Blast from the past

An idea popped up to go back in the past and see what they're doing now. So, what's JP Aerospace doing these days? Checked it out, and they're doing pretty much the same things. JP wants to go to space in an airship, but he's not doing it really fast. Not only that, he's getting kinda old. Nobody lives forever. What happens when he cannot do it anymore? Is there anyone to follow him?

He has videos on YouTube. Some of those are about his propulsion system. Not really clear on how it works. He claims that it is pretty efficient. It's probably some variant on the ion propulsion device. If so, it will have a high ISP, which means it's fuel efficient; but it won't have much thrust. He won't need that much thrust in an airship.

How does anyone get to space in an airship? To make it short, it's complicated. The idea is to do it in stages, which is kinda the way they do it now. But these stages are not like the conventional thing. The first stage is an airship which will go to about 140k feet to a station floating in the sky. The second stage is to use another airship customized to the higher elevation. This ship will be friggin' HUGE. The idea behind that is to give lift, while gaining velocity. After enough velocity is obtained, the ship will have lift. The lift from the atmosphere allows it to keep airborne while it builds up enough velocity to get to orbit.

There are skeptics that this concept can work. Even if it couldn't, the technology could be useful some day. For instance, it could be useful on Mars. The thin atmosphere may allow for an airship type means of transportation from one point to another on the planet. On Earth, he uses helium. On Mars, an airship could use a less dense gas-Nitrogen, and still be able to get airborne. A concept like his might be useful to make ultralight airships that could be propelled by the propulsion devices he is working on.

But all of that is pie-in-the-sky. At his rate of progress, it won't happen in his lifetime. Which means it won't happen at all.