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New Aircraft is Part Blimp and Part Airplane
An anonymous reader writes "Canton Rep has an interesting article on Ohio entrepreneurs who hope to get their business 'off the ground'. Brian Martin and Robert Rist think they are close to testing a prototype of their patented Dynalifter hybrid. They announced last week that their airship -- part blimp and part airplane -- has been completed, and they hope to conduct a test flight this spring. Martin and Rist hope the Dynalifter will help bring in a new transportation era. They see it as a way to move materials at a lower cost than jets and at a higher speed than ships. From the article: 'They think it could be used in emergency situations, such as Hurricane Katrina, to transport supplies. It might have military uses, such as delivering equipment and supplies to sites that might not be easily reachable.'"
I guess no one ever said "look it's the Good Year blimp" to you, and then ran off?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
After reading the article, it looks like it's just a blimp with more engines, and not really an airplane. The article doesn't provide much info about the speed, range and payload capacity of this "hybrid", so it's hard to say how cost effective it would be.
Makes perfect sense to me. With advanced technology and more experience then say, the people who made the hindendburg, I'm sure we could make it work better this time.
I wonder how long it will take other formerly taboo technology to come around... I'm not all that afraid to have a nuclear reactor in my backyard(My neighbors would disagree)
http://www.cantonrep.com.nyud.net:8090/index.php?I D=261606&r=0&Category=9
BBDs are real?!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Better link/picture of the dynathing - mostly a blimp
http://www.ohio-airships.com/Old/Default.htm
Actually, I thought it was World War I that taught us that blimps weren't effective as combatants (bombers). German Zeppelins burned pretty intensely after getting hit. They were only used for long range ocean recon in WW II, right? The Hindenburg incident probably didn't help much either.
Good thing the patent has expired on the Zeppelin
Tell that to Goodyear, Fuji Film, Met Life, and the vast number of other companies that operate them. And don't forget to mention it to ESPN, ABC Sports, Fox Sports, and all the other networks who use them for their sports coverage.
As to WWII, the blimp was used very successfully. To quote: "The United States was the only power to use airships during World War II, and the airships played a small but important role. The Navy used them for minesweeping, search and rescue, photographic reconnaissance, scouting, escorting convoys, and antisubmarine patrols. Airships accompanied many oceangoing ships, both military and civilian. Of the 89,000 ships escorted by airships during the war, not one was lost to enemy action.
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Its not a balloon...its an AIRSHIP...
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
Why not have a deformable body? Flatten it out so it can travel at higher speeds, then whe it slows down, puff it up and it can be more blimpy.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Just say no to dope!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But is it something like project Walrus?
o -gives-ok-to-hula-airships-for-airlift/index.php#m ore
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/10/us-cb
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Yeah they're a thing of the past, the future is getting into space, oh hang on:
http://www.jpaerospace.com/
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
a use for those docking ports at the top of the Empire State Building.
Airplane + Blimp = Airpimp
From my quick research a 747 gets around 100 miles to the gallon per passenger when completly full. Lets say its 75% full so 75 miles to the gallon. So flying versus driving alone is hugly economical, of course if you pack 4 people into a car it becomes more economical, though the waste of time driving isn't nessesarly worth the savings.
I think the true meaning to the phrase "Blimps have failed." is that blimps have been replaced by airplanes and helicopters for the things which they were originally designed for. First, I don't see a blimp truly replacing a cargo 747 due to the fact that you can't run a blimp at 600 MPH. Even with engines all over it, they are talking about replacing trucking and not aviation, so they cannot mean moving faster than say 150 MPH.
The reason a blimp can't replace a helicopter is that blimps are much more susceptable to high winds. Any time the winds are too high, the Goodyear blimp stays home, and a helicopter takes its place. The reason for this is simple. wind resistence of a very large sack of bouyant gas is much much larger than a rotating turbine. Now, on clear days with little wind, a blimp would be much much more economical to operate than an airplane or a helicopter.
