Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s secretive project to build giant electric airships is expanding rapidly, as Lighter Than Air (LTA) Research prepares for its first major test flights later this year.
This tech billionaire is hiring hundreds of aerospace engineers in Silicon Valley and Akron, Ohio, at a site made famous by Hurricane Goodyear, to build airships for humanitarian missions to remote or disaster areas.
LTA was founded in 2014, before Brin stepped down from executive duties at Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2019. The startup’s headquarters is at Moffett Airport in the San Francisco Bay Area, a facility owned by Nasa, a short distance from the Google headquarters that the US space agency has started. This tech company hires a short drive.
LTA payments to Google for using Moffett have grown more than tenfold over the past three years, according to parent company Alphabet most recently. submit an annual mandatedisclosed “arm length” transactions with Brin’s company since 2017.
After starting at just $131,000 five years ago, those payments have grown from $1.1 million in the year to March 2019 to $10.9 million in the most recent period. ending in March 2022, showing that the LTA is accelerating its development.
LTA hopes to recreate the boom for the 21st century with “zero-emissions” flights. The company’s first full-size airship, the 120-metre Pathfinder 1, is expected to begin test flights over Silicon Valley this year.
The even larger Pathfinder 3 is under development at the Akron airfield, which became the largest building in the world when it was completed in 1929 and remains one of the major aerospace facilities. world today. A hiring spree in Akron will double the LTA’s total staff to more than 400 in the coming months.
Alan Weston, former Nasa program manager who has led the LTA since 2016, told local news reporters in Ohio in May that the company was building “the largest air vehicle on earth” in Akron. The 185-meter-long Pathfinder 3 will eventually be capable of carrying 96 tons over a range of up to 10,000 miles, or 16,000 kilometers, when it is completed next year, Weston said.
Pathfinder 3 is 60 meters shorter than the ill-fated Hindenburg-class airship that promised to revolutionize passenger flight in the 1930s until a catastrophic crash in New Jersey killed 36 people and shattered the ambition. industry expectations.
Brin’s day-to-day involvement at the LTA is unclear, but he’s one of 13 inventors named on the key. US Patent issued to the company in April last year. The patent covers “methods and devices for making airships,” using 3D printing and carbon fiber tubes to reduce costs and speed up production.
“We believe lighter-than-air technology has the potential to accelerate humanitarian aid by reaching remote locations with little infrastructure and reducing the carbon footprint of freight transport,” said Weston. and aviation.”
Among the many open positions the LTA is hiring for is a Silicon Valley “flight test engineer” with “experience with test-aircraft first flight efforts.” Advertised perks include free lunches, “swag, and occasional spaceships”.
