At launch, a high-altitude balloon is just a bubble of helium in a mostly-empty envelope. An airship with that much room for expansion would be enormous, even b

At launch, a high-altitude balloon is just a bubble of helium in a mostly-empty envelope. An airship with that much room for expansion would be enormous, even by the standards of airships. In WW1, Germany flew some "height climber" zeppelins, which could reach 20,000 feet (still well within the range of stormy weather), but they could carry very little payload. They were also fragile, vulnerable to damage by quite ordinary weather. I think all other airships were limited to a few thousand feet, at least in practice.