Google co-founder Sergey Brin is working on a high-tech airship in Silicon Valley — a behemoth that will be the largest aircraft in the world, according to a report.
“It’s going to be massive on a grand scale,” one of several sources with knowledge of the project told The Guardian of the UK.
The dirigible will likely be almost 657 feet long, making it by far the largest aircraft today – though smaller than Germany’s iconic Zeppelins of the 1930s, or the US Navy’s airship USS Macon.
The Macon, which crashed in 1935, was 784 feet long. The ill-fated Hindenburg, which was more than 800 feet long, met its fiery fate when it crashed in an infamous disaster in New Jersey two years later.
Today, by comparison, the Russian Antonov An-225 Mriya is 276-feet long and the Airbus A380 is about 240 feet long.
The sources revealed details of the airship to The Guardian on the condition of anonymity, citing confidentiality agreements.
Brin, who has remained mum on the project, is personally funding the airship, which he is building at Moffett Field inside in a giant hangar at the NASA Ames Research Center, sources told the paper.
He wants the mammoth aircraft to be able to deliver supplies on humanitarian missions to remote locations — but it also will serve as a luxurious intercontinental “air yacht” for his relatives and pals, the sources said.
The project will cost $100 million to $150 million to complete, one source said.
“Sergey is pretty innovative and forward looking,” Igor Pasternak, an airship designer who was involved in the early stages of the project, told the paper.
“Trucks are only as good as your roads, trains can only go where you have rails, and planes need airports. Airships can deliver from point A to point Z without stopping anywhere in between,” he said.