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Zeppelin Flies Again
rakerman writes "The Globe and Mail reports Japanese firm buys first new-look Zeppelin.
"Makers of the revived Zeppelin airship delivered their first helium-filled craft to a commercial user Saturday, a Japanese company that plans to use the 12-seat craft for sightseeing trips and advertising." They call themselves Zeppelin-NT, or as the Germans say "Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH"."
This is a terrible day! What a tragedy! Oh, my God! Those poor people!
Zeppelin NT came to Istanbul for a private BMW meeting I guess. Thing looks damn cool and huge :)
The Zeppelin NT has been around for at least 10 years! I've seen photos of it in Popular Science, Discover, et al.
They should upgrade to Zep 2000 (based on NT technology.)
Sounds like those are going to have to be some very pricey tickets. They'd have to be with only 12 passengers for each flight.
DeviantArt Page
NSFW" The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik -- named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" -- is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fuelled the earlier generation of airships. " The earlier generation of airships was also designed to be filled with Helium, not Hydrogen. Short supply forced them to use Hydrogen.
I'm not sure naming it Zeppelin NT is such a wise move. Would you get on an aircraft with a namesake that's prone to crash? Oh, the humanity!
Mirror here. This would seem like a no-brainer for the editors. But they couldn't care less, it seems.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
You lost a great opportunity to be quiet. Don't let those pass you again.
Sincerely,
Mr Blinky
Maybe I got something wrong but,
i on .htm
"Today, the Zeppelins have returned. In 1997, the Zepplin Luftschifftechnik built a new airship -- the LZ NT. The ship is certified. Commercial passenger flights began 15 August 2001."
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/introduct
Does that mean BSOD = Blimp Screen of Death?
(and as long as I have you here...)
I know a Zeppelin has to have a Captain, but will it have a Kernel as well?
ba-dum-DUM!
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!
Ever since the Hindenburg accident the technology has been nearly dead, just as if we had stopped building ships after the Titanic sank.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Check out www.21stcenturyairships.com
This guy made spherical airships despite everyone telling him it would never work.
Personally, I find this much more interesting than the Zeppelin "comeback".
I've seen it fly out of Friedricshafen, Germany, and I even managed to buy a plastic model kit for it (made by Revell, curiously) in a hobby shop in Friedrichshafen. It's a neat looking machine, and I hope the firm succeeds in doing interesting things with them. There's certainly room for zeppelins in the world of aviation.
BTW, I also visited the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen; they have a 1:1 mockup of the boarding gangway, some passenger cabins and a dining area from the Hindenburg. That was an awesome experience, and I recommend it if you ever go to the Bodensee region of Germany.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I though maybe John Bonham (deceased Zeppelin drummer) had been cloned or something.
Considering that the Hindenburg itself was *literally* flamebait, perhaps the mod was going all uber-meta and using the flamebait mod as a subtle show of recognition.
Then again, maybe the mod's just a dumbass.
These would be excellent (and much safer) for small regional transportation instead of the puddle jumpers and small jets that exist now. Since the US is never going to adopt high speed rail this looks like a good alternative.
The Zeppelin NT was flying near Frankfurt in Germany last year using a base in a field on the edge of a small town called Bad Homburg situated about 15Km outside Frankfurt. They ran short tours around the centre of the city. Being rather larger than the average blimp it is impressive to watch and relatively slow and quiet compared to conventional aircraft.
See my journal, I write things there
"a Japanese company that plans to use the 12-seat craft for (...) advertising."
If they put light-emitting diodes on the sides for an electronic billboard, would that make it a LED Zeppelin?
From their website:
Fare per Person: EUR 335,00 Monday to Friday; EUR 370,00 on weekends and holidays.
Please visit www.zeppelinflug.de for booking.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
GmbH is the German equivalent of, 'Inc'. or 'Ltd.'
It's short for 'Gesellschaft mit Beschränkter Haftung' (Corporation with Limited Liability).
Das ist alle für heute. Viel Spass.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Personally I'll never understand marketing folks. =)
Paul Lenhart writes words!
that'll go over like a lead.. uh, um, nevermind
Actually, it isn't a blimp, it's a proper Zeppelin. The difference? A Zeppelin has a rigid frame, a blimp does not.
