WEBVTT - The Null Ship 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:17.759 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:20.880 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:23.599 in today's episode, we're going to be looking at a 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:28.560 spectacular bit of hypothetical air travel that has intrigued us 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:33.080 for centuries. The vacuum airship or knull ship as I've 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.440 seen it referred, and that's such a cool name for 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:38.720 something that I think I had to front loaded on 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:41.080 this episode, but usually it's just referred to as a 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.960 vacuum airship. And the basic principle, as we'll discuss, is 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:49.560 pretty simple. Hydrogen, helium or hot air filled balloons allow 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.720 an airship to traverse the skies because these gases are 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.600 lighter than the surrounding air, and even lighter gas is 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:00.200 the absence of any gas at all, the vacuum. If 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:03.720 one could create a vacuum chamber or bladder that was 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.280 itself light enough, then this could be used to provide 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.319 lift for airships on Earth or even on other planets. 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.000 I mean, it's such an obvious extension of the idea 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:20.240 underlying balloons indirigibles all lighter than air flight craft. You 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:22.800 would have to assume that if if you don't see 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:25.560 things like this being used all the time, there must 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:27.759 be a pretty good reason. And I guess we'll get 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:29.880 to that in a little bit. But yeah, it's it's 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.400 like an obvious place to take the idea. Yeah, yeah, 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.959 And and so it's ultimately such a fascinating topic because yeah, 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.360 there's the basic underlying science of the principles of it 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.800 are pretty sound. There are material challenges in place, but 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:46.320 then the history of the concept is pretty interesting as well. 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:51.120 Thus far, however, the main place you'll see these vacuum 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.200 airships deployed are going to be within the pages of 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:58.040 science fiction and fantasy. And one of the main examples 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:00.160 of this and this and you'll see this why le 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:07.320 Cited is a novel that was serialized between nine thirty 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.200 by Edgar Rice Burrows titled Tarzan at the Earth's Core, 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:15.600 not to be confused with At the Earth's Core, which 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:19.640 was his nineteen fourteen novel that established the hollow Earth 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:24.000 world of Pellucidar, which is this, like it sounds, it's 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.720 like a world within our world. It it has a 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:30.720 race of intelligent and I think psychic terra Saar overlords 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:35.520 called the Mahar or the Mahar and the that novel 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.880 prominently features a subderine. So we've actually mentioned that book 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.079 on the show before in our episode about subderines, which 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:48.560 is another sort of fantastic um hypothetical, uh, means of 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:53.880 traversing the natural environment. But this Tarzan at the Earth 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:58.760 score is a crossover novel which features Tarzan traveling to 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:03.200 the inner world v a vacuum airship. And I had 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.120 to dive into this in a little bit. I assume 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.360 you haven't read this one either. No, I haven't read it. 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:09.639 I do remember it was mentioned in that earlier episode. 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:11.520 But also it just got me thinking about, like, wait, 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:15.440 where do all of these science fiction books about a 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.920 hollow earth with like a different biosphere or or some 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.480 kind of archaic state. Uh, where does all that come from? 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.960 Because this isn't the first one. This is in what thirty, 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.480 but like as far back as the eighteen sixties you 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:30.639 had Jules Verne with Journey to the Center of the Earth, 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:32.839 which is very similar concept. I don't think it has 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:36.680 like psychic pterosaurs, but it does have a hollow earth 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:41.200 with like essentially a mirror biosphere on the inside that 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.560 has dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Well, it makes me 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:46.560 think we should come back into a proper episode on 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.080 the concept of the hollow Earth. You know why why 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.280 it it wouldn't work A quiet individuals thought that it 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.680 could have worked, and why it has uh, you know 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.360 why it has captivated people's imagination for so long. Yeah, 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.760 I don't know of anything older than than Jules Verne, 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:04.880 but but there may be. So I had not read 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.720 this book either. I think the only Edgar Rice Burrows 