Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, build a massive electric airship which his Lighter Than Air (LTA) Research firm incorporated in 2014, and is preparing to launch new research later this year. Brin is hiring hundreds of aeronautical engineers in Silicon Valley and at a location in Akron, Ohio known for its Goodyear blimps, to build airships intended to run humanitarian missions to remote areas or disaster zones. As he prepares for his first major test flights later this year. Brin stepped down from executive duties at Google’s parent Alphabet in 2019.
LTA’s headquarters is in Moffett field in the San Francisco Bay Area, a Nasa-owned facility a short drive from Google’s headquarters that the US space agency began leasing to the tech company back in 2015.
After starting at just $131,000 five years ago, LTA hopes to reinvent the blimp for the 21st century with zero-emission flights. The company 120 meter-long full-sized Pathfinder 1, is scheduled to begin test flights over Silicon Valley this year.
The 185 meter-long Pathfinder 3 is battery powered and all-electric system, which is 60 meters shorter than the Hindenburg class airship which was run on flammable hydrogen, that promised to revolutionise passenger flight in 1937 until an accident in the New Jersey killed 36 people. Pathfinder 3 is being developed at the air dock in Akron which became the world’s largest building when it was completed in 1929 and remains one of the world’s largest aerospace facilities today. Pathfinder 3 will be carrying up to 96 tonnes across a range of up to 10, 000 miles or 16, 000km.
