C J Campbell wrote:
Nice idea, but:

1) They want to build a 6,000 foot long airship using a construction
facility permanently parked at 140,000 feet up. Might be a little tough.
They are probably right in their calculations that it would take an airship
of this size to reach 200,000 feet.

2) They want to use a solar powered electric motor with a propeller over a
period of five days to accelerate the big airship to orbital velocity at
200,000 feet.

When I read the article, what I saw was that they wanted to glide the
airship upwards and have it accelerate as it rose, using the positive
buoyancy as it's source of thrust. So it'd be an upside-down glider.
They were proposing to gain much of the airship's escape velocity that way.