Traveling The Luxury Skies The Eco-Friendly Deluxe Airship Way

by Susan DeFreitas, February 5th, 2010
Imagine, a luxury eco-hotel where every room has a stunning view…of the clouds in the sky and the earth from above. The designers at London’s Seymourpowell did, and the result is something truly lovely: a concept design for a hydrogen and solar-powered “clipper in the clouds” integrating a hotel into an airship with zero emissions.
According to Ecofriend, the Aircruise concept integrates four duplex apartments, five smaller apartments, a penthouse apartment, and a number of bar/lounge/communal areas with features glass floors that offer breathtaking views from the sky. The design makes innovative use of the fact that airships typically need large volumes of a gas that’s lighter than air–in this case, hydrogen–and a comparatively smaller passenger payload, integrating the two into a low-density, high luxury “air-cruise” moving at an average of 90/miles hour. At this pace, it would take about one and a half relaxing days to get from London to New York.

It’s hard to remember sometimes, in the increasingly cramped and uncomfortable spaces afforded by commercial air-travel, that flight was once a romantic human ideal. This concept design revives that ideal in the form of a spacious, futuristic airship. Although the technical challenges that would have to be overcome in order to make the Aircruise a reality are formidable, according to Seymourpowell, the designers were commissioned by Samsung to develop detailed interiors and achievable technical specifications, which involve large hydrogen fuel cells. Here’s hoping…