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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Airlander 10, the world's largest and longest aircraft, is preparing to gently glide out of its gargantuan shed [arstechnica.com]—which is incidentally the largest hangar in the UK—at Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire.

Earlier this month, Airlander 10, which is being built by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), was officially named Martha Gwyn by the duke of Kent. HAV is now in the "final stages of testing" before it can exit the hangar, which will be a "matter of weeks" rather than months.

The Martha Gwyn is an odd beast. At its most basic, it's a 92-metre (302ft) blimp filled with 38,000 cubic metres of helium. There are four propellers—two at the back, one on the front left, one on the front right—that provide vectored thrust from four V8 turbo-diesel engines. But in addition to those rather mundane elements, the envelope (the bit that holds all the helium) has an aerofoil silhouette that reportedly increases lift efficiency by 40 percent. Tucked in just below the front of the envelope is a tiny cockpit capsule with space for a pilot and a handful of personnel. The Airlander 10 will theoretically be able to carry payloads of up to 10 tonnes (thus the name), though that has never been tested. HAV has future plans to build an Airlander 50 with five times the capacity. It will be presumably be about the same size as Wales.
...
Whether it will actually fly, and land, and then fly again with a 10-tonne payload remains to be seen. Hybrid Air Vehicles maintains that there's strong demand for giant airships from myriad sectors, ranging from communications and surveillance, through to logistics, militaristic settings, and scientific endeavour.

"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [imdb.com]," here we come!

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