Ira
"The fools! They should've built it with 7,001 hulls! Oh, when will they learn!"
This sounds similar to the Deltoid Pumkin Seed, another airplane/blimp hybrid. It was more of a helium-filled flying wing that was tested in the seventies.
"Specifically, where could a blimp get to more easily than a helicopter?"
They can fly higher and longer than helicopters.
But in general, the perfect use for airships is AWACS. They don't have to come down to refuel periodically (they'll need food more often than they'll need fuel), so that's one less major hassle for an aircraft carrier crew to deal with.
It would also work well for similar work over land, and might work well as an anti-balistic missile laser platform.
Another thing I don't get about why people don't like dirigibles is the Hindenburg disaster. Every time something comes out about blimps, every Tom, Dick, and Harry screams "Hindenburg." It doesn't make sense that one crash would doom an entire, civilized way to travel. When passenger jets are mentioned, no one screams "Lockerbie" or "9/11" as a reason why we shouldn't fly in airplanes anymore. They just go back to the drawing board and figure out how to make it safer/better. Why are dirigibles held to a different standard? It would be really nice to see people break out of groupthink on this one.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
looks lik you nd a nw kyboard. your "" ky is brokn.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Oh, it's crashing...oh, four or five hundred kilobytes per second, and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's a white screen, and there's database errors, now, and the browser is crashing to the desktop ...Oh, the humanity, and all the sysadmins screaming around here!"
Ummm what part of this airship is plane like? 2% ... maybe 5% on a good day? How does that makew this a hybrid?
It's a blimp with tiny wings that are control surfaces; because it seems to me that the amount of lift the wings could provide, would be insignifigant.
I have seen concepts of a delta wing blimp - that could reasonably be called a hybrid ariship-plane
Because that's a good way to get the government to pay part of your R&D costs.
I also wonder what would happen if someone shoots at it repeatedly? Would it just pop and fall to the Earth? It must be moving slowly, making it an easy target
Of course...no one in the entire development stream ever thought of an airmachine, at least partially for military use, ever getting shot at.
Not once. They will thank you for reminding them of that possibility. Now they'll have to change the entire design.
The potential for transporting goods seems like its best use, although I don't think the trucking industry/lobby is going to like it very much.
Too bad. Either they can a) suck it up and adapt, or b) build a fleet of their own and compete.
The idea of hybrid lighter than air lifting and an aerodynamic hull has been around for a while. In his 1963 book The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed essayist and journalist John McPhee covers the story the the Aereon, which was an early avitar of the dynalifter. There was a brief resurgence of interest in this aircraft design during the oil crisis in the 1970s. It now seems to be back once again now that oil has risen in price.
One of the things that those pushing this design may not be mentioning is that increasinly helium is both scarse and a strategic resource. Helium is actually "mined" from underground domes where it has been trapped (I assume formed from radioactive decay). If fleets of airships were helilum based, the price of helium would seen rise to the point where the airships were no longer cost effective. The alternative is hydrogen, but as the Hindenburg demonstrated, hydrogen has its own problems. These issues could be the reason that after over three decades this idea has not caught on.
What exactly is this quality of "blimpiness" you want to improve? The important characteristic of blimps is their buoyancy without cargo, and blimps become more buoyant if they carry a higher volume of gas or if they have less structural mass. Blimps are designed to look "puffed up" only because that shape reduces the structural mass necessary to support a given volume of gas, and a shape-changing structure would be more massive still.
Some military use is likely.
I could see these used as high altitude portable communication platforms near hot spots. I could see a fleet of UAVs being controlled from one of these. And these would fit the traditional blimp role of coastal surveillance very nicely.
Wish the web site wasn't slashdotted.
I would think a heavier than air blimp would be easier to land.
I have the impression from the few pics and diagrams I've seen that the blimp has a lifting body shape and the "wings" are primarily control surfaces. I'd be interested in reading the specs.
