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The Second Age of Airships

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the no-smoking-please dept.

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."

9 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Great, instead of peak oil ... by capnchicken · · Score: 5, Informative

    we'll have peak helium.

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/05/2159215/Price-Shocks-May-Be-Coming-For-Helium-Supply?from=rss

    --
    A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
    1. Re:Great, instead of peak oil ... by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Informative

      Technically we hit peak helium a long, long time ago. Most of what's used today is out of storage collected decades ago.

    2. Re:Great, instead of peak oil ... by somersault · · Score: 5, Funny

      I thought helium was refined essence of Chipmunk - surely a renewable source?

      --
      which is totally what she said
    3. Re:Great, instead of peak oil ... by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 5, Informative

      "What helium is present today has been mostly created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements (thorium and uranium), as the alpha particles that are emitted by such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations up to seven percent by volume, from which it is extracted commercially by a low-temperature separation process called fractional distillation."

      Looks like another good reason to build LFTR reactors that can also take
      the current radioactive waste and dispose it for good.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk

      Good transition til we can upscale other clean energy sources.

      --
      google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
  2. Not the first try to revive airships by PseudonymousBraveguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are not the first trying to revive the airship. Several years ago, CargoLifter was developing a "second generation airship". Despide heavy subsidaries they've gone insolvent, because the engeneering required to create an actually useful airship is not exactly trivial, and the list of potential customers is astonishingly small. Well, at least they left a damn big hangar that now contains a nice amusement park.

  3. Re:Hydrogen by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  4. Half as dense != twice lift by Kupfernigk · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'm afraid not. A guy called Archimedes (based in Syracuse, but not in NY) rather beat you to it. The lift is the difference between the current density of air and the current density of the fill gas. The MW of air averages around 29, so the lift for helium is 29-4 = 25 units, and for hydrogen is 29-2 is 27 units. If helium wasn't so expensive, the small loss of lift would be justified on safety alone.

    The other problems with hydrogen are (a) that it leaks out of just about everything even faster than helium does and (b) your safety statement is utterly unproven - because nobody has recently built full size airships and compared the safety record to current winged aircraft, which are quite extraordinarily safe. Historically, airships in the 1930s might have been safer than airplanes - but since then airplanes have had over 70 years of technical advancement which have paid off massively.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  5. Re:Use hydrogen. by Deadstick · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh, jeez, the "rocket fuel" BS again. Might want to read this:

    http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/myths#flammable-cover

    rj

  6. Re:Use hydrogen. by MadKeithV · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dammit, it said "IN-flammable" - how was I to know?