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Large, Slow Airships Could Move Buildings
Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."
"Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world."
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
...run into the building?
Did anybody think of that?
What was that show where the one building came alive, and to keep it happy they put it on tour?
They just had to make it look like a traditional Alien 'U.F.O.' didn't they? (Skylifter)
The first time a house falls on a house they will be out of business from the lawsuits.
Because I know a very well educated coyote that would be really interested in this sort of innovative technology with his work in high speed pest control.
Lift buildings?? I doubt it.. they are designed for compression loads, not tension. Though, if you lifted it from the bottom....
Stolen idea
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
If you have a crowbar in orbit then surely you need a big rocket to take it out of orbit? You can't just snap your fingers and watch it fall out of the sky. If that's the case where is the advantage over an ICBM with a conventional payload?
And I thought local builders were relatively safe from outsourcing. Now it seems like China has a way to take another industry...
I would have preferred this title:
OMFG HUGE and putting me to sleep kind of slow airships MAYBE could move buildings IF the company in question ever gets investment and builds them and it all works out at the end.
It's a freaking startup, not jesus.
You can't handle the truth.
Structures are built right side up.
They won't survive if you pick them up from the top.
Shit will break off and fall to the ground.
The building will twist and break in the wind.
People will die.
It was super sad when that dude's wife died. The talking dog was funny though. Wait, what?
Well, until now I thought that feature among Terrans was useless...
use it to move the ever increasing wind turbine parts that, a year ago, seemed to be getting too large to move over roads especially as regulations pushed them into less and less accessible areas.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
anyone care to do the crossref math and tell us how much helium it will take to lift 150 tons and how that relates to the dwindling supply?
oops, SRY - forgot mods don't have sense of humor
This idea is full of hot air. It will go over like a lead balloon. It's just an idea to puff up managements' egos. I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but the budget will balloon out of sight.
Table-ized A.I.
Skyscrapers may be vastly more affordable if built from interlocking modules on the ground that could be airlifted into place. Would such a structure be feasible (I'm not an architectural nor a mechanical engineer)?
As pointed out by somebody else, if anybody (these people aren't the first with this idea) could get this to market, it would be a boon for the growing wind turbine industry.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
If obesity rates continue to climb in this country, we could be looking at a new way to commute to the local KFC/Taco Bell.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Large airships have been a recurrent proposal for moving large and bulky items which exceed the routine capabilities of the transport system.
The problem is that the airship needed is huge. That makes it very difficult to operate in anything other than good weather, even before attaching a massive but somewhat frail payload.
The record is full of airship and air lifter crashes because of bad weather or unexpected turbulence. Until that problem is resolved, the proposal is not serious.
The idea of using airships to move heavy objects has been around for a long time. Moving heavy objects with airships may be more feasible than building the airships.
The idea of using airships to move heavy objects is not new . But as history has tried to teach us, moving heavy objects with airships may be easier than building the airships.
Apparently, they have an issue with other nations/companies ignoring IP laws and stealing their tech. While many other companies have thought to do airship lifters, this UFO approach is unique. Even the propulsion appears well thought out. Good luck to them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is time for America to quit dumping our Helium. It is going to get very expensive soon. In addition, it might be time to encourage capture from out many natural gas wells.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
an airship that can lift 150 tons has a lot of crossectional area, even if a sphere need some serious motors to keep it stable in crosswinds, updrafts etc this was brought out in a great book by the new yorker write john mcphee, I think most of /. would love reading this book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter
it is not like any engineer will ever be able to design homes to be picked up or to be mobile. Nor will 50-100 tonnes Nuke power plants be designed for that either.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here in Colorado and most parts of the west, we do not have have easy access to water. BUT, if something like this could carry 150 tones of water to a fire, well, that can help make a difference. In fact, with a good design, the carrier can be quite a bit lower than the lifter which means that they can put this close to the fire, prior to dumping the water.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Unless you want to wait a few millennia for alpha decay to replenish our supply, there simply won't be anything like this... at least not for more than a few years. We are foolishly squandering our remaining supply.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/helium-reserve-shortage-expensive-party-balloons-100823.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Livesciencecom+(LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed)
Remember Cargo Lifter?
One of the most spectacular failures during the wild technology startup stampede a decade ago in Germany. They burned several hundred millions before folding.
The only remaining legacy is a huge indoor pool in their former airship hangar...
The lift capacity of this VapourTech is 150 tonnes. That's not a very big building.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Mi-26 useful lifting capacity 20 tons, gross lift 50 tons
Hindenburg class airship - useful lifting capacity 10 tons, 252 gross tons
Goodyear blimps are four times smaller than Hinderburgs
Lifting 150 tons with airship, VTOL or heli, when lifting record is about 40 tons? Could you pass me that stuff you are smoking? It looks really good.
