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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. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG
he wants his world of tomorrow back.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
No, the Stargate program has control of that. Go talk to Captain Carter and see if she can give you a few pointers.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
(sorry, had to be said)
Table-ized A.I.
Cool.
Airships have their issues, but I recall reading somewhere that a blimp large enough to carry massive amounts of cargo can do so for the fraction of the fuel spent on ship-based transportation. Ships have to keep expending energy to push through water, but an airship needs far less power to keep a course through the air.
I see a couple hurdles though.
The first is designable around -- damage to the hot air or helium part due to lightning, or tears due to other factors. Having multiple "balloons" might help this situation, so if one is ruptured, the airship still can stay up, or descend in a fairly graceful fashion.
The second is a bit harder, but sort of related to #1. There are people out there (in most areas of the globe) who wouldn't mind taking potshots at an airship. It could be a drunk hillbilly who is playing with his new 30/06, or someone who has a RPG and is hoping to knock the thing out of the air completely. Oddly enough (and I have little or no aerospace expertise), I wonder if, even with major damage from a missile hit, a well engineered airship still can land gracefully (assuming the gondola isn't what is damaged.) Could an airship fly high enough so the chance of getting hit by ground fire be minimized?
Lastly there is a third problem. There is a ton of air traffic already. I wonder how hard it would be to factor in large, slow vehicles into the aviation corridors without impacting takeoffs and landings of jets and prop based traffic.
Hydrogen is much cheaper, and is pretty safe if done properly. Hydrogen zeppelins of the first half of last century had an excellent safety record.
The Hindenburg disaster wasn't that bad. It only killed a few dozen people. And it involved other shortcuts that shouldn't have been done. The only reason that the Hindenburg seems so bad in retrospect is because there were a buttload of reporters at the right place at the right time (they planned to report a successful zeppelin trip), and because zeppelins don't die quietly, but rather in a huge exploding fireball.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
About every 10 years or so, someone proclaims the return of the airship. The problems with airships are the same they have always been - high susceptibility to winds and difficult ground handling. Those problems are essentially insoluble - it's *lighter than air*. The combination helicopter/blimp had been tried at least half a dozen times, all unsuccessfully.
The hydrogen/helium thing not an issue. It's not going to use hydrogen. Whether that's what got the Hindenberg, or not, flying around with tens of thousands of cubic feet of exceptionally flammable gas, with a HUGE range of fuel/air ratios at which it can sustain ignition, isn't going to happen. It's a *bad idea* and wouldn't pass the laugh test for FAA certification.
Brett
It's in the ice cave just west of Crescent Lake. (But first, you'll need the Canoe from Lukahn.)
*ducks*
But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships?
Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?
That's no airship, it's Thunderbird 2!
you are thinking of hydrogen.
The trouble with blimps is that they don't compete with aircraft, since they are too slow. They compete with trains and trucks, but don't have the carrying capacity to do that, while they do have the maintenance cost of aircraft. So altogether they don't make economic sense and they likely never will.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
But since love is irrational, then only a float is going to be at all useful.
And it lifts better too!
Of course vacuum would provide the best lift of all in the atmosphere. So why is it that my beautiful 21" crt monitor, which is little more than a big cube of vacuum, is so damn heavy?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I've driven past Moffet Field, in California, which NASA uses part of, and seen several airship hangers. The ships I saw were not advertising or such, but appeared to be actual "workhorse" ships, whether for cargo or research, I don't know, but it seems airships have been around and doing useful work with almost no attention, so it is hardly surprising to me that more uses are being considered.
A very interesting use is being worked on by a company called JP Aerospace (http://jpaerospace.com/). Their idea is to build an airship-to-orbit system. Not in one go. It would involve transferring from a ground capable airship to an extreme high altitude airship.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
If I remember correctly, they used aluminized layers alternating with iron oxide layers. aluminum can react with iron oxide in a thermite reaction. Iron oxide is the oxidizer and aluminum is the reducing agent, because of the violence of the reaction it is used in some cases to dispose of computer hardware to reduce/eliminate the risk of data recovery by unintended parties. That being true, it is certainly possible that the paint increased the risk of fire but the fact that the gas inside the balloon was very flammable didn't help anything. would the ship have caught fire if the outer coating wasn't flammable? probably eventually, all it takes is a tear in the skin of that ship to expose hydrogen to air and really at that point, it is only a matter of time before something causes ignition of the gas. OTOH, had the gas been helium, the only fire hazard would be the paint which if comprimised would be bad but likely a lot better than the whole ship catching fire.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Oh, please stop the FUD. From wikipedia:
"Despite the violent fire, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. The two dogs on board the ship also died. Most deaths were not caused directly by the fire but were from jumping from the burning ship. Those passengers who rode the ship on its descent to the ground survived. Some deaths of crew members occurred because they wanted to save people on board the ship. In comparison, almost twice as many perished when the helium-filled USS Akron crashed."
