What if you could fly at 32,000ft, going 750 mph for as long as the sun is up, using solar energy to power massive turbofan engines?
It's sounds in impossible, but the concept being put forwerd by French industrial designer Daphnis Fournier is not just possible, it's actually practical thanks in part to hybrid airship design principles.
In this case, the designer is essentially talking about building a scaled up version of the same concept as that of the Solarship, but it would be used for high altitude, high speed passenger air travel instead of humanitarian relief. There is really nothing technically speaking that says this cannot be done, the only issue I see is the claimed 750 mph, I imagine the turbofans on this thing would need to be massive and power hungry to achieve that kind of speed, but even if it get's half that speed it's still worthwhile investment for the airline industry.
What would make it even better is if the 4 turbofan engine's thrust could be vectored down to give the craft true VTOL capabilities like other hybrid airship designs out there. Maybe Daphnis isn't aware of the other hybrid airship projects out there, or he just believes it's impractical to give this thing VTOL capabilities, which may be true for all I know. It might not have enough helium in it's cell to lift the craft even with the thrust of those massive turbofans vectored down. Most hybrids are built to have the helium support most if not all of their empty weight. This one might not generate enough combined lifting power to takeoff vertically. It could still have engines vectoring up to 60 degrees in that case for a slower stall/takeoff speed, but would mean it would still need a runway.
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