I believe it's still possible to book passage on many trans-ocean ships. I swear I read once that even many cargo ships actually have space to take on a very few "passengers" for a very no-frills voyage. (We are not talking a Cruise line here.)
It's also possible to book one-way trips on most cruise ships, though that's certainly not going to be cheap.
But seriously, I wonder if they have run the numbers to determine whether this is more efficient than trucking. It doesn't seem impossible when you include the cost of roads, and real estate for roads.
Also, a steady stream of payload-moving craft overhead might even be a workable platform for broadband connectivity. There are already several companies working on using airships as wireless relay platforms, but perhaps the idea would be more economically feasible if the airships are making money in two different ways.
Speaking of AWACS, I recall an article from The Wall Street Journal a while ago to the effect that some companies were looking at stratospheric blimps as a replacement/supplement to satellites. It's not very windy up there, and launching them is probably a lot easier and cheaper than depending on NASA and friend, and they can be replaced much more readily, as well. A quick Google search on the topic turns up a BBC article as well.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
in a brilliant book called "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed." He writes about an extraordinary variety of subjects, from rustlers to growing orange trees in Florida, although much of his work is about geology. But TDPS was/is entirely about this airframe and its evolution through the '60's and '70's, and includes some great material about flight into known icing conditions, the stuff that dooms small aircraft. blimps and dirigibles can often accumulate eight inches of ice and keep flying. (A small Cessna is screwed if you put on 1/2" of ice, and a jetliner isn't much better.) McPhee also wrote a lot about the quarter-scale and tenth-scale flying models of the hybrid lifting body. It's a fantastic book, and as is usual with McPhee, turns into a book about obsession and human devotion to ideas, rather than just being about the ideas themselves.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I'm 6'4" and have regularly flown from the Eastern seaboard of the US to various cities in China. Flying sucks, but it sure as hell beats the alternatives. Plus, planes don't waste fuel - they're actually much more efficient than cars or trucks in terms of gallons per mile and the amount of people and cargo they can carry. Not to mention the time/value of money savings.
I've never understood the irrational annoyance that people get when someone in front of them reclines their seat - who fucking cares? Just recline your seat too, then you're back where you started, and a little more comfortable to boot.
I've flown long flights (at least 12 hours on a single hop) for 24 years, and been over six feet tall for the last 9 of them, and I've never had ANY knee damage, not to mention irreversible knee damage.
Get real.
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There is a lot of erroneous information on this /. discussion. Allow me to correct several misconceptions.
;)
1) The concept of a hybrid airship is older than the "Pumpkin Seed". Some of the earliest work was performed by Howard Hughes with his "Mega Lifter" concept. The Dynalifter has several unique twists, most significant of which is its use of "stayed-bridge" architectural concepts that will allow large point load masses.
2) The Dynalifter is not a blimp: it is a hybrid airship. Approximately 48% of its lift is aerostatic (helium) and 52% is aerodynamic. As a result, it takes off and lands like a normal airplane. The heavy freighter design uses 8 engines for take off (3 on each wing, one on each canard wing) and cruises with 2-4 engines engaged.
3) Its cruising speed is 90 knots (max speed is 120 knots) in the current heavy freighter design.
4) It can carry a payload of 320,000 pounds in a detachable cargo bay measuring 150x40x15 feet (volume of 90,000 cubic feet).
5) Range is 3200 nm with a full payload.
6) Aircraft size is 990x168x21 feet.
7) There are many, many possibilities for this airship: both commercial and military.
Please mod this up if you find this informative. Thanks.
-- from someone who knows a lot more than the Canton reporter
>Cheap, comfortable, fuel efficent. Pick 2. Tramp steamer. Try: fast, cheap, comfortable, fuel efficient. Rigid airships could be fast, actually: they can be built in the ideal streamlined form, so all your drag is due to wetted area rather than induced and separation drag. Strap some big jets on, and off you go. In the 1930's, the German Zeppelins were flying nonstop from Germany to Argentina. In the NINETEEN THIRTIES. Back when flying across the Atlantic in an airplane was a somewhat big deal. And talk about comfort: full cabins, beds, a dude playing the piano.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
No, because it's significantly heavier than air. It can't stay aloft without its wings.
