With the recent resurgence in interest around airships as more eco-friendly options for hauling and travel (relative to commonplace aerodynes), the safety of hydrogen and availability of helium may still prove to be limiting factors in further development. Moreover, many are postulating that an airship instead using vacuum lift components isn't possible with known materials due to the strength required for the pressure gradient. Will research in materials or engineering overcome the hurdles regarding vacuum lift?
Specifically, this market resolves YES if before 2040 there is an object that can hold an imperfect vacuum and provides active lift in Earth atmosphere when doing so. The lift it provides must be equal to or greater than a conventional airship balloon with an equivalent volume of hydrogen (this point might need further defining, please take to the comments if you have suggestions).
Some nitpicks:
it need not always hold a vacuum (in case of f.ex. a ballast system)
it need not be perfectly hollow or made of a uniform material (most speculative designs of a vacuum lift object expect some kind of lattice internals or mixed outer frame materials)
it need not be of any particular size, so long as enough objects could eventually be made to replace some or all traditional methods of lift in airships
it doesn't need to hold a perfect vacuum as even outer space is not a perfect vacuum, but still needs to be based on the idea of vacuum lift
Otherwise, this market resolves NO in 2040.
As I often do, I have put in limit orders to help initial bettors, and might trade more on this market.
Related questions
@brp hmm I don't think I'd understand what that question means. maybe others like it more?
@Stralor Oh, I'm not critiquing your question, just offering my interpretation of the tech that would be necessary to make it resolve YES. The question and resolution criteria are good!
Betting no as
1) airship research has been continuing, at a very low level for years. There's no reason to expect sudden takeoff within the next few years
2) helium is in short supply, but hydrogen is plentiful and likely to become cheaper for next five years as the petroindustry try to push it as a transition fuel
3) vacumn tech is, imo, most likely to take off when an established airship industry needs an alternative to hydrogen following some accident or regulation on wildfire risk.
Discussion on 3)
I don't have too much insight into airship research but isn't hydrogen quasi-forbidden since the hindenburg desaster?
I.e.: hydrogen is explosive in earths atmosphere. This is sometimes referred to as an ex-risk.