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.520 novel that I have read is one called The Monster Men, 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:15.840 which memory serves is largely it seems very inspired by 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:18.920 the Island of Dr Moreau, but it was it was 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:21.480 pretty fun, as I remember it, And so I went 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.760 ahead and and dove into this one, and I was 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.000 like reading through it trying to find some good examples 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.760 of them talking about vacuum airships. And I think I 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.960 wasted a good, uh like minutes just scanning through the 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.799 book trying to do some searches. And then I realized 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:38.039 that I was looking at the wrong one. I was 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:39.960 looking at the Earth's Core instead of Tarzan at the 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.640 Earth's Core. But I switched to the correct book, and 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.600 they talk about the vacuum airship a lot in that one, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:47.920 So I can't just find like the one spot where 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.920 they're talking about it there. It's a frequent topic of conversation. 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.400 But I do want to read just a fragment here 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:56.960 from it where they touch on it. Uh. So this 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.400 is Edgar Rice Burrows from Tarzan at the Earth Score 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:05.200 again from ninety. The greatest risk that we would have 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.240 to face would be a possible inability to return to 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.400 the outer crust owing to the depletion of our helium 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.080 gas that might be made necessary by the maneuvering of 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.359 the ship. But that is only the same chance of 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.200 life or death that every explorer and scientific investigator must 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:24.360 be willing to assume in the prosecution of his labors. 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.960 If it were but possible to build a whole sufficiently 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.640 light and at the same time sufficiently strong to withstand 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.840 atmospheric pressure, we could dispense with both the dangerous hydrogen 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:39.200 gas and the rare and expensive helium gas, and have 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.320 the assurance of the utmost safety and maximum of buoyancy 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.720 in a ship supported entirely by vacuum tanks. Perhaps even 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:51.040 that is possible, said Tarzan, who was now evincing increasing 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.880 interest in Gridley's proposition, the Americans shook his head. It 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.240 may be possible someday, he said, but not at present 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.919 with any known material. Any receptacle having sufficient strength to 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.520 withstand the atmospheric pressure upon a vacuum would have a 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.159 weight far too great for the vacuum to lift. Okay, 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.040 so first of all, I am definitely picturing this as 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.960 the Kristoff Lambart Tarzan from from gray Stoke. This has 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.680 got to be it, right, Yes, yes, it's it's a 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:21.599 gentleman Tarzan here. Mild spoiler for the for the book. 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.120 Obviously they figure it out. I believe some sort of 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.640 rare element or metal is introduced that it makes the 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.760 impossible possible, because otherwise, how are you gonna get Tarzan 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.800 to the Inner Earth to battle psychic terra stars. I mean, 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:41.680 it's funny how this Psychic Terrastar book does uh correctly 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:46.960 diagnose some of the problems with existing lighter than air craft. 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.440 So one problem is needing to have continued access to 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:53.800 your lighter than air gas so that so that you 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.679 can like refill the balloon or the tank do because 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.200 there's always going to be some kind of leakage or 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:02.960 potentially even damage that would allow the gas to escape. 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:05.320 You'd have to have a way to get more helium 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:07.680 in there. If it's helium. Of course, if it's hydrogen, 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.680 you run into a whole uh raft of other problems, 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:12.640 as one can see with the history of the henden 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.880 Bergens and fourth hydrogen very flammable and having the same 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.240 uh you know, fixed access problems as helium. But yeah, 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:22.640 with with a vacuum like, you don't need to carry 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:24.840 vacuum around with you. All you would need to do 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.560 is find a way to pump out the chamber. Yeah, 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:30.520 so you can see why it's such an attractive option. 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:33.680 And this this passage kind of encapsulates all that I 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.200 was looking around too. I noticed that it's It's been 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.440 noted that at least two other authors that we've mentioned 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.360 on the show before have also employed vacuum airship principles. 