French designer Jean-Marie Massaud has a vision, one which looks like a
huge white whale with flippers and flukes. The futuristic Moby Dick is
actually an airship containing a luxury hotel. Guests of the "Manned
Cloud," as the ambitious project is called, will be able to enjoy the
world’s most beautiful sights from up on high — if the project ever
gets off the ground. (w/pics)

Massaud Studio, the company behind the project, is promoting the
futuristic vessel as an ecologically friendly way to travel. According
to spokeswoman Aurélie Ullrich, landscapes will be enjoyed from above
rather than being disfigured or damaged by tourist infrastructure.

Massaud’s plans foresee the 20-room sightseeing hotel accommodating
40 guests and 15 employees. A restaurant, bookstore, fitness studio and
bar will provide entertainment, should watching the world go by through
the enormous panorama windows, or tanning on the sun deck on the top of
the vessel, become boring.

The airship will have a top speed of 170 kilometers per hour, but will
generally travel at 130 kilometers per hour, a more comfortable speed
for sight-seeing. The vessel, which will be 210 meters long, 82 meters
wide and 52 meters high, will only require re-fuelling after 5,000
kilometers and will be able to remain airborne for roughly three days.

The 41-year-old French visionary has brought a big-name partner on
board — the French aerospace research center Onera, which will develop
the technology for the vehicle. Ullrich says further details will be
revealed later. As of yet, there are no specific plans for the
airship’s propulsion and landing technologies.

According to the present design, the hotel would have to be carried
by a massive gas-filled buoyancy device with a volume of 520,000 cubic
meters. Ullrich says a smaller version would also be possible, should
the intended size not be feasible. Investors with specific business
models have yet to be found. Nevertheless, the designers are hoping to
be able to launch the hotel in 2020.

Fat Cigars with Little Wings

Today, 156 years after French engineer Henri Giffard made the first
powered flight in an airship, dirigibles are once again the subject of
much interest, as entrepreneurs dream up ways of using the exotic
vehicles for tourism. So far, airships have only been used for short
tourist excursions; longer voyages haven’t been considered financially
viable. But the American airship company Worldwide Aeros Corporation
recently announced plans to build an airship-aeroplane hybrid that
could also be used for longer air cruises.

The so-called Aeroscraft has the capacity to compress helium — the
lighter-than-air gas which is used to create lift –on board, allowing
it to vary the vehicle’s weight at landing and take-off. In addition,
it gets 30 percent of its lift during flight from its aerodynamic form.

Unlike in zeppelins, the roughly 500-cubic-meter passenger cabin
will be located directly in the Aeroscraft itself. The airship, of
which a small prototype is already in construction, will travel at a
brisk 220 kilometers per hour. But the vessel, which resembles a fat
cigar with little wings, can hardly be described as elegant. When it
comes to chic design, Massaud’s airship is way ahead — even if the
French company appears to consider the airship’s technology to be of
secondary importance.

In fact, Massaud has already received a design prize for his "Manned
Cloud," from the Parisian industrial design institute APCI. According
to Ullrich, Studio Massaud was awarded the APCI’s 2008 "Design
Observeur" prize partly because of the way the project brings together
partners who would normally not have found each other: a designer, an
aerospace research center and a potential investor.

Via der Spiegel