- Sergey Brin’s airship company LTA Research recently received flight clearance for its vessel Pathfinder 1.
- That means the company can now test the massive airship in designated airspaces in the Bay Area.
- Brin launched the company in 2016 and plans to use his airships to deliver humanitarian aid.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin’s airship is ready to take flight.
LTA Research, Brin’s company that aims to deliver humanitarian aid through “lighter than air” blimp-like vehicles, announced this week that its Pathfinder 1 vessel received its airworthiness certificate. The company received the certificate on September 6, a spokesperson for the FAA subsequently told to Insider by email.
The Pathfinder 1, LTA’s crown jewel, is a massive airship that’s nearly 400 feet long and close to 66 feet wide at its broadest point. Airships are lighter than airplanes and typically don’t require jet engines.
The airworthiness certificate allows the Pathfinder 1 to begin test flights at Moffett Field — a NASA airfield run by Google in the Bay Area — and Palo Alto airport’s airspaces at heights of up to 1,500 feet. Eventually, it will move to the former Goodyear Airdock airship hangar in Akron, Ohio, where the company is already working on building an even larger vessel, the almost 600-foot Pathfinder 3, according to IEEE Spectrum.
When it does eventually take the skies, the Pathfinder 1 — propelled by 12 electric motors and the lift of 13 helium bags — will be used to deliver food and other basic necessities to remote areas of the world.
“We believe lighter than air technology has the capacity to speed up humanitarian aid by reaching remote locations with little infrastructure, and to lower carbon emissions for air and cargo transportation,” LTA’s CEO Alan Weston told the Financial Times in June 2022. Weston — an Australian aeronautics expert with a penchant for extreme sports — worked as a program director at NASA before he was tapped by Brin to helm LTA.
LTA’s airships could one day carry up to 200 tons of cargo each — nearly ten times the amount a Boeing 737 can carry — Weston told Bloomberg in May. That, along with the fact that they don’t require a runway or much infrastructure, is why the company hopes the vessels will play a key role in disaster relief.
“If runways, roads, and ports are damaged, LTA’s airships can still deliver what communities need. If cellphone towers are knocked out, airships can hover and provide service,” the company notes on its website.
The vehicle could also serve as a luxurious intercontinental “air yacht” for Brin’s friends and family, as The Guardian once described it. Which means it might end up being an airborne addition to Brin’s collection of luxury yachts and water-sports vehicles that those in his inner circle have dubbed “Fly Feet.”
Over the years, Brin, who founded LTA Research in 2016, has been closely involved with the company, regularly visiting its facilities in the Bay Area to discuss progress and meet with Weston. It’s not clear exactly how much Brin, who is worth $105 billion, per Bloomberg, has funneled into the venture, but factory floor workers said it could be more than $250 million, Bloomberg reported.
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