Did you know that the US Navy built a few Zeppelin Aircraft Carriers in the 1930s? That's right - Zeppelins that could carry, launch and recover fighter aircraft. Fighteres were carried in a compartment in the body of the airship and were launched and recovered from a "trapeze". Link with pictures.
Zeppelins are cool. I wish they'd become more widely adopted. Stoopid Hindenburg painted with Stoopid rocket fuel...
"the total mixture might well serve as a respectable rocket propellant"
The direction and color of the flame supports this theory. Hydrogen burns with a colorless flame and would burn upwards (being lighter than air). The actual flame burned downwards and looked like a "fireworks display".
See: http://engineer.ea.ucla.edu/releases/blimp.htm
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
It's short for Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung. (association with limited liabilty).
That's a quite common form for buisiness in Germany. The limited liabilty means the
owners are only liable with everything in the company and only little with private money).
It's pronounced Ge Em Be Ha.
(where a is pronounced between but and car,
the e a bit like in yelow.)
No, Cargolifter went bust.
Zeppelin have been making heavy construction equipment for years.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
The engines are flat 4 piston engines rather than turbines which reduces servicing costs and it doesn't have to burn fuel to sit stationary in the air. The Zeppelin is also designed specifically to require a minimal ground crew.
At the moment, the development costs still have to be paid and pilots earn a bundle because there aren't very many certified but in the long term the running costs should be lower than a helicopter with a similar carrying capacity. The thing cost around $9 million including ground infrastructure items like mast and refuelling vehicle.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I wonder what Microsoft will have to say about this...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
...advertising air ships just like in Blade Runner. Bio-manufactured organs are comming next.
>> Practice Safe Hex
There was another German Zeppelin Startup called the Cargolifter. Their business plan sounded a lot more exiting. They were going to develop a Zeppelin for Heavy Duty lifting, like bringing Turbine Parts to remote areas in India. Basically all the stuff thats too big for normal trucks.
Unfortunately, the managers were rather low on some vital brain functions and they had a few hundred engineers working on rather useless side-projects before their burn rate caught up with their Venture Capital
They did, however, built the biggest self-supported manufacturing hall worldwide. Some Japanese investors are planting a rainforest in it now.
Fleur de Sel
Even though it's the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, helium is fairly scarce on earth. The majority that we get comes from extraction from natural gas. Ambient air extraction is not economically feasible due to the low concentration (1 part per 200,000). I've heard that demand will outstrip supply by 2010 and the $19.95 Party Balloon kits at Costco will be a bit more costly. What is the future of lighter-than air transport with the "lighter" part being costly in the near future?
I'm sure the weight of the structure we'd need to contain the vacuum would far exceed the air it would displace. Maybe it could be possible with some radical design made out of carbon fibre, but for today it isn't practical.
Two big reasons.
first using a gas gives you a tension structure. Tension structures are easy to build light wieght and strong. Using vacume gives you a compression structure and compression structures are much harder to build light.
second Vacum isn't that much lighter than helium.
follow me on this. At STP (standard temperature and pressure) air has a weight of about 26g/mole while helium has a weight of about 4g/mole blimps run low pressure so this is about right. 1 mole is about 23 L of gas. so for 23L of heium I get 22g of lift for the same amount of vacume I get 26g of lift. So by using helium instead of vacume you only lose about 15% of te lifting capacity, but you greatly simplify construction and maintainance.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
The Zeppelin NT has a rigid spine, the cells are arranged round about the spine. It isn't a blimp.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Iron oxide and powdered aluminum? Holy crap, there's some brilliant engineering for you.
"Hmmm... this hydrogen-filled airship is flammable... but couldn't we make it MORE flammable?"
"I know! Let's dope it with thermite!"
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
For example, consider this sentence. . .
Quote: The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik -- named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" -- is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fuelled the earlier generation of airships.
