another summary that
Speaker 3: Clark had prepared that's hosted on the NASA website, and
Speaker 3: he makes some interesting points. One funny thing is that
Speaker 3: advanced project briefs like this always have the obligatory section
Speaker 3: where they rag on whatever technology we're currently using. So
Speaker 3: this one takes a few good wax. At ground based
Speaker 3: rovers on Mars, it's like you know, rover with wheels.
Speaker 3: You can fall in a ditch, you can get stuck,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's got limited line of sight, can't
Speaker 3: see over mountains. Theres a lot of problems with ground
Speaker 3: based rovers. You know what would be better a rover
Speaker 3: that could fly, But of course it's going to be
Speaker 3: very hard to fly on Mars. And here's where a
Speaker 3: vacuum airship could come in. Obviously, a vacuum airship would
Speaker 3: be useful in planetary explorations for some of the same
Speaker 3: reasons it would be useful on Earth. You get the
Speaker 3: general transportation efficiency benefits of air travel without having to
Speaker 3: rely on a fixed supply of low density gas like
Speaker 3: hydrogen or helium. To keep a vacuum airship afloat, you
Speaker 3: don't need a supply of gas. Technically, all you need
Speaker 3: is power like electricity to operate a pump that will
Speaker 3: continuously evacuate gas particles from the inner void. Now, Clark
Speaker 3: points out that there is a good reason what we've
Speaker 3: never developed a vacuum airship for use on Earth. It's
Speaker 3: the same reason we've been talking about already. There is
Speaker 3: no homogeneous material yet discovered that is strong enough to
Speaker 3: be completely evacuated and withstand the crushing pressure of Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 3: at least not without the structure becoming too heavy to float.
Speaker 3: Earth's air is cruel to vacuum airships. But Clark argues that,
Speaker 3: based on his team's calculations, not only is this not
Speaker 3: true on Mars, the atmosphere of Mars is kind of
Speaker 3: an ideal environment for a vacuum airship. Now this immediately
Speaker 3: went against my intuitions, because before I really reasoned it
Speaker 3: through and read the argument here, I would have thought, well, okay,
Speaker 3: the atmosphere of Mars is much less dense than Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 3: The average surface density is something like zero points zero
Speaker 3: two kilograms per cubic meter. Compare that to Earth's, which
Speaker 3: is more like one point two kilograms per cubic meter.
Speaker 3: So Earth's is a couple of orders of magnitude greater
Speaker 3: in density than the Martian atmosphere. Martian atmosphere is very thin,
Speaker 3: and of course a balloon floats by having contents that
Speaker 3: are less dense than the atmosphere. So in an atmosphere
Speaker 3: with lower basically in a thinner atmosphere, I would have
Speaker 3: assumed it's got to be harder for a balloon to float.
Speaker 3: But here is where I would have been wrong. Of Course,
Speaker 3: a vacuum is always less dense than even a very
Speaker 3: thin atmosphere, so if it can be contained and it
Speaker 3: displaces more atmosphere than the weight of the craft itself
Speaker 3: than the weight of the shell and the payload, it
Speaker 3: will float. The real benefit of Martian atmosphere is in
Speaker 3: its pressure to density ratio, so the main constituent of
Speaker 3: Martian air is carbon dioxide. Unlike on Earth, which has
Speaker 3: mainly nitrogen and oxygen. At a molecular level, carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: is dense than nitrogen and oxygen, and the cold temperatures
Speaker 3: on Mars also help make that CO two even denser.
Speaker 3: You're probably familiar with the idea that hot gas expands,
Speaker 3: cold gas contracts, and yet at the same time, a
Speaker 3: cool advantage of Mars is that there is far less
Speaker 3: atmospheric pressure pressing on the outer shell of the airship,
Speaker 3: so you should be able to construct a vacuum envelope
Speaker 3: that can stand up to the weight of the atmosphere
Speaker 3: on Mars without buckling, using a design that is still
Speaker 3: light enough to float. To read a section from the
Speaker 3: NIAC paper quote, Mars having the most suitable atmosphere for
Speaker 3: the vacuum airship is quite remarkable since the Martian atmosphere
Speaker 3: is a severe detriment to all other flight vehicle designs.
