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By DarthPickley
#19830
Current balloon air flotation systems such as helium balloons and hot air balloons are based on buoyancy and air pressure. Helium balloons use helium that has a lower mass per volume than air and so it floats. Hot air balloons use heat to allow the side pressures of the balloon to expand the volume of the area while keeping the mass the same, therefore having higher volume per mass.

If you used the strongest relevant basic force to combat the collapsing force therefore eliminating the need for thick metal walls, you could have a system that used simple electricity to expand and contract its body and therefore increase and decrease volume, changing its buoyant force to float very quickly and precisely. With the use of a vacuum or near-vacuum would allow it to only need to be a certain size, unlike huge scientific helium balloons and also it would be robotic controlled.

How it would work is on the outside a large somewhat elastic wall that could be made of plastic or some other strong material that prevented leaking of air inward, and embedded with small magnets with one polarity going outwards and the other one going inwards. Inside of the balloon it is filled with a vacuum. In the center there is a small metal sphere that is an electromagnet that has the same polarity all around the outside and repels the walls from it strongly. Inside of the thin gap-ridden sphere would be the computer, protected from magnetic interference by a substance that has that property, which controls the balloon's size and maybe some other things.

I think the idea is new and interesting, but it might require much research which I haven't done to figure out if it would work and how it could be made to work.

Reward: a video of it working if someone gets it to work.
#21288
I like where you're going with this man. When you refer to the metal ball in the center, you could just use a standard electromagnet. a battery and a coil of wire makes a magnetic field. no vacuums needed. does the field really have to be uniform?
By Rishi
#21340
Sorry to *beep* the 'balloon'.
A helium filled balloon is almost at atmospheric pressure. It is filled to a lower volume than the capacity of the envelope at almost ambient pressure. As the balloon goes up the out side pressure decreases and the Helium just expands. The balloon keeps getting bigger. The proposed idea requires that the balloon is expanded to create the vacuum. Even at absolute vacuum the lift generated will be about 1.3 gms/litre volume, while the stress on the walls of the balloon will be about 10 tons/sq.mtr. at sea level. A Helium balloon provides about 1.1 gms lift/ltr volume without any extra equipment. All you gain is a minor 0.2 gms lift/litr volume at enormous cost and weight of equipment, which will be so heavy that it would sink in water.

It will be a virtual impossibility to build any balloon with a net lift capacity using available materials.

rishi
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