It's certainly a nice-looking airship! I'd **love** to see this company succeed, and I wish Mr Pasternak all the best as he gets this great airship to the market.

It would be cool to travel between Europe and US in one of these airships. I would look forward to having a small cabin with bedbunks, some office space and common social area onboard. I think the travel time would be around around 26 hours.

Excellent interview! I love blimps, so I'm glad to see someone recognizes their potential and is working to bring them into the modern age.

Well, a very similar project (http://www.cargolifter.de/geschichte_der_cl_ag.html) has failed big time about 10 years ago in Germany. I hope this one will do better, as it offers certain advantages over 'traditional' airlifting technology.
Best, Martin

Great idea but I would like to see how it flies in wind and what effects that would have on the ground handling. This is a problem that has plagued earlier ideas.

Martinkopplow, the aeroscraft and Cargolifter are very different vehicles. Cargolifter was flawed from the start- they intended to use a conventional LTA(lighter-than-air) airship to lift heavy cargoes, which has all sorts of associated problems. Their design was also quite inefficient- thrice the volume of the 800-foot Hindenburg(payload: 112 tons) and yet it didn't lift all that much(payload: 160 tons). Then of course there was the problems with their business model...
With the aeroscraft, you have a hybrid vehicle ideally suited for cargo operations. By being HTA(heavier-than-air) like an airplane, the airship's payload is increased dramatically, and it can offload the cargo safely without needing any expensive ground infrastructure. It also uses a buoyancy control system similar to a submarine's, which allows it to remain heavy and stable on the ground and light and efficient in the air. Lastly, it has an all-terrain hovercraft landing system that allows it to land anywhere, unlike a Cargolifter airship, which could land in only a few places in the whole world. These benefits also mean the airship can be built a great deal smaller than leviathans such as the Cargolifter, which not only helps performance and weather tolerance, it's also cheaper and easier to deal with as well.

I agree with Tommo, airships are wonderful but something that big in relation to its weight/mass is going to be at the mercy of sudden storms. Not saying accurate weather forecasting won't help that issue, but even strong winds in the neighborhood of 30+ knots, not unusual even close to the ground, will make for bumpy and very slow progress when going upwind. New York to LA, facing the prevailing wind, would run the risk of averaging 60 knots which would make for a long and potentially uncomfortable trip for passengers. I hope there's an answer for these considerations, because the prospect of a leisurely "cruise" by air is potentially fabulous. If our current ever-faster culture would be able to take such trips without going completely mad with impatience. Price is another thing. If business people don't sign on, because it's too inefficient, you've lost a significant share of your potential market, which will mean fewer flights and higher prices per ticket. As an ocean liner experience, probably a natural...if they can make it pay off without catering only to the idle rich .

I am not sure about running out of helium, as we can create it. I like the idea, and am happy that airships are potentially re-emerging. The old Hindenburg accident really put a scare into people. This technology has huge potential. I also wonder that they these ships couldnt utilize the newer lightwieght solar/photovoltaic technologies to generate more power or electric engines instead of diesel powered.

Not quite right about the helium, as I understand it. Helium can be mined from the ground or extracted from the air. However, it costs about 10,000 times as much to extract from the air as to mine it from the ground. This could probably be improved considerably if you extracted it at high altitudes where it is found in much higher concentrations. Maybe a hydrogen filled balloon could lift a device to the region where helium is more abundant, and a device could extract it. However, it would always be costly. I am in favor of regulations on using helium in frivolous uses like the balloons you see in supermarkets. On the main subject of the article, it sure would be nice to replace our current gas guzzler aircraft with something more ecofriendly.