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.240 Peter Wattson makes use of them in his Rifters books 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.640 as a means of enabling flying machines. I totally forgotten 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.160 about this, and then Ian in Banks invoked them in 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.200 at least three different novels, including at least one that 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.000 I definitely read, but I also don't remember mentioned of them. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:07:59.880 I guess I just wasn't My mind wasn't as open 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:02.480 of the idea of vacuum airships when I was reading 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:04.640 these books. And I've also read that they factor into 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.720 Neil Stevens since The Diamond Age, which I have not read, 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:09.760 but I've heard good things about. So wait a minute, 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.880 I actually know almost nothing about Tarzan. Where old does 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.320 Tarzan go? Is he like the lepre Con or like 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.400 he goes to space, he goes to the to the ocean, 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:20.480 he goes to the Hollow Earth? Does he does he 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:22.640 go to Las Vegas at some point? What? What? What 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.480 are all his adventures? Well, Joe, there are twenty four 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.920 Tarzan novels by bar Rice Burrow, so you know he 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.440 he ultimately gets around. I have not read any of them, 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.600 but you can just when you when you start scanning 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:38.040 the titles, you realize that he maybe starts running out 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.440 of jungle and he has to has to go to 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.800 lost Empires in the Earth's core, in a city of gold, 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:48.120 forbidden City. Uh. Looks like he may join the Foreign 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.760 Legion at one point, so, uh, you know, he's got 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.160 to get out there and travel around and and explore 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.240 the outer world. But I think generally speaking, he's always 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.000 going to battle or befriends some sort of the large animal. 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:02.920 Thank you for correcting my tarzan ignorance. Now I know, 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:05.439 all right, But I guess before we go any further 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:10.560 exploring the history of proposals for vacuum airships, it would 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.800 be worth briefly explaining the underlying reasoning, and that is that, 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:18.240 whether you're talking about a lighter than air gas inside 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:22.120 a balloon or a rigid chamber containing a vacuum, the 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.960 physics phenomenon that would cause this, uh, this balloon or 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:30.280 or chamber to fly is what's known as Archimedes principle, 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.680 named after the ancient Greek inventor and mathematician. And I 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.280 think the core idea you really need to understand in 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.920 order to grasp Archimedes principle at a gut level is 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:46.240 the idea of fluid displacement. Fluid displacement so a few 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.959 extreme experimental conditions aside. Basically, if you are on Earth, 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.040 you are submerged within a fluid. So if you're a 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.400 barracuda or a jellyfish, that fluid is going to be water. 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.480 If you are a human standing in line at King 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.480 that fluid is the atmosphere. Both gases and liquids are 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:09.160 fluids because they both flow to fill containing environments. And 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.439 when you occupy space within a mass of either kind 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:15.800 of fluid, whether it's liquid or gas, you are taking 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.480 up space that this fluid would otherwise fill, would otherwise 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.520 rush in to fill, So, in other words, you are 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:26.880 displacing gas or liquid. The inside about physics that our 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:31.560 comedes had is that objects submerged within a fluid are 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:36.079 pushed upward, meaning in the opposite direction of gravity, by 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:38.920 a force that is equal to the weight of the 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:43.520 fluid displaced by that object. And this is why boats float. 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:46.160 I mean, humans have been making boats for a long time, 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:48.640 but uh, it took us a while to figure out 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.720 what is the exact physics principle governing the flotation of boats. 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.600 So a boat, for example, may have a steel hull, 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.360 and steel is very dense, So you would think that 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.680 a steel boat should sink, right, I remember wondering about 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:03.280 this when I was a little kid. How does you 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.959 know metal sink? So how does a metal boat float? 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.319 A metal boat floats because the hull of the boat 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:13.200 displaces a lot of water. An amount of water that 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.760 is as heavy as the boat itself. So when a 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:20.520 boat gets launched out into the ocean, it sinks down 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.960 in the water until the amount of water it displaces 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:26.800 is the same as the weight of the boat overall. 