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The Second Age of Airships
The Telegraph has a story about a new generation of airships. It says "It's a new vehicle. It's a hybrid because we're combining helium lift, aerodynamic lift, a hovercraft landing system, and vectored thrust... If you can get beyond the word airship — because that has a lot of history — people think about them differently."
We should save it for heart shaped balloons and making funny voices at parties?
If you recycle your helium properly, then you're just "borrowing" it anyway. As far as I know no airship owner wants to let his helium escape into the atmosphere. Not at $200k or more for a "full load". If the airship project doesn't work out, it's an asset with value and it can be recovered and sold. There are plenty of medical facilities in need.
It's the kids with the helium balloons that are the REAL wasters of helium.
So, it's like a cruise ship, but faster. And that's a bad thing? Obviously it doesn't compare favorably to a jet airliner if your only objective is to get from A to B, but if your objective is to enjoy the ride (kinda like on a cruise) then it seems pretty awesome.
Half as dense as helium (so twice the lifting power),
Uh, no? It's being lifted by air pressure caused by air density of about 1.2 g/L; helium has a density of 0.1786g/L, so a vacuum would at most supply 14% more lift. Hydrogen at .08988g/L supplies 7.5% more lift-- hardly twice the lifting power.
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Sure, there is a place on this planet (or just above it) for airships. However, trans-atlantic passenger service isn't one of them.
‘You go to Richmond Park International. At 11 o’clock on Thursday you get on board the SkyCat200. There are hundreds of staterooms on it and you dinner dance your way across the Atlantic. At two o’clock on Friday afternoon you’re getting off at the East River in New York. You’ve travelled 3,000 miles overnight and there’s no jet lag.
Or, you could get on an airplane, be in New York in a fraction of the time, and spend the rest of the day recovering from jet lag.
Realistically, SkyCats would be most useful in the transport of heavy loads – the largest SkyCat can carry up to 200 tons – to harsh environments
That's more like it. If you attack problems like heavy lifting, surveillance, even tasks like fighting forest fires, you don't have to sell it by saying "it's a hybrid"
At that time they tested a full-sized airship against a range of artillery including a Russian mounted machine gun filled with .22 calibre armour-piercing incendiaries and a SAM-7 surface to air missile. What they learnt was this: the airship is almost invincible to attack. Helium is an inert gas, so it doesn’t explode.
Did the test include shooting at the crew? I'm sure they'll find that sitting nearly motionless over a well-armed enemy does not make airship pilots invincible.
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
Sure, but these guys got a $500,000,000 contract from the US government to actually make some of these things.
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But is it actually cheaper than just using boats, trains and trucks? While using three different kinds of transportation may not sound as nice to you, those are the cheapest methods of transporting large amounts of stuff.
What, exactly, makes it a dumb idea?
I've been on 5hr flights -- they're no fun. I can only imagine some of the really long flights must be friggin' brutal. Give it hotel amenities, a bar, a dance floor -- whatever -- and send people on a more leisurely trip without jamming them in like cattle and shoving them through airports. I can see it being a popular mode of travel.
Heck, just the romantic notion of it is kind of cool. I'd *love* to go on an airship voyage. It would be just plain old cool.
For leisure travel, it would be absolutely awesome way to see the world. I can see people paying to travel on one, if nothing else, for the novelty of it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hydrogen is the correct answer, but people don't want to hear it because of the images of the Hindenburg crash.
This is ridiculous. The Hindenburg crash isn't 9/11: it was nigh 80 years ago and I'm not even distantly related to anyone who died on it. I have no emotional connection to the disaster whatsodamnedever. I reject hydrogen in airships because it's dangerous as hell. There are just too many potential sources of ignition (sparks from machinery, static discharge) for it ever to be safe enough for flight, if we hold it to the same standards of safety that commercial jets are.
Gasoline burns hotter than hydrogen, but thanks to the Hindenburg crash video, we don't have hydrogen cars either.
Gasoline burns, hydrogen explodes. There's a difference. And the issues with hydrogen cars are a multi-paragraph post that I don't feel like writing right now, but (lousy energy density, present impossibility of storage, no infrastructure) are the main reasons, not lingering Hindenburg memories. Who on earth modded GP Insightful?
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Now imagine the costs if the thing must always take off at constant load. It would be like old sailing ships that had to fill up with gravel ballast to make safe return trips (because if they returned empty the wind could simply push them over.) Currently an Airbus 380 can transport about 150t of freight one way, and if it makes the return journey empty, OK it is a wasted trip but it requires less fuel for takeoff, which is significant on short hauls.
