this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Helium is a non-renewable substance which there is a global shortage of. I wonder how much it takes to lift that thing 😅
Wouldn't hydrogen be better for lifting something like a wind turbine.
Not necessarily. It's not about the boom factor alone - hydrogen is a small atom, and so under pressure, most commonly used materials are permeable to it. It leaks through every material. It really takes something as solid as steel pipes for hydrogen atoms to not work their way through and escape. So while hydrogen would be cheaper to produce at scale, it's also constantly leaking out of any container.
For wind turbines, static electricity and storms would be huge risks as well, so the application of a floating wind turbine would not be ideal.
If you're producing electricity in it, you can always bring some water up and use some of that electricity to extract hydrogen from the water to make up for any leaks.
It really depends how bad the leaking is since that dictates how much weight of water is needed to be brought up and electricity must be used for hydrolysis.