re: Recycling
Yes! Competition is good...Cooperation is even better.
Think about what might-have-been had Henri Giffard
received COOPERATION from the Englishman, John Stringfellow;
not to mention from his own countrymen [French scientists,
engineers, commercial patrons ("Perrier water" advertising-slogans
all over the airship's gas-envelope?)]
...Airships would have become a practical, though still-dangerous, reality before 1860.
What-might-have-been.
Maybe it's just as well that history/fate didn't deal kindly with Henri Giffard: You might have had U.S Union airships dropping nitroglycerene
bombs on Richmond, Virginia [circa: 1864-1865].
Jacob Samorodin