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.360 And then after it reaches this equilibrium, it's held up 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.880 on the surface of the water by that buoyancy, that 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.000 force pushing upward on the boat equivalent to the weight 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.800 of the water it displaces. And this, of course is 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.800 also why a ship sinks when water leaks into its hull. 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.680 It's water that is denser than air filling that void 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:48.880 that was otherwise filled with with air. So kind of weird, 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.120 but I think accurate. Way to think of a ship 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:55.400 on the ocean is a rigid balloon filled with air. Now, 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.199 the same principles that apply in water also hold true 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:01.480 in the fluid of the atmosphere. Is a force pushing 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.640 up on an object that is equivalent to the weight 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:09.080 of the air that that object displaces. Now, for most 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:14.000 objects around us, the the atmospheric buoyancy is negligible because 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:19.000 objects are way more dense than the atmosphere that they're displacing. Uh. 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.520 Though technically it is true that your body has a 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.160 measurable buoyancy within the air. It's not enough to make 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:28.040 you float up off the ground, because you know, human 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.120 bodies are are pretty massive. But based on some rough 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.120 calculations I looked up, it seems like it's probably a 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:37.440 fraction of a pound at sea level for the typical 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:39.840 range of human body weight. It's one estimate I saw 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.360 was that it's like zero point two pounds for a 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.559 hundred and seventy pound adult. So how can you change 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.520 an object in order to take advantage of that atmospheric 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:52.800 buoyancy and make it float up in the atmosphere like 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.120 a boat floats on the water. Well, as demonstrated by 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.080 balloons and dirigibles, what you can do is make that 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:03.640 object take up a lot of space, mostly with material 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.920 that is lighter than the atmosphere itself, which is usually 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:09.880 going to be a lighter than air gas like hydrogen 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:12.160 or helium. But of course it could also be a 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:14.960 chamber that has no gas in it at all, nothing 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.400 in it at all, which would be the lightest possible 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.000 way of taking up space. Now here's a weird fact. 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.199 I was just wondering about which of the fundamental forces 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.480 actually causes the force of buoyancy. Where is that force 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:31.480 pushing up on a boat or pushing up on a 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:38.120 balloon coming from? Counterintuitively, that force originates with gravity, which 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.400 is kind of strange because the force of buoyancy is 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.680 going in the opposite direction of gravity. Right, Why would 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.680 gravity cause something to rise up from the ground instead 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.000 of sinking down? But you have to think about a 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:53.080 sort of chain of causes here. So, whether you're talking 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.840 about the atmosphere or the ocean, gravity is pulling all 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.920 that fluid toward the Earth's center of mass. It's pull 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.119 ling all the water or the gas down. So gravity 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.960 is the cause of air pressure and water pressure, and 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:12.080 it is the downward pressure of the surrounding fluid that 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:16.440 causes buoyant objects within that fluid to rise. So, to 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.120 use some kind of approximate and anthropomorphic terms, when a 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.239 balloon floats, it's because the heavier gas of the atmosphere 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.680 around it is all rushing down to get to the surface, 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.080 and it has to push the balloon out of the 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.760 way to get there. And it can push the balloon 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.240 out of the way because the balloon is less dense 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:38.880 than it is. It's kind of like if asking, well, hey, 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.280 I'm why if everybody's trying to get to the TV 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:46.400 section of the big box store on Black Friday, everybody's 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:48.320 trying to get there, then why is the four Why 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.760 am I being pushed out of the store because everybody 0:14:51.760 --> 0:15:01.240 else is pushing harder than you are. Thank But to 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:05.280 come to real world proposals for vacuum airships. Uh. One 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.280 thing I was shocked about was how far back this 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.120 idea goes. I would have imagined it was something dreamed 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.480 up in the nineteenth century. Yeah, I was very much 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:16.200 the same. But then I started looking into it, and 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.120 sure enough, the roots go all the way back to 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.360 the seventeenth century. So our story here begins with an 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:25.840 Italian Jesuit priest by the name of Francesco Lana Detersi, 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:30.440 who lived sixty one through six seven, sometimes called the 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:36.440 father of arionnautics. His groundbreaking book from sixteen seventy, titled 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:41.520 Prodromo de larte Mastra, was apparently the first to discuss 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.960 the possibility of human flight via mathematical calculations and an 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:50.800 understanding of physics. Uh. These were no mere loss speculations either. 