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."

Comments

Re:Helium

[huckamania]

We should save it for heart shaped balloons and making funny voices at parties?

Re:Arrogant prick

[wjousts]

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.

Re:Hydrogen

[bluefoxlucid]

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.

Re:Use hydrogen.

[AdmiralXyz]

What on Earth are you two talking about? The incendiary paint theory is deader than dead, it's on the same plane as Moon landing hoaxes. Christ, even the Mythbusters tanked that one, although if you like your science rigorous, there's plenty of documented proof too.

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?

Airships simply will not be practical, sorry

[Kupfernigk]

This is a parade I've rained on before. Put simply, airships are incompatible with modern logistics and so are not cost effective. Why? Because they rely on buoyancy. Unless you are prepared to waste the expensive gas, turning around an aircraft with any significant cargo (and large numbers of humans are significant) either involves being able to hold the thing down with a force equivalent to its cargo load (not easy on something so large and prone to wind forces), or loading and unloading cargo at a similar rate so the mass of the total stays roughly constant. Otherwise, passengers and freight get off, thing heads rapidly skywards. Not good.

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.