Could we make a floating/flying solar house powered by nature?

Question

I'm not an engineer but I have this idea of a kind of Helium airship with solar panels on top. Then Hydrogen fuel bags underneath, bigger Helium bags under that and them a house with a small garden and swimming pool. There could be a shaft through it to light the house. The idea would be to get Hydrogen by sun powered electrolysis, this would be gathered from clouds and Sunlight. The house could then float about visiting other parts of the world occasionally landing in the sea. Could this be possible, energywise, would it be safe, could it be green?

Answer 1

Floating solar house powered by the sun; That's planet Earth, take care of it.

Answer 2

Airships or dirigibles are proven technology they were actually quite popular form of transport from the very early 1900's until the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. (Hindenburg had a lifting capacity of 242 gross tons)

Zeppelin made the mistake of using hydrogen instead of helium, which ended the reign of the airship rather dramatically.

Depending on how heavy the "House and pool" this idea is very possible.  Have a look at the Goodyear blimps to get an idea of the size requirements

http://www.goodyearblimp.com/

With the large surface area there is plenty of room for solar panels. Thin film solar technology could possibly be utilised to build the gasbags. Energy wise, yes I think there would be plenty.

Safety Ummm ..... If the hydrogen were to be kept to the inner bags with the outer bags filled only with helium it could be safer. You would need a good deal of separation between anything electrical and hydrogen. There have been heaps of advancements in plastics and polymers in the last few years, but there is always an element of danger involved with highly flammable gases. Getting a partly filled hydrogen airship approved by air safety authorities would be a nightmare, but possible.

Could it be green? Yes it could be any colour you like. (Sorry couldn't resist)

The airships of the 1900's utilised jet streams and weather patterns during trips. They were largely wind assisted. So with virtually greenhouse emissions, I think this could be classed environmentally friendly. (I will guarantee that not everyone will agree.)

Without getting too far off track if you have a look at weather charts the wind circles around the highs and lows. If you fly to the correct side it helps. (Sailing boats do this).

In Summary: Yes quite doable.

Have you got anybody in mind to bank roll this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship

Answer 3

There would be a lot of "issues" with trying to get this working in real life.  First off, such a structure venturing into anything resembling a tropospheric low pressure system with strong winds would lead a brief but exciting existence.  If it flew to stratospheric altitudes above most weather systems, you would have to deal with the fact there is relatively little water there for electrolysis, plus lots of hard UV and ozone that will degrade the polymers of the lift bags, and the house and evirons would have to be pressurized for there to be enough oxygen to breath.  

Figure you are going to get 1 kg per cubic meter of helium in terms of buoyancy.  I'm going to guess you would need the structure to be similar in weight to a large long-haul airliner, so figure 200,000 kg of weight.  Therefore, you would need 200,000 m^3 of buoyancy, which is a bag of helium 60 m in diameter (which doesn't sound very big but is three times larger than a Zeppelin in terms of gas volume).  And that is at sea level.  Once aloft, you would have to allow the helium to expand because air density is less aloft.  (i.e., a factor of about three between sea level and 10,000 m, so you would need 600,000 m^3 of buoyancy to reach the stratosphere)

There are other problems such as you would have a lot of helium loss which would need to be replaced fairly often, flying at such altitudes for prolonged times you would have to worry about the total radiation dose from cosmic rays, and ozone toxicity is severe when breathing compressed stratospheric air.  

It's a kind of cool idea, but not very realistic.  Sorry to burst your balloon, so to speak.

Answer 4

It would be like a floating BOMB. Hydrogen is a very dangerous material to handle.