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.880 This was a work that was translated and then circulated 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:59.280 throughout Europe, and subsequent advancements in ballooning, for example, are 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:03.040 are often directly linked to this work, namely thinking of 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:07.280 the month Gaffier Brothers a flight in seventeen eighty three, 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.720 which was an unmanned balloon flight lasting about ten minutes. Now, 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:12.880 I want to stress we're largely talking with with the 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:17.800 Western and European sphere of of exploration here. If you 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:21.640 get into the Eastern accounts, there are some some older 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:27.200 accounts of possible you know, unmanned hot air balloon experimentation 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.880 in China for example, going back you know to I 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:37.640 think like the third century see wow, but again unmanned. Now, 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.400 in this particular book, Lana covered many subjects uh here 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:43.800 and I was reading about this in a paper titled 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.960 the Jesuit Contribution to Written Art Technological Sources in the 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:54.400 seventeen and eighteen centuries by Karina Gramatki from sixteen. Apparently 0:16:54.440 --> 0:17:02.200 the topics include invention itself, drawing, design, pigments, chemistry, medicine, arithmetic, 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:08.960 the production of telescopes, microscopes, and finally aeronautics. Pick a lane. 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:11.399 I mean, this was an age where yeah, if you 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:13.119 were if you were into stuff, you were you were 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:18.680 into everything. Yeah, so, um a particular interest to Lana 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:21.639 here though we were recent advancements in the creation of 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.399 the vacuum pump. This would of course been a continuation 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:28.080 of suction pump technology. Uh. The idea of the vacuum pump. 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:30.959 The first vacuum pump was invented in sixteen fifty by 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:35.960 the German scientists Otto von Garrick and subsequently experimented on 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:39.360 by others. Oh. Yeah, we've talked about Otto von guerricky 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:41.800 before in I think in an episode that we did 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:49.160 about atmospheric pressure, specifically reference to his experiments with the 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:55.040 so called Magdeburg hemispheres, which was a really interesting experiment 0:17:55.080 --> 0:18:00.240 that took place in the sixteen fifties, I believe, And uh, 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:01.879 it's been while since we talked about it, so I 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.160 may be forgetting some of the details, but basically, from 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:09.320 what I recall, they took two brass hemispheres half spheres, 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.879 and then greased the edges of them with lard and 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.600 then pressed them together and then used the invention of 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.840 the air pump to remove air from inside these two hemispheres, 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:23.760 creating a vacuum within of course, a partial vacuum. You know, 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:27.280 they're not going to get every single molecule out, but yeah, 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:29.840 they're getting getting most of the gas out of them. 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.959 And then they hooked these hemispheres up to horses and 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.840 had the horses pull in opposite directions to try to 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.640 pull them apart, and they couldn't. Like that, even horses 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.399 could not separate them. What they were demonstrating there was 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:46.400 how heavy the atmosphere is. That when you take all 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:49.640 of the atmosphere out of the inside of these two 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:54.320 two half spheres, you create such a disequilibrium that the 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.200 you know, the atmosphere is essentially reaching down and and 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:00.199 uh clutching these two things and pressing them together so 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:04.120 that even great force cannot pull them apart. Yeah. There 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.000 there are a couple of papers on this topic that 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.119 I was reading from New Scientists actually, like I was 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:11.439 kind of getting the impression that maybe the editor at 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.200 New Scientists is like pounding the desk that I need 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:18.200 more vacuum airship stories. But one of them was from 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.320 two thousand and nine by Paul Collins titled The Rise 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.840 and Fall of the Metal Airship, which is ultimately about 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.280 metal airships in general and not just the vacuum airship concept, 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.840 but he mentions, uh this this experiment, writing uh quote 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:34.160 Otto von Gerriki had drawn together small copper hemispheres with 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:36.959 such a strong vacuum that teams of horses could not 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.000 pull them apart. But he mentioned some other things of 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.320 note here. Collins also writes that the concept of a 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:48.200 vacuum airship appears in a German interplanetary travelog of seventy four, 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:52.920 envisioning trips to Mars. So another example of something ultimately 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.359 far earlier than I would have had, oh guessed it. 