2001:
CargoLifter AG based to the South of Berlin in Germany is developing "Lighter-than-Air" systems for logistics and other applications. The Company's first product, the CL 75 AC balloon based system has been in prototype flight test since October 2001.
2002:
For reasons of insolvency the CargoLifter AG Board of Managing Directors today filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings on the assets of CargoLifter AG at the Cottbus District Court.
I'm not saying it can't, or shouldn't be done, it makes sense on some levels, i.e. not having to ship your tons of goods via truck->rail->boat->rail->truck, but I remember reading about the operation mentioned above a few years back. It was no garage business, they had a wealthy shipping magnate with a lot of vertical expertise, a slew of aerospace engineers, and a ton of capital.
The problem, IIRC, was that the infrastructure to handle these things (big hangars) are gone, and real estate is too valuable to go around scooping it up near transportation hubs, where they could be integrated into existing systems. I think they went broke, not because the airships were too costly to build, but there weren't any other facilities to land/unload/service the things, and they had to build those too. The problem is easy to spot when you look at their plans.
Helium is just a place-holder. You make some ships and prove that they work and are cheap, then you replace the helium with hydrogen. It can even be generated from the ship's fuel if there are slow leaks. The hindenberg's shell burned, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen can plenty safe in airships with the right designs... far safer than using thousands of gallons of jet fuel. You aren't going to shoot a hydrogen airship with a handgun (or a rocket for that matter) and have it explode.
The Hindenburg wasn't all that bad. The people who died were mostly the people who jumped. Burning hydrogen rises quickly, keeping the passengers safe despite the inferno.
It's remembered because it's one of the first spectacular disasters caught on film.
But still: the Hindenburg burned. It burned like a bomb. And yet, most of the people lived. How many lived through the Towers crash? The thing about hydrogen is that it goes up, really really fast, especially when it's hot hydrogen. In comparison, Jet A isn't easy to light on fire. But when it does burn, it burns hot and deep and for a long time. You have a few seconds of severe excitement in a big hydrogen fire and then everything's done. It's almost like using explosives in coalmines: if the blast is fast enough, it won't ignite flammable gases. If I had my choice, I'd much rather crash in a hydrogen-filled blimp than a jet airliner.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
As usual, price(resource), speed, comfort, pick two.
And I'll say it again. RTFA! and then RTFWS! http://www.ohio-airships.com/Old/Default.htm Over half the lift comes from the wings. Yes, they look awfully small for the body, that's because the body is filled with helium and as such weighs very little (but is not actually lighter than air). The advantage over LTA transport is that it does not require a groundcrew or sophisticated mechanisms to land. It also has no problem with lift changes due to fuel use over long flights. It is more stable in high winds. Also it can fly faster for a geiven fuel usage because it has less drag. The advantage over conventional airplanes is mainly fuel economy. I imagine that a fleet of these could compete with a fleet of semis based on economy and speed. My 2 bits Merlyn
The first application that came to my mind after reading their site was air deployed rocketry.
n =projects.view&workid=EE0A866A-F1C1-C18B-7D3CB327B CAF3542
I'd be interested to see the numbers for cargo tonnage carrying capacity and max altitude of a full size (~1000 ft) freighter craft.
Combine this airship with t/space's air-launched lanyard rocketry, and there is an awesome potential for large tonnage air launched private spacecraft.
http://www.transformspace.com/index.cfm?fuseactio
Boston Center's gonna love these things poking around NY approach. ATCCs are gonna have to start supplying Xanax to controllers when one of these fat bastards strolls into range.
Maybe this time we'll get some Hindenburg-action over Newark.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Human psychology is interesting. This sounds great, whereas stating the truth from the other direction - "at a lower speed than jets and a higher cost than ships" - sounds terrible. But I suppose this polarity of viewpoint is present in every comprimise, by the very nature of comprimises.
the Hindenburg demonstrated, hydrogen has its own problems.