1. Flammable is a non-word. (Re: The Elements of Style) The word they were grasping for is "inflammable".
2. Airships were never "fueled" by hydrogen or helium. It provides buoyant lift, it's not burned for energy.
3. The first generation of Zeppelins were made to use helium, not hydrogen. The Germans only switched to hydrogen after the USA embargoed them and cut off their supply of helium.
Furthermore, it irritates me that nobody can mention airships without harking back to the Hindenberg. It's as if every news story about a large oceangoing ship was compelled to recap the Titanic disaster.
Looks like a Zeppelin to me.
-Brendan
Me too. Very disappointed that it just turned out to be about a big balloon.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Optimized for Internet Exploder...
Badabim, badaBOOM...
Hydrogen would have burned almost instantaneously. There was nothing keeping the hydrogen under pressure, so there would be no explosion -- just the bags popping off one at a time. If the gas bags and outer skin were both fireproof, I suspect the Hindenburg would have crash-landed with most people surviving even if the hydrogen burned.
There is not freighter in use today that could not run rings around a LTA craft. In addition to being faster, the freighter can haul more cargo and it can do so through weather that will turn your LTA aircraft into a twisted lump of plastic and carbon fiber sitting on the bottom of the ocean. The amount of volume needed to turn any of these things into a "heavy lift" vehicle also makes them pretty much useless for that task.
Compared to ships there is almost nothing an LTA aircraft can do that a ship cannnot do better, safer, and cheaper. Compared to other aircraft there are only a few things that an LTA can do that a HTA can't; the big advantages of LTA aircraft are loiter time and almost silent operation. The only real use cases for these things are as high-altitude communication relays, long-loiter reconnaisance, and sightseeing.
I hear ya. Even though I'd pay whatever they were charging to go see them....I know it couldn't possibly live up to the legendary performances of their heyday.
I often think, while watching the latest Led Zeppelin DVD set of their concert days and watching Bonzo beat the living hell out of the drums, Robert singing his ass off, Jonesy playing all types of things,and Jimmy smoking on guitar...I think "Wow...THIS is what a rock and roll band is supposed to be.....
I HOPE that some younger kids today get ahold and watch this and get some inspiration that I frankly think is lost in today's music. You don't need 2 tons of electronic trickery that fixes bad vocals and bad instrument performances.........IF the group is even playing for real and not lip sync'ing.
I miss seeing people playing the guitar at a million notes a minute....mixing in great riffs.....dancing around the stage and putting on a performace, that was based less on special effects and light shows, than musicianship and performance skills
Pink Floyd being the exception to this...great show backed up by fantastic music and performances...but, not much movement...hahaha.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A communication breakdown.
Pilot: "Ah, look how nice and blue the sky is up here!"
Co-Pilot: "Actually we're still in clouds. That's a blue screen."
Pilot: "Hold me."
Iron oxide, cellulose acetate, and aluminum powder was used for the doping material.
"the total mixture might well serve as a respectable rocket propellant"
Lots of energy but not much outgassing - and that mostly from the cellulose acetate binder. Rotten rocket fuel. But a GREAT source of heat and hot particles.
Iron oxide and aluminum, once you finally get it lit (which is hard), burns to aluminum oxide and quite pure white-hot molten iron.
It has been used for such things as welding railroad rails (and by pranksters for welding trolley cars TO the rails while they're stopped to load/unload passengers). And of course for starting fires in a war setting.
Burning a thermite coating on a hydrogen-filled zepplin, in addition to removing the skin, would result in drops of molten iron falling THROUGH the internal structure, rupturing the gas bags, heating/weakening the structural members, and generally insuring that everything flammible was on fire in extremely short order.
But you've seen the film.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Back when I was a kid right before World War 2, I was riding on a Zeppelin when this strange guard was checking tickets. One of the passengers didn't have one, so he tossed him out the window.
Even though it's the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, helium is fairly scarce on earth. The majority that we get comes from extraction from natural gas.
And (at one point) from a set of wells in texas that produced nearly pure Helium. Helium concentration varies from deposit to deposit.
