World's largest blimp searches for life in the clouds
World's largest barrage balloon, in a mix of science and entertainment, is on BBC mission to seek out microscopic life over the US
The world's largest blimp was scheduled to leave Florida yesterday on a month-long journey across the United States, slipping inside clouds so its crew can try to determine whether they teem with microscopic life.
The brilliant-white airship, owned by an Orlando company, is on a cross-continental science expedition for a British Broadcasting Corporation television project.
"The point of this is to combine some great science with some great entertainment," said Jonathan Renouf, a BBC executive producer. "I think a project like this, using a huge airship to travel across America, captures the imagination."
Emblazoned with the words "Cloud Lab" - a working name for the television project - the 65-metre-long airship recently spent a week on shakedown flights over Orlando and Titusville in Florida. It's a flying laboratory, packed with instruments that will study clouds' behaviour and chemistry, listen to the sounds made by bats and birds, probe atmospheric gases and measure the earth's surface features.
When the balloon, called the "Spirit of George", took off last week for some final calibration of its instruments, the lift-off was more a sharply angled launch then a stately rising into the sky. That's because the ship is powered by a pair of turbo-boosted Porsche engines that can push the craft to a top speed of almost 100km/h.
But for scientific purposes, the advantage of a barrage balloon is being able to slow to zero.