New Airship Will Try to Tackle the Amazon

Brazilian company Airship do Brasil hopes its airship designs will help bring people and supplies to isolated communities in the rainforest.

Amazon Rainforest
Eurasia / roberthardingGetty Images

The Amazon is the largest and densest forest on the planet. It's over 2 million square miles of jungle, and navigating it is nearly impossible. There are few roads, which means that for many of the isolated communities living in the forest contact with the outside world is rare. Currently, the best way to reach many of these communities is by boat, traveling down the river.

River travel is slow, so one Brazilian company is looking to the skies for a better solution. Airship do Brasil (ADB) is building a unique airship for bringing supplies and people to remote Amazonian communities, and the first public test flight is coming later this month.

Airships are a logical choice for reaching remote communities because they don't require long runways to land and takeoff. In a region like the Amazon rainforest, an airship might be the only way to get large supply deliveries to an outpost quickly.

Airship do Brasil

ADB built its first airship, the ADB-3-3, based on an old design from American company Leidos. The prototype airship will be able to carry six people and travel at speeds of 55 mph. In 2018, the company will begin development of a larger airship that will be able to carry over 30 tons of cargo.

This makes ADB the first company in South America to build an airship, and ADB hopes that they will help Brazil become a hub of airship travel and manufacture on the continent. If they're successful, they could start a new industry and enable people to live in remote parts of the rainforest without needing to be cut off from the rest of the world.

Source: BBC

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