The Age of the Airship Returns?

Popular in Victorian and Steampunk fantasies, airships and zeppelins evoke a certain elegance that most modern travelers don't associate with the airplane. Some companies are capitalizing on that idea, and a need to move cargo by air in an era of ever-increasing fuel costs, to re-re-introduce commercial zeppelins. Popular Mechanics notes four notable airship designs, all with specific design purposes. One craft in particular, the Aeroscraft ML866, is being funded by the US government's DARPA group. It looks to combine the best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin. "The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings, Aeros says. It hopes to end the program with a test flight demonstrating the system. "

Comments

Re:Hydrogen

[delt0r]

And you saying its not credible makes it un-credible because you are credible? Please back up your claim.

Over half of the people survived the crash. How many survive 747 crashes? Perhaps the 100+ tons of JET fuel in the wings and under the floor is not safer than hydrogen after all?

Re:Hydrogen

[MaineCoon]

People also seem to forget that 2/3s of the passengers of the Hindenburg survived, and it was the only notable airship disaster, whereas most airplane crashes that involve fatalities seem to kill a good majority (if not all) of the passengers, and seem to happen at least once or twice a year lately.

Re:Hydrogen

[NNKK]

There are around 43,000 traffic fatalities per year in the US. If we posit that a mere 60,000,000 people (only 1/5th of the US population) get in a car or cross the street on foot every year, that's a total death rate of about 0.00072%.

There have been 439 astronauts. 19 of them have died in flight. That's 4.5%, meaning you are, given the above incredibly pessimistic estimate, more than 6000 times as likely to die in a spaceship than in the rolling deathtrap called a car. And by the way, 14 of those 19 deaths have happened in the Space Shuttle, the most advanced manned spacecraft to currently fly on a regular basis.

You'll therefore excuse me if I find your risk assessment lacking.

Re:The discouraging prior art

[vidarh]

Only to people who don't bother to read enough of it to realize that a major reason for the disaster was that the paint on the Hindenburg was more or less rocket fuel. Bringing up the Hindenburg is like using a disaster involving one of the earliest planes to discourage commercial flights with modern jets.

Flies in the ointment.

[Ancient_Hacker]

A few gotchas:

• Blimps are unlikely to get very high, so they have to fly through the weather, or land and hide in a hangar. So they're no good for any kind of dependable, scheduled service.
• Even if good weather, blimps have a terrible safety record.
• 220 tons sounds like a lot of lifting, but it's only two rail cars. It's never going to be economical to replace two super-reliable, all-weather $100K rail cars with a million dollar blimp that can only fly in good weather.
• Consider how much real-estate it takes to moor just one blimp.

Helium Supply

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I recently toured the Naval Air Station Tillamook and learned two surprising things related to this discussion:

• The US is far and away the largest, if not the only, producer of helium; and
• we'll probably be out of Helium within 10 years.

As Helium is used, it must be recovered. If it simply left to evaporate, being lighter than air it will rise to the highest level of our atmosphere and there be stripped of by the solar wind. So once it's gone, it's gone--and there appears to be a finite supply, as we have only been able to extract it from natural gas deposits that have had the further advantage of being proximate to a radiation source.

There are different estimates about how much more of it we have, and the Moon is a possible supply. But I sure wouldn't want to attempt to build an airship industry around it. By the time airships became feasible again, we may well be out of Helium by then (or in enough cheap abundance to make it the lift medium infeasible).