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Helios Technology Oh, hello there! I had heard you were coming. Welcome to Helios Tours, Incorporated!
My name is Admiral Ted Helix, lead designer and commander of the Helios airship series, and I will be your guide today! Please step into this tour balloon, and in a few moments we shall fly up and begin the aerial portion of the tour. Before we leave the ground, however, I will provide a brief background and general overview of the Helios series in general, as well as introduce this particular ship you see behind hovering behind me; the Chateau Nouveau.
The term Helios is a general title or "brand" for a handful of different models of airships. Several Helios models have been released before the one we will be touring today, and all Helios models share many of its same traits. The most notable feature of the Helios series are each ship's four, spherical helium pontoons. These pontoons are packed with an inert, gaseous helium mixture that allows the ships to retain the approximate buoyancy of air, even with all equipment turned off. Even the very first Helios design, which was essentially a man-powered bicycle with pontoons attached, boasted this type of technology.
In other words, a Helios unit can hover in mid-air like a helicopter, but with virtually no usage of its propellers. Since Helios airships are typically science vessels, they are well equipped to hover in one area for long periods of time for research purposes without any worry of expending large amounts of fuel in the process. The pressure in the pontoons can be adjusted to match atmospheric pressure, so a Helios ship can hold its position in virtually any altitude, for any length of time.
The latest and greatest addition to the Helios family is the ship before us, the Chateau Nouveau. It represents the culmination of months of planning by some of Arcadia's top scientists, engineers, designers, and architects, as well as many more months of work spent actually building. The project was privately funded by a number of individuals and corporations, and bears no official political affiliation with either of Arcadia's disputed ruling political factions (neither Celestial Empire nor Feuersturm).
We are hired to carry out many scientific tests and studies by various private and government parties. On this ship we build mechanical objects, test explosives and ammunition, run weather experiments, execute high altitude tests, map the geography and geology of Arcadia, explore mountainous regions, monitor various water filtering systems on the ship itself, study electrical fields, monitor our own states of well-being, and much, much more! Please feel free to take photos, but I must remind you that this is not only a state-of-the-art science vessel; it is also a home. Myself, my expedition partner and our robotic assistant are aloft often for weeks at a time. Please do behave in any way that might inconvenience us or delay our next voyage, and that includes wandering away from the tour group! Anyway, up we go! |