If you try to solve the problem by having pumps to transfer gas from the envelope to storage tanks, to control the buoyancy, you have to factor in the cost of ferrying around the pumps and the tanks. It is not impossible, but it would be complicated and expensive and require extensive safety testing before it could be certified. Much of the simplicity relative to an airplane would be lost - and you still end up with something that requires as much or more room as a 380 - a helicopter replacement this is not.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
From TFA:
"Currently, the lighter-than-air market uses only two per cent of all the helium bought in the world. Most of that is used to blow up party balloons. "
Based on that I would expect the demand for party balloons would drop very quickly as the price of helium rises. That would allow plenty of helium to shift to airships.
why not FFIV? you start the game on the Red Wings as Cecil!
frog blast the vent core
The claims of thermite paint being the cause of the explosion has been debunked. Mythbusters featured one of the better known debunking.
Reconcile this.
If it's dangerous and it explodes, then how does it have lousy energy density compared to gasoline, when your argument apparently is that gasoline doesn't do these things?
Also,
Explain this. The outside of the Hindenburg was coated with what basically amounts to thermite. The frame of the airship was grounded because of the fear that the hydrogen might burn. The panels (painted in thermite, tethered to the frame with non-conductive rope) were not, because it wasn't known that they would burn.
The Hindenburg's hydrogen escaped above the flames much quicker than it could ignite. Some of it burned, but most of it simply escaped. This is due to H2's lightness. This prevents the "OMG hydrogen burnsssss ussss" theory from being of any worth.
Not to mention the detail where jet fuel, whether burning, exploding, or miraculously transforming into wine, is stored in the airplane's wings which are holding the damned airplane up. If the jet fuel catches fire, the plane's going down. Period.
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In any case, there's nothing actually wrong with hydrogen, used with care. We've come a long way from the first age of airships, and materials and engineering are vastly more sophisticated.
It's common to trot out the example of the Hindenberg as to what can go wrong, but by comparison with the mess a 747 makes when it hits anything at 570mph, it's fair to say airships are pretty safe. In the Hindenberg disaster, 63% of the passengers survived. Whereas, if your plane crashes you can usually be pretty sure you're going to die, given the amount of fuel (of very high calorific value) that is always on board.
Airships are slow; there is no way around it. They have huge cross sections and drag is a big factor. If your airspeed is 30knots going into a 30knot headwind your ground speed is 0knots. Even a moderate wind of 10knots will decrease your speed by 33%. Crosswinds are a similar issue. An airship can spend much of its forward speed compensating for winds.
Mass is also an issue. Large airships are docked to towers to keep them on one place for loading and unloading. This docking process is very precise. It is somewhat like porcupines kissing; too fast and the tower gets knocked over and/or the airship damaged, too slow and you never get there. Winds complicate the matter. Many accidents have happened due to strong gusts or wind dieing at inopportune times.
Then there is landing area. Each airship needs a circle at least the radius equal to the length of the airship as it needs to be able to swivel into the wind. You could put the airship inside a hanger but that maneuver it tricky (can not be done in windy conditions) and the hangers are huge/expensive.
Depending on the winds, the airship may note get out of the hanger, get loaded, get launched, reach the destination, get tethered and or get unloaded. This makes flights very unreliable in even moderate weather.
I just love how the article says that airships will save lives in Nunavut. I am sure that sending 200 tons of stuff that the locals can not afford to buy will really help the situation. Throwing stuff at people is not the solution to social issues.
The main determinants of fuel consumption are: 1) speed; and 2) the surface area of the front of the vehicle (since that determines how much air must be pushed out of the way). Since airships are very large, they will never be fuel efficient unless they travel very slowly. If they travel very slowly, then we must ask: why not use a train or a ship? Trains and ships will always have vastly greater carrying capacity, because they don't require helium to lift their cargo which has modest lift for a given volume.
In short: if speed is not important, then trains and ships will always be far cheaper and carry far more; and if speed is important, then airplanes will always be faster and more fuel-efficient at high speeds.
Airships are neglected because they suffer from fundamental limitations and therefore have few uses.
Granted, airships may find niche uses. Airships do have several advantages: first, they can hover for long periods; and second, they require little infrastructure (like long landing strips, ports, or train tracks). Since they can hover for long periods, they have found a use as floating advertisements, and they may find a use as floating observation vehicles for the military. Since they don't require infrastructure, they may find a use in transporting cargo to areas which lack airports, train tracks, or ports. But they will never take over the bulk of transport between major areas, because of fundamental limitations of the technology.
Every few years, someone starts a company to revive the airship. The venture always fails, because o
f fundamental limitations of airships that will always prevent widespread adoption. Perhaps some com
pany will eventually succeed, but they will succeed in a niche market, not widely.