> Pathfinder 3 will initially be powered by batteries, Weston said. But the goal is to have the helium-filled airship powered by hydrogen fuel cells, he said.

> Pathfinder 3 will initially be powered by batteries, Weston said. But the goal is to have the helium-filled airship powered by hydrogen fuel cells, he said. This is worth expanding on. There is a worldwide shortage of helium [1]. It's being aggravated by ongoing natural gas supply disruptions: > The helium shutdown in Arzew is a result of high natural gas demand in Europe, due in large part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Helium is found alongside natural gas in conventional wells. Algeria normally compresses natural gas into liquid form at Arzew for global transport by ship. During that process, it’s economical to extract helium because it liquefies at much higher pressures and lower temperatures than natural gas, explains industrial gas consultant Jon Raquet. > But now, much of Algeria’s natural gas is being sent to Spain via pipeline, making separation impractical. The industrial and rare-gas advisory firm Edelgas Group estimates that liquefied natural gas production in key regions is down 30% from January, leading to a 10% drop in global helium supply. And it's not like we're talking about just a little helium, either: > ... Pathfinder 3, at 600 feet long and 100 feet in diameter, is designed to carry about 20 tons and be able to traverse as many as 10,000 miles using electric-only, zero-emission propulsion. Running some back-of-the-envelope math, we can think of this as a cylinder roughly 400 feet long (to take account for tapering on either end) and 100 feet in diameter. That's 3.14 x 50^2 x 400 = 3.1 million cubic feet of He just to fill. It doesn't even account for ongoing resupply, testing, etc. The US is the largest producer of helium at 77 million cubic meters [2]. With a conversion factor of 35:1, that puts the volume of the airship at ~ 886,000 cubic meters. So we're not talking about consuming all of the US production of helium, but it's not insignificant, either. > The United States is the largest helium producer worldwide. In 2021, the production of helium in the U.S. stood at approximately 77 million cubic meters, [1] https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/War-Ukraine-makes-helium-shortage-more-dire/100/i10 https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/War-Ukraine... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production...