It's a shame that this meme is so widespread in the collective consciouness, because it's very damaging to the airship industry. Hydrogen is a superior lifting gas, it's inexpensive, and there's virtually a limitless supply.
Try to check out an article called "Odorless, Colorless, Blameless" (Air & Space Smithsonian magazine, May 1997, pp14-16) by NASA employee Richard Van Treuren. (Unfortunately this article is no longer available online.) It will convince you that the Hindenburg would have met the same fiery fate, even if it had been filled with helium. The flammable aluminum-based paint that covered the vehicle was to blame.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I don't know a whole lot about airships, but wouldn't a big, rigid balloon hold up to gunfire more effectively than a helicopter packed with sensitive mechanics and electronics? A cloth skin would be easier to patch than a metal one.
It's not like it would pop...if they want maximum bouyancy, they'd keep the envelope's pressure as low as possible; The less mass per volume, the better their numbers.
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As stated on the Dynalifter web site, their airship is NOT lighter than air, even when empty. So the only "savings" in weight are limited to the weight of the mass of the ship. That doesn't seem like a large percentage to me, when compared to the weight of the payload that the ship will be carrying.
Looking at a couple other aircraft:
Boeing 747
Weight Empty: 361,600 lbs
Maximum Take-Off Weight: 825,600 lbs
Empty Weight ~= 43% of maximum take-off weight
C-5 Galaxy cargo plane
Weight Empty: 374,000
Maximum Take-Off weight: 840,000 lbs
Empty Weight ~= 44% of maximum take-off weight
How much fuel would an airship hybrid really save, since it still has to pull the entire weight of the payload, which accounts for more than 50% of the weight of other fully-loaded modern aircraft? And would the fuel savings really justify the other hassles of dealing with an airship hybrid?
To add one more problem to the list: Aircraft using buoyancy don't scale down well. It's hard to get started in the buoyant craft business on a small scale. When I was a kid, I so desperately wanted to build a scale zeppelin that I could fly. I was crushed to discover that it took roughly 1 cubic meter of helium to lift 1 kg (at 1 g).
I am not a crackpot.
In terms of survival rate in case of accident. When a passenger plane crashes, often close to 100% of people on board die. In the case of the Hindenburg accident, though, this rate was of 36%. Also, your comment on hydrogen burning upwards is very adequate. In fact, considering that the danger of hydrogen flames tends to be overestimated, hydrogen is much cheaper and easier to manufacture than helium, and hydrogen provides more buyoancy than helium, I myself would rather use hydrogen instead of helium in an airship.
1) The cargo bay and the piloting area are not connected or contiguous. The cargo bay is fully detachable and has a volume of 90,000 cubic feet. You can detach the cargo bay very quickly upon landing. Picking up another cargo bay requires ~1 hour to affix.
/. account in the 4 years of reading /.
2) nm refers to Nautical Miles. So the Dynalifter has a range of ~6000 kilometers.
3) This is not the DARPA Walrus program. The Walrus program is currently only doing paper engineering trade studies, and its objective is to design a larger (500 ton payload) aircraft for delivery in 2015 with an enormous R&D budget. The Walrus is an expensive paper vision; Dynalifter is currently buildable with off-the-shelf parts for a fraction of the cost.
4) The Dynalifter does not use a ballast system, since it does not need to. The helium offsets only the weight of the unfueled empty aircraft.
5) I post as AC since I've never bothered to get a
Please mod this up if you find it helpful. Thanks.
And hydrogen does not give twice the lift of Helium, the net lift given by an object in air is given by
(lift given by air)-(weight of the object)
=(volumn of the object)*[(density of air)-(density of the object)]
Although the density of Hydrogen is half of that of Helium, You don't get twice the lift when you replace the latter with the former.
Here's a solution: If helium just won't do the job, use hydrogen. What could possibly go wrong?
How ya like dat?