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[Avis-Mergulus]

Liquid expansion on freezing, aided by the fact any beer has a fair bit of gas in it, which enhances the expansion :v

Don't let your beers freeze, kids.

That's actually water expansion on freezing. It's IIRC one of the few, or maybe even the only liquid that does that, due to its highly irrational bond structure.

Of the ones I know, molten bismuth expands, and I think gallium and silicon also do. For some reason, when I look this up, I only find elemental liquids, despite being sure that some compounds also do that. I just don't remember which ones.
Still, it's pretty rare.

[Rolan7]

There probably are several compounds that do, since water is a compound and all.

[Sergarr]

What hte hell.

Here's how it works. First, get a very large airship and float it above a city. Then attach a giant warehouse full of Amazon items to the bottom (actually, you should probably attach this before the floating, but the patent is vague on this point). This warehouse is constantly restocked by smaller airships, which bring personnel and supplies from the ground, as well as carrying away waste. People on the ground use their computers to browse items currently floating over their heads, and order whatever they want. Then drones grab the items, hurl themselves out of the airship, and engage their rotors as they approach the ground. The human receives his or her item from the drone, and the drone ascends back up to its floating palace of boxes and workers.

What is this, Blade Runner?!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's not....literally impossible?

I guess we'll get to see that airship techline we missed out on...

[TempAcc]

BUT WHAT KIND OF AIRSHIP ARE THEY GOING TO USE?

What, do we have flying saucers already and I've just been living under an aerospace rock for the last few years?

[IcyTea31]

When looking for subtances that expand when they solidify, one should probably look to ones that make crystals. After all, the expansion is because the rigid molecular lattice takes more space than the freely-moving liquid.

[Comrade P.]

BUT WHAT KIND OF AIRSHIP ARE THEY GOING TO USE?

Prolonged flight without much movement? That sounds like a job for a blimp.

[Rolan7]

That's... hm.
Is it cost-effective for a warehouse to be attached to a dirigible?
It sounds cool as hell, but my guess is no.
Though I really want it to be yes.

I suppose dirigibles are fragile, and it would be relatively costly to float goods up and down from them.  Though shipping from warehouses isn't inherently cheap either, we've just optimized a lot...

I mean the main cost is probably the interstate trip, this only handles the final local distribution...  Hm.
Clearly this won't work because nazis.

[TempAcc]

Aren't blimps like, kinda vulnerable to adverse weather and not able to carry all that much cargo, though?

Like, you'd need a fuckhuge blimp in order to actualy use it as a warehouse of some sort, with products + workers + drones. Then one day God decides to practice his old zeus persona and throws a lightning at it, and suddenly you have a fuckhuge warehouse tier mass falling on top of unsuspecting consumers.

[Shadowlord]

To quote Indiana Jones, "Nazis! I hate those guys!"

[Comrade P.]

There is a slur of problems with blimps, yes, BUT every other alternative I can think of is going to cost a fucking fortune in fuel expenses alone. Plus emissions from burning said fuel, but who has ever cared about emissions when tremendous amounts of money are involved.

E: I think I was in seventh grade when I did that little bit of research for a project about airborne aircraft carriers, and my conclusion back then went "this idea really sucks, but if you absolutely must have one, go with a blimp".

[Shadowlord]

Nuclear powered helicarrier

[Comrade P.]

Nuclear powered helicarrier

Are you telling me that gigantic aerial battleship from Avengers is actually going to be an Amazon warehouse?

[TempAcc]

CAPITALISM HO!

But nah, I don't think anyone came up with any reactor design light and powerful enough to put on an airship. We won't be getting nuclear airships unless people can get one of those small fusion reactor designs working, not to mention stable fusion itself :U

[Comrade P.]

Well I'm an optimist that way, so what I question is not whether or not we will come up with the technology, but how are we going to use it.