back to article Break out the scatter cushions: Google rents out NASA blimp hangar

Google is set to rent out NASA's historic Hangar One as well as two runways at an airfield near its Mountain View headquarters. The space agency announced a deal that would see Planetary Ventures LLC, a Google subsidiary, "rehabilitate" the historic hangar and manage Moffett Federal Airfield. We hope that doesn't mean too many …

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  1. Ralph B

    The Alan Parsons Project

    Google are obviously planning to launch a massive Eye in the Sky. Looking at you. Able to read your mind.

    No amount of tin foil will save us now.

    1. Roger Greenwood

      Re: The Alan Parsons Project

      I see your Alan Parsons project link, and raise you Vulture Culture.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: The Alan Parsons Project

        But do they bet everything on a turn of a friendly card?

  2. Robert E A Harvey

    Bedfordshire

    Shame we could not get them to refurbish the Cardington hangers too.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Bedfordshire

      I thought I read that a building company was going to have to renovate them before building a few hundred houses on the airfield.

      For a legal definition of 'before'.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Bedfordshire

        There are no hangers in Cardington!

        In the civilised parts of the world they used to keep their airships in proper sheds.

  3. Sporkinum

    Google must be part of the Syndicate that's in cahoots with the aliens.

  4. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
    Happy

    Hmmmm

    Is this hangar big enough to need a monorail, in order to get from one end to t'other? If not, don't worry. There's nothing to see here.

    If yes, we need to get an agent inside that hangar as soon as possible, in order to snog the super-villain's girlfriend, find out his plans and then thwart them ruthlessly. After being captured, a nice dinner, a little bit of light torture and so on.

    Obviously a giant hydraulically powered hangar door that opens slowly enough for the brass section of the orchestra to get fully warmed up would be a requirement.

  5. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

    Wow. That thing's HUGE

    It covers 8.5 acres of floor space!

    One of the pictures NASA have in their gallery shows a modern airship totally dwarfed inside either Hanger 2 or 3, and these are smaller than Hanger 1.

    1. DB2DBA

      Re: Wow. That thing's HUGE

      Absolutely. When the 747 that used to shuttle the Space Shuttle back to Florida after Edwards landings would park behind it, it looked like a toy airplane. It was simply dwarfed by the structure.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hangar 1 is so big, it used to generate it's own weather inside.

    I was inside once when we got sprinkled on, while it was sunny outside. Something about trapping that morning's fog.

    Right now the shell of the hangar has been removed. I guess I am ok with Google taking the thing over, but I have to wonder about the use of the place.

  7. David 164

    Let hope they don't mix up the fuel pumps this time around.

  8. Mike 16

    Just a nit-pick

    I know, but Hanger 1 was not (just) for Blimps. It was used for actual rigid dirigibles.

  9. Charles Manning
    Headmaster

    Another sad day in Editsville

    To rent out means to rent to another party. "Google rents out hanger" means Google currently has the rights to the hangar and are renting it out to someone else. What's wrong with "Google rents hanger", apart from being correct?

    It isn't aerodynamically designed, it does not need to fly. You can store blimps in a box it you want to. The shape probably does reduce wind loading but is mainly due to this being a good shape for a wide span structure - hence the Romans et al using the same basic shapes in their bridges and buildings.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: Another sad day in Editsville

      "It isn't aerodynamically designed, it does not need to fly."

      It does not need to fly but when an airship shed's doors are open they may create localised air turbulence so strong that it would wreck the airship being moved in or out of the shed - in fact, this was one of the major causes of airship losses in their early history, both in Germany and the UK.

      For this reason various door designs have been tried in order to mitigate that risk - some where rounded, some folding etc.

  10. Blain Hamon
    Happy

    Hangar One is gigantic, and like another commenter mentioned, you get weather patterns, and it's spacious enough to fly inside. Unfortunately the ground is tainted by a lot of heavy metals and the like. If I recall, there was consideration to scrap it, but public outcry is what saved it.

    The wikipedia article on it has more. It doesn't have a monorail, but a twin set of narrow-gauge tracks that run along that was for a mooring mast that guided the airships in and out.

    Anyways, let's get down to what's important: Reg units!

    The doors were not hydraulic, but electric, with 110 kW (Hey Reg! We need units for power!) motors to slide open the 42.86 kiloJub doors.

    Measuring 37.5 double-decker busses long and 10.2 double-decker busses wide, it weighs in at 1.6 microwales, meaning you could have 8 football pitches (6 full American football fields) in it. It stands 6.5 double-decker busses high and dwarfs nearby water towers.

    Lately, the panels have been removed, leaving just the truss structure that was underneath. It's always strange driving by it on 101, because it looks like reality's video card hiccuped and decided to draw Hangar One as a wireframe.

  11. Chris G

    Hmmm no monorail but...

    Once the Hangar structure (with an 'a' not an 'e', a hanger is something in a wardrobe to keep clothes off the floor), is recovered I can see a secret underwater tunnel being dug from the end of the Moffet runways where the barge will probably be moored to the interior of the hangar, where they will construct a giant world dominating submarine ad delivery device so that it can rendezvous with the Borg Barge.

    Does anyone at Borgle like white pussies?

  12. Loverofpies

    Very taxing

    They pay minimal tax so at least the government is getting money from them through this deal!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not built for blimps.

    If they'd needed a hangar merely for blimps (non-rigid airships), they wouldn't have bothered building anything quite so big.

    Moffet Field's Hangar One was built - like all those huge old airship hangars - for huge rigid airships. Wikipedia says this one was built "as a naval airship station for the USS Macon (ZRS-5)".

    Also: "During the brief period that the Macon was based at Moffett, Hangar One accommodated not only the giant airship but several smaller non-rigid lighter-than-air craft simultaneously."

    1. Robert Sneddon

      Re: Not built for blimps.

      REAL giant airships have hangars for smaller airships on board. See Castle Wulfenbach for an example.

  14. DropBear
    Joke

    ...aaaaand just like that, trying to dismiss a tinfoil-hatter with "it was just a weather balloon" will never quite be the same again.

  15. Alan Edwards

    I looked up Hangar 1 on Google Images, and got this: http://funraniumlabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IMG_9532.jpg

    NASA have a weird 4-engined Antonov 72-type-thing and a Stargate stored in there...

    The page that picture came from is a good read too: http://www.funraniumlabs.com/2010/09/a-field-trip-to-nasa-amesmoffett-field

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      NASA 715? Not an Antonov

      The weird 4 engined aircraft (NASA 715) is apparently:

      "De Havilland Canada C-8A Buffalo. Ex.USAF 63-13687. Converted by Boeing into Quiet Short-haul Research Aircraft(QSRA)"

      http://www.abpic.co.uk/search.php?q=NASA%20715&u=reg

      I think you're right about that other thing being a stargate.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    USS Macon = flying aircraft carrier.

    The USS Macon was a real, not fictional, flying aircraft carrier.

    http://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-akron-macon

    - okay, so the thing carried biplane fighters, not airships, but I say the Macon beats Castle Wulfenbach in the "real giant airship" stakes because, erm, the USS Macon was real.

    The USA tried the "flying aircraft carrier" idea again in the 1950s with the experimental McDonnell XF-85 Goblin hooked up to a B-36.

    No-one ever solved the problem that re-attaching to a flying aircraft carrier was always horribly difficult and dangerous.

    AFAIK, the Soviets were the only people to operate parasite planes in warfare: the Zveno project.

    http://fineartamerica.com/featured/soviet-bomber-with-parasite-fighters-1935-ria-novosti.html

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