Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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!
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"
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.
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 think Microsoft has a solid claim for prior art on vapor technology.
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
Looks like a Zeppelin to me.
-Brendan
Optimized for Internet Exploder...
Badabim, badaBOOM...
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."
The NT has ribs--3 longitudinal ribs made of aluminum, spaced by triangular transverse frames made of composites. It is classified as a "semirigid," meaning that the frame helps keep the overall shape and distributes the lift, but the lift gas has to be pressurized to put tension on the skin, which contains the gas and also serves as the aerodynamic surface, as in blimps.
Blimps are nonrigid or pressure ships--all of their structure results from pressurizing the lift gas by means of air ballonets inside them. They have no rigid members.
The alternative is a rigid frame and stiff external skin; this approach frees you of the need to pressurize the lift gas. Generally this means a complex structure like the classic Zeppelins--but that structure was often, even taken altogether with its numerous parts of gas cells, netting, frame members, wiring, and outer skin, lighter per unit of lift volume than blimps, even the best modern blimps.
The big drawback of pressure ships, including semirigids, is that if you lose pressure for any reason you lose structure. On a semirigid it is not quite as bad, especially on the NT with its three ribs which pretty much would maintain the basic shape, but you'd lose skin tension hence get a lot more draggy. On a blimp loss of pressure is a disaster. Also, pressure ships are hard to partition so any big leak or rip will tend to spill _all_ the lift gas, whereas on the rigids the gas was kept in numerous separate cells and total deflation of one or several might still leave the ship airborne--I know of several instances of that.
The semirigid form does allow you to distribute weights all along the length of the ship which is important, and the NT version also allows elements like the props to be moved up along the width of the hull, kind of like what was possible on the old rigids. What is most "new" about the New Technology Zeppelin is its vectored thrust system. Modern blimps have used pairs of vectored props (though attached to the gondola, their only rigid element, rather than up along the hull sides which is clearly better) but the NT adds an arrangement on the tail tip that greatly increases the control available; this is possible because of the ribs.
Still a number of us wish they'd gone ahead and made a modern rigid while they were at it; such a ship would have enabled all this, freed them of pressurization issues, and given the crew access to the entire interior so if an engine gave trouble in mid-air someone could go and try to fix it. Happened all the time on the rigids! Fortunately modern engines are more reliable, but a major issue of the NT is that you need special equipment to get at the engines, mounted up high as they are, for maintenance, it restricts their operations.
I also think a modern rigid would have been as light or lighter, and very possibly cheaper to make and maintain. All they'd need to do to make the NT a rigid would be to devise some kind of very light aerodynamic shell to replace the skin, and then design some gas cells--just basically balloons-to fit inside the spaces betweent the frames. Well actually the frames are braced with wires so either the cells would have to contain those or else the structure would have to be redesigned to avoid running the wires there.