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?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Shouldn't all comments referring to the Hindenburg be modded "Flaimbait"?
I know what you did last summer. Just kidding, I don't work at the NSA.
Think how crushingly heavy it would be if you broke the vacuum!
Deleted
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.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
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.
But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships?
Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the American public-school education.
And according to this link (no myminicity, I swear!), Helium is in danger of being in short supply due to among other things that it's not captured and recycled after use and while being available in big supply in the universe, the Earth supply is actually a bit limited.
According to the article it is an issue the next generations of scientist are going to have to struggle with. So maybe a Helium-based airship is not that good an idea, although I don't have to background to propose a different scheme.
You can make it from hydrogen. It's a bit tricky, though.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I recall reading something about what amounted to a flying aircraft carrier. A zeppeline-like airship that launched biplanes.
The USS Akron (ZRS-4) based in Lakehurst, NJ and the USS Macon (ZRS-5) based in Sunnyvale, CA were helium filled rigid airships developed by the Goodyear-Zepplin Company (a joint venture of the Zepplin Company of Germany and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company) for the United States Navy. The airships were designed for coastal patrol and had the ability to carry and launch five small biplanes.
More info here
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Because it is too small to have much lift. Depending on how it was built, you might need weights to keep a 21 meter monitor from drifting off.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
- 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).
--
$tar -xvf
I'm the "this guy" mentioned above. I guess I should clarify what I wrote in my blog post. The ban on selling helium to the Nazis WAS based on military priorities. The presence of the swastika had nothing to do with the ban (other than making sure there wouldn't be an exception made). Eckner admired the Americans and was less-than-thrilled by the Nazis (although he accepted their funding). The economic realities of the day meant he had to place the swastika on his airships, thereby "dissing" those he admired. Sorry for any confusion.
In the 1980s, my dad worked on a project for the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation. It was called the PA-97 Helistat. There are some pictures and info about it on the Piasecki Aircraft website. It was designed to lift heavy objects using a derigible and a few helicopters. Unfortunately, the helicopters motor frequency became resonant with the flimsy frame structure and it fell apart, killing one pilot. One thing that has always intrigued me is that the German version of wikipedia has a lot more info about the Helistat than can be found anywhere else: link.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I hear the sun's been doing it for years. Maybe we should ask it for advice.
Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the American public-school education.
I noticed his handle is "MisterLawyer", which ought to explain the ignorance. He's probably been hitting his head on the ass end of too many ambulances.
You're using her as bait, Master!
I think we need to forgive MisterLawyer. He is after all not trained to think, but to see possible opening for a liability case.
Yup. I'm failing to see how the Hindenburg tragedy was "inevitable", given that it was, let's see, the 129th or 130th airship built by the Zeppelin Company, and none of the others met such a spectacular end.
It's also a fact that we regularly deal with much more dangerous materials in our technology. The solution is to engineer to minimize the danger. Accidents still happen. Planes have crashed, killing everyone onboard (unlike the Hindenburg, where most of the people onboard got off in time and survived, since a burning hydrogen filled airship is still a lot safer than a burning 747, merely containing hydrogen instead of the much more dangerous jet-fuel), but we engineer better and minimize the risks. All evidence points to a hydrogen-filled airship, even using yestercentury's technology, being safer in a crash/fire than a passenger jet. Today, we could do even better.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The 30-06 is still one of the best general purpose rifles around. In hunting, it easily handles powder and bullet combinations from a 150 grain deer round to a 220 grain round suitable for moose and large bears. There are now sabot bullets in the 95 grain region that make the 30-06 a good varmint rifle. It is a favored hunting rifle for reloaders because the cartridges can be fire-formed to custom fit the rifle's chamber, the brass is thick enough that they can be re-used multiple times, and the wide selection of powders and bullets allows custom tailoring of rounds.
In my experience, rural rednecks who know enough to acquire a 30-06 rifle are very unlikely to have it in hand when they are drinking. The redneck rule in southern Oregon is: no beer or other alcohol until the day's hunting is over; no handling of any of the guns after the drinking has begun. Break the rule and you find that none of the good old boys will hunt with you any more. My impression is that this is universal throughout rural USA and Canada, and probably world-wide. There would be fewer rednecks around if it wasn't for centuries-old customs like this one.
City-bred rednecks are another story: they do drink and shoot simultaneously. But they generally aren't savvy enough to buy a 30-06. They want something more macho like a .300 magnum to go with their huge fourwheeler that they don't know how to drive.