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:57.280 If I was to guess, well, when when we were 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.560 people first thinking about vacuum airships in the atmosphere of Mars, 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:06.800 I would not have gone with the mid Uh. Now 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.600 is a brief detour. I want to touch on another 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:11.960 thing that Collins mentions here um to get to the 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:16.159 title of his paper, there actually was eventually a metal 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:21.440 non vacuum airship, and this was in the first one 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.760 was a thirty eight meter airship designed by David Schwartz 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.560 and helped into the sky by the Prussian airship Battalion. 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:31.480 And it was a It was blimp shaped, but its 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.960 skin was riveted aluminum plates, and it traveled about six 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:40.040 kilometers total before it stopped. They put the brakes on 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:42.440 and it caused the thing to crumble due to its 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:46.440 rigid construction. But the advantage of a fully functional metal 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.679 airship would be speed. Though so uh the the idea 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:54.640 didn't go completely away, and in good years, original airship 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:59.760 designer Ralph Ubson quote formed the Metal Clad Airship Corporation 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.720 to build an aluminum clad helium airship, the z m 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:07.440 C two for the U. S. Navy. Although notoriously difficult 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:10.800 to handle, the quote unquote tin bubble, as it was dubbed, 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:13.040 could reach a speed of a hundred kilometers an hour, 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:17.399 and it put in twenty two hundred flight hours before 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:21.320 it was decommissioned in n and that was it for 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:24.720 metal airships. That was the last one that took to 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.119 the skies here on Earth. And yet that was the 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.840 Detroit z m C two Angel. I include a picture 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:32.760 of it here for you. If one was looking at 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.680 you might not guess that what you're looking at is 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:41.400 is a metal structure, aluminum clad helium airship. That I mean, 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:43.639 if I've ever seen a tin bubble, that is the 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:48.080 tin bubble. But to clarify again, the one the actual 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.679 examples we've just been talking about, the people got up 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:53.440 in the air flying even if they were even if 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:57.240 they failed early on, these were not vacuum airships. These 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:00.119 were airships that you even though they had rigid out 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:05.560 or hulls, they did use some form of gas inside. Yeah. Yeah, 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:08.480 So ultimately, as as we'll discuss, the vacuum airship is 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:12.000 still a concept that individuals are still chasing today. Now 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:16.120 coming back to Lana's book here, another important connection here 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:20.760 would be to Robert Boyle's work proving that air has weight. Essentially, 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:23.720 it was proven that all of the atmosphere could be 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:28.680 mechanically drawn out of a volume. Maybe the nature didn't 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.840 abhor a vacuum quite as much as previously supposed, and 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:35.840 Lana has taken the next step by speculating one exciting 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.440 way that such a vacuum could be made to work 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:41.240 for us. So what Lana does here is he basically 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:43.480 applies what was known at the time regarding the nature 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.200 of air, vacuum and cylinders to devise a means by 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:51.159 which first vacuum spheres would be made that would float 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.040 up through the air, and secondly that with enough vacuum 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:56.600 you could also float a vessel. So he proposed a 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:00.879 vessel consisting of a basket with a say ill and rudder, 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.720 held aloft by four large twenty five ft spheres made 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:08.160 of thin copper sheeting and bound together by rigging. Uh. 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:11.119 This was of course never actually built, but there have 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:13.560 been various illustrations of what this would have looked like. 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:17.560 I included one here for you, Joe. It looks positively whimsical. 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:20.760 Why does it? Does it have an oar? I guess 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:23.280