Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
You can ignore gravity in computations about lifting gas, since it affects payload weight in exactly the same way as it affects lifting ability.
As for vacuum balloons: any time a design sequence says vacuum balloons are useful, it means you've found an error in the design sequence.
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I ran across a page on a NASA Web site that proposed them, so I thought it worth looking at.
As for ignoring gravity, that seemed intuitively right, but I wanted to go back to first principles, by comparing the weights of the lifting gas, the equivalent volume of atmospheric gas, and the payload. My intuition isn't infallible, after all.