What materials and what shapes should be used for struts inside a vacuum airship's envelope?
What materials and what shapes should be used for struts inside a vacuum airship's envelope?
The vacuum airship is a theoretical dirigible design were you replace the hydrogen/ other lifting gas with a vacuum. The density of air at standard temperature and pressure is 1.28 g/l, so 1 liter of displaced air has sufficient buoyant force to lift 1.28 g. The problem with this is that you must have a strong and rigid envelope so that it does not collapse under the pressure of the atmosphere. I think one way to resolve this would be to have struts made out of light and stiff material (e.g graphene) and to have an incredibly rigid envelope made out of similar materials.
So, what shape should the struts be (both individual shape and how they are placed), and what should they be made out of? If you have an alternative to the struts then you may answer with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship
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