In the period between WW I and WW II, essentially the only sources of bulk helium were wells in the US south, plus a little in Russia. Due to its usefulness in barrage balloons during WW I, the US considered the supply a strategic weapons material and monopolized the US supply (under the administration of the Navy, which was also in charge of the US Zepplin program).
The US would not allow Germany to have any - which is why the Zepplins were hydrogen-filled. (Indeed, that policy was STILL in force during the '60s, which was the last time I looked. I think it got relaxed in the last decade or two.)
After the Hindenberg's flameoff was blamed on Hydrogen, with Helium unavailable, nobody was interested in paying for a flight in a Zepplin when there were perfectly good steamships.
So the industry went down, not JUST from the misattribution of the problem to Hydrogen, but ALSO to the US government's refusal to release Hydrogen for commercial air flight - even to US operators.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If the dirigible is made with multiple self-sealing gas cells filled with helium, it is not at all very susceptible to anything short of major explosives, such as surface-to-air missiles. An RPG-7 (such as was used to take down two UH-60 helicopters in Mogadishu back in those recent troubles) might also make a dent and deflate a single cell, slowly - but the remaining cells should be enough to ensure at least a slow descent. If, however the terrorists shoot up a significant number of gas cellls, yes, that will possibly be a problem. The factors will be getting a high enough rate of deflation to actually make it drop at a significant rate, a rate high enough to cause damage.
At any rate, a dirigible is much less vulnerable to attack than, say, a pasenger airplane.
You are referring to Addison Bain's misleading claims.
He is quite wrong about the skin in many different ways. It could not generate sparks in the ways he claimed, and if such sparks were applied to it they would not ignite it, and if someone did set the skin on fire it would not burn nearly as fast or energetically as he claimed, not by orders of magnitude. He compares the mix to "rocket fuel" but first of all this is false, it lacks the right components in the right proportions to burn as a rocket fuel. Actually solid fuel rocket fuel does not burn at the rapid rates he assumes either. But anyway the skin was not a uniform mix of all the chemical components (which he gets wrong) it was a layered composite, with the various chemicals separated.
Bain himself made a hash of his claims that the skin self-ignited and then burn furiously, so vigorously as to eclipse the heat of hydrogen combustion, when he took a piece of Hindenburg's own skin and tried to set it afire for cameras. He used an arc torch, making no attempt to demonstrate that static discharges alone could do the job, and even so it burnt very weakly.
Bain's real agenda is to prove that hydrogen is reasonably safe to use, mainly because he works with liquid hydrogen as a fuel. It is a bit silly to try to prove LH2 safe by claiming hydrogen was never at fault in the numerous cases of hydrogen-filled airships that went up in flames, since a huge bag of gaseous hydrogen separated from air by thin membranes is very different from a tank of cryogenic liquid inside thick insulation. Anyway lots of hydrogen airships of all types, using lots of different types of skin, burned spectacularly generally with great cost of lives and sometimes property damage. Some helium-filled airships have indeed burnt, but not easily and never with the kind of rapid chain reaction evident in the Hindenburg fire. Clearly most of the energy that consumed the ship in just seconds came from burning hydrogen; the bright visible light that Bain tries to claim proves it was some other materials (pure hydrogen flame is in UV and invisible to the human eye) comes from that hot fire setting the other materials afire and superheating them, just as the mantle on a gas lantern transforms the pale blue flame of propane into bright redder light.
It is quite true that the old Zeppeliners did their best to minimize the dangers of hydrogen and generally carried it off. It is false that helium is so much worse than hydrogen that using it spelled doom for airships. What spelled doom for airships IMHO was the determined opposition of many interests that preferred to develop airplanes and helicopters and regarded the market as too limited to support both HTA and LTA. Hydrogen fires, and the cost and limited supply of helium, were good excuses to divert development funds away from airships.
But it is ridiculous to suggest that the NT could carry a lot more pax if it used hydrogen! Maybe 3 or 4 more, at risk of their lives--a hydrogen _pressure ship_ is much more risky than a hydrogen rigid, which is bad enough.
A bigger airship could be made using helium that would work just fine. The second-largest rigids were made in the USA and were wonderful ships, the USS Akron and Macon.