You know what clouds are called when they're on your doorstep? Fog. People love fog!
Good thing it can ascend and descend and hardly ever have to experience it!
I have to think though, that even the airship skeptic would concede that you would have some pretty stunning vistas very often.
Regarding resistance to natural disasters: I'm not sure whether a hurricane could easily destroy one or not, although the possibility seems plausible.
Not likely. It would depend on speed and altitude. The stratostations I have seen would be too far up to be affected. What altitude these more residential/office/crusie ship/hotel type ships could reach would be part of how they deal with issues like that.
As for high altitude launch site? I actually cannot think of a more terrible place to put your weapons than on a high-visibility, slow, easily punctured lighter-than-air vehicle. Every other proven platform is either low-visibility (submarine, mobile land vehicle), fast (aircraft), or highly survivable (hardened bunker). A cloud city possesses the weaknesses of all of them and the advantages of none, at many times the cost.
Thats launches into space. And the goal there is to be cheaper than a launch from the ground. The military applications of airships, albeit not residential airships, are numerous, but different than a floating cruise missle ship. Designs for unmanned high altitude observation platforms that can remain aloft for years at a time would be one such idea.
Indeed, the expense of a cloud city cannot be overstated. While rich people are indeed willing to pay silly amounts for things that don't matter, the things they tend to value are space, mobility and privacy. The equivalent to a $10m mansion on land is probably a rent-controlled apartment 1km in the sky, in a compact structure, so space and privacy are voided; mobility is a concern as well as air-to-ground-and-back transport costs can rapidly mount.
Ahhh so location doesnt matter in real estate! I imagine that city living in condos and apartments has not been considered by you? People pay an enormous amount for very, very little space or "privacy" in the sense of distance to nearest neighbor. Although when you close the door of you city apartment or condo, you actually do have interior privacy. Not only would there be no shortage of people who would want that, but other versions as hotels, spas and cruise ships would be a huge hit.
I dont have any problem at all seeing the desirablity of it. And since its an airship and solar powered, Its not clear what makes the cost so high for you. I think the devil in the details is the construction materials. This cant really be done right now, as vacuum buoyancy for something like this would reguire far stronger, lightweight building materials than currently exist. In principle, they could be manufactured, but this would involve some advances in the nano-manufacture of incredibly strong materials. Its easy enough to make something that can maintain its shape with a vacuum internally, but it has to be able to light enough to float at the same time. And thats alot more difficult.
