Plausibility Check: Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier's Airship

Wikipedia:On 3 December 1783, he presented a historic paper to the French Academy: "Memoire sur l'equilbre des Machines Aerostatique" (Memorandum on the balance of aerostatic machines). The 16 water-colour drawings published the following year depicted a 260-foot-long (79 m) envelope with internal ballonnets that could be used for regulating lift, and this was attached to a long carriage that could be used as a boat if the vehicle was forced to land in water. The airship was designed to be propelled in the air by three airscrew propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder.
I was just wondering if this idea was at all possible in the 1700s or if it was just a crazy idea.
 
I don't see why it couldn't happen, but not at that time. I don't think there's any engine with sufficient power-weight ratio to power it, or technology to develop same. Even if he could get it to work, it would have no immediate practical impacts, remaining a one-off experiment for several decades, at best inspiring later inventors but probably remaining a fascinating sidenote of history.
 
IIRC the BBC tried out the proposed screw propeller drive, and that would - kind of - have worked as long as the wind was low. The lift capacity could have been generated with hydrogen. However, I still think that the design as proposed was just too asmbitious. It has too many things that can go wrong with a far too immature technology. I'm also not sure how well the regulating system would have pertformed in real life.
 
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