Speaker 3: So you know, you try to do like a fixed
Speaker 3: wing aircraft on Mars, that's going to be really hard.
Speaker 3: Continuing the quote, the Martian atmosphere is comprised almost entirely
Speaker 3: of carbon dioxide, so vehicles cannot use typical combustion fuels,
Speaker 3: which require an atmospheric oxidizer. Glider, plane and helicopter designs
Speaker 3: are all hindered by the atmosphere of Mars due to
Speaker 3: the low Renolds number and relatively low density. Additionally, the
Speaker 3: vacuum airship provides benefit over other airship designs and super
Speaker 3: pressure balloons because of the inherent robustness of the design. Moreover,
Speaker 3: if damage is sustained, the vacuum airship can land be
Speaker 3: repaired and then re evacuate to resume operation, whereas another
Speaker 3: airship would need to be refilled with a lighter than
Speaker 3: air gas. Therefore, the evacuated airship design thrives in an
Speaker 3: environment where most other aircraft are added disadvantage, and in
Speaker 3: this paper, Clark and colleagues claim to have already modeled
Speaker 3: the design that should be able to carry a payload
Speaker 3: of five hundred kilograms in Martian air, and that weight
Speaker 3: they say could be increased with further design improvements.
Speaker 1: So the argument here is that not only is it
Speaker 1: a situation where to make to make our vacuum airship
Speaker 1: dreams possible, we must go to Mars, it's instead, no,
Speaker 1: that makes this the concept, that makes this the design
Speaker 1: that makes the most sense on Mars if we're gonna
Speaker 1: have anything flying around.
Speaker 3: Right, that's their argument. And I don't know if this
Speaker 3: has ever made it beyond this phase one or phase
Speaker 3: two proposal level, So I'm not aware of any evidence
Speaker 3: that this is actually like being developed for Mars missions.
Speaker 3: But at least the initial case they make is really interesting,
Speaker 3: and I wonder if anybody's going anywhere else with it,
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm certainly intrigued. So Earth, with its thick atmosphere,
Speaker 3: may well hate vacuum airships. It may just forever crush them.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's no way we could really design one that
Speaker 3: would feasibly work on Earth, but Mars may be a
Speaker 3: completely different story. That thinner atmosphere may be just the
Speaker 3: place to make this dream a reality.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, this all brings to mind a previous
Speaker 1: episode of the show that we did titled Airships over Venus,
Speaker 1: which discusses the hypothetical use of airships in the oppera
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Venus, at least for unmanned craft, but also
Speaker 1: in some of the more extreme and fantastic concepts that
Speaker 1: have been discussed in some of the literature. The idea
Speaker 1: that you could potentially have a human being travel to
Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere of Venus and be inside a specially
Speaker 1: designed airship.
Speaker 3: I think one of the ideas for crude aircrafts there
Speaker 3: is literally that you could have the crew inside the
Speaker 3: balloon because in the Venusian atmosphere, breathable air floats.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, looking around, I noticed that there have been
Speaker 1: some papers that have come out speculating about the use
Speaker 1: of vacuum airships in the Venusian atmosphere, the upper atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So it looks like there at least are some individuals
Speaker 1: out there who are thinking about taking the vacuum concept
Speaker 1: to the upper atmosphere of Venus as well.
Speaker 3: You just hope it doesn't sink. Talk about heavy crushing atmospheres.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the Venusian atmosphere ultimately is an atmosphere that
Speaker 1: crushes everything all right. Well, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and close out this episode, but we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there if you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on vacuum airships or just airships in general, some
Speaker 1: of these concepts we've discussed regarding the atmospheres of other worlds.
Speaker 1: Everything's fair game, right in, let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. As always. Core episodes
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
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