AHC: Buckminster Fuller's Cloud 9 is build.

Cloud nine (Tensegrity sphere)

Cloud nine is the name Buckminster Fuller gave to his proposed airborne habitats created from giant geodesic spheres, which might be made to levitate by slightly heating the air inside above the ambient temperature.
Geodesic spheres (structures of triangular components arranged to make a sphere) become stronger as they become bigger, due to how they distribute stress over their surfaces. As a sphere gets bigger, the volume it encloses grows much faster than the mass of the enclosing structure itself. Fuller suggested that the mass of a mile-wide geodesic sphere would be negligible compared to the mass of the air trapped within it. He suggested that if the air inside such a sphere were heated even by one degree higher than the ambient temperature of its surroundings, the sphere could become airborne. He calculated that such a balloon could lift a considerable mass, and hence that 'mini-cities' or airborne towns of thousands of people could be built in this way. The 'cloud nines' could be tethered, or free-floating, or maneuverable so that they could 'migrate' in response to climatic and environmental conditions, such as providing emergency shelters.

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heating will be a problem

I guess it's possible, but you'd need to keep the air inside heated. As your sphere gains height heat dissipation will increase, so requiring increased heating. It shouldn't be impossible to do, but you can't afford any mistakes as gravity is an unforgiving teacher.

I'm not sure I'd want to be in one of the things when a storm moved in either, I can't imagine you'd have much chance of outrunning a gale. When you say "'migrate' in response to climatic conditions" I get a mental picture of a balloon in a hurricane.
 
I would think you could use sunlight for the heating. Like a closed in car, only less so. Or would it be more so?:)
But what would use you use for running whatever businesses are situated up there? Or do you envisage the inhabitants commuting down to the ground for work?
 
Okay, solar heating is a possible solution, at least during daytime. With efficient energy storage allowing heating during the night. Due to the large volume of air requiring heating that will require some technological advances to become practical, but I guess that is possible.

However I still wouldn't fancy the prospect of being in a cupola suspended underneath a gigantic balloon in an aftertoon storm, let alone serious bad weather.
 
Would the balloon material be reinforced? If a plane accidentally ran into one, that would be a city-cide... not to mention what was underneath the balloon-city...

An intriguing idea nonetheless.
 
Nuclear, of course. I should have thought of that. If someone can envision nuclear powered aircraft then this becomes almost logical.

Every problem has a solution.
 
What about leaving the generators on the ground and running a cable up? Wouldn't be mobile, obviously, but might be a bit more practical.
 
"Are you sure that that's the right way around?"

When considering the possibilities of a nuclear reactor floating overhead in a giant balloon you are indeed correct.
 
What about leaving the generators on the ground and running a cable up? Wouldn't be mobile, obviously, but might be a bit more practical.

Yes, it's a habitat anyways so you probably don't want to go drifting around randomly in the first place.

Of course, the whole idea makes much more sense on Venus, where atmospheric gas produces lift without needing to heat it up, and it isn't possible to just build more (or bigger) buildings on the ground.
 
Venus Skylands?

I wrote a story that used glider-type lifting-bodies to airscoop useful gases and metallic vapours and return them to a structure I called Cloud 9 - an industrial unit airborne at the top of the Venusian atmosphere. Could have been BF's idea but owed more to the Cloudbase aircraft carrier.:eek:
 
But, how do you and groceries get there when airborne without renting a helicopter?

And, nuclear was far too heavy back then. And solar is too wimpy to do the job, especially back then.

The need for constant WORKING power also strikes me as a dangorous problem given that nothing ALWAYS works.
 
But, how do you and groceries get there when airborne without renting a helicopter?

And, nuclear was far too heavy back then. And solar is too wimpy to do the job, especially back then.

You might be able to do it with nuclear if you really had to, although I wouldn't recommend it. The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program developed nuclear-powered turbojets of several hundred MWth power that could propel an airplane; they could probably provide enough energy for this contraption. Like I said, not a good idea - it would be expensive as hell and not very safe - but it could be done.

How much power do you need to keep something like this in the air, anyway? I'm guessing you want considerably more than a one degree temperature difference - you don't want the thing crashing if the temperature changes faster than your heating system can keep up with.
 
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