There was a company in Germany trying to reintroduce air ships as transporters for heavy loads. They were called "Cargolifter". The only thing they ever built was a huge hangar. The company went bankrupt in 2002. The hangar has since been turned into a water park / resort.
Me'n the crew 'ere took o'er this 'ere buildin' some 12 years ago now, matey! If it were just a wee bit more mobile, we could plunder and pillage other buildin's! We'll be in touch with this 'ere company an' then we'll set sail on the high plains, movin' from city to city an' plunderin' buildin's as we go! Haaarr!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
we could order the whole restaurant.
a german company which planned something similar in the nineties . They ran out of money when germany went into recession.
Deleted
This looks like a fantastically expensive way to move things to places where the cost of building is astronomical. The shape of the beast looks very uneconomical, though. It's rare to see this shape of pressure vessel (outside of very small pancake air compressors). It takes a lot of force to restrain a surface from becoming a sphere or tube (which is why historic ships are built the way they are, and why nearly every airplane has a circular fuselage).
This also has the disadvantage of being dynamically unstable under horizontal wind forces. If you're hit with a wind that is not perfectly horizontal, the leading edge will start to rise/fall. That increases the angle of attack and increases the rotational force. Most airships are tethered to a ballast (cargo area) from the perimeter (or nearly so), but the artists rendering does not reflect this stabilization.
I'm sure they've considered these things, but active controls are dodgy. Sure, the military goes with dynamically unstable configurations, but they do it for specific strategic advantage, and at an astronomical cost in risk, maintenance, and training.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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it takes a sphere of 66m Diameter filled with H2 to get a lift of 150 t.
The H2 hull is surrounded by another hull filled with He to minimize H2 combustion risc
and catalysts oxidize escaped H2 safely outside, and diffused O2 inside the H2 hull
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the reason it will not be made is that a balloon technologfy like that would allow the construction of a stratospheric radar platform which would be capable to discover stealth aircraft and low altitude flying cruise missile.
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This will not be allowed!
Those building will soar high above the skyline, just like the Hindenburg! Wait...
It wasn't just the hydrogen; it was also the fact that the envelope of the Hindenburg was painted with thermite. Zeppelin learned its lesson, and its modern airships use far less flammable materials for the envelope. So even if airships did have to go back to hydrogen, it'd be far less risky than in the 1930s.
I tried to look up http://slashdot.org/~plugwash and was returned the following:
Email help@slashdot.org, that's how I got my old "mcgrew" account back. The guys here are a lot better than most slashdotters give them credit for.
Free Martian Whores!
All of these dirigible Great Ideas are doomed to fail unless they use hydrogen or hot air as the lifting gas. Helium is going to run out, forever. Helium is a limited non-replaceable resource. We're using it up faster and faster, and when it's gone, it's gone. Replacing helium is as feasable as implementing Mr. Fusion.
Nah, profile pages are just fucked today.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I tried to look up http://slashdot.org/~plugwash [slashdot.org] and was returned the following: /. account including this one and your account
I'm getting that error when I look at any
While I registered the plugwash account here years ago I never actually posted anything using it (IIRC i screwed something up during registration but it was a long time ago and I don't even rememeber what email I used)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
For stealing their idea. What is UP with that?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
using it would have to be a better deal than just schlepping the parts fairly close than airlifting them with ordinary heavy-lift helos.
"Heavy-transport helicopters, such as the Mil Mi-26 or Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, address some of these difficulties, but their payloads are limited to 20 and nine tonnes, respectively, and the huge rotors create a powerful downdraft that makes handling that payload rather tricky. So people have long been looking for other ways round the problem."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
In addition, it might be time to encourage capture from out many natural gas wells.
Don't worry; when big oil sees dollar signs from doing so, it'll do so.
Except big oil already burns money. Those wells with gas flares are burning natural gas. It may take more infrastructure but I've often wondered why oil companies don't capture the gas then sell it too. Or they can use it to fuel generators, if there's a surplus they could sell electricity.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I wonder if there is a market for sky cruises.. especially in pretty locations.. Or perhaps California to NY in 2 weeks.. See the scenery, stop at places, no rush no push.. luxury provided, do gambling rules apply in airspace?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
I've read that the main problem with airships with large cargo capacity is controlling buoyancy once the cargo is unloaded. For every tonne of cargo that is dropped the airship either needs to take on a tonne of ballast or dump expensive lifting gas otherwise it would suddenly shoot off into the air because it was too light (imagine a helium balloon cut from it's string).
Given they're claiming they can drop off a whole 150 tonnes of cargo in one go it'll be interesting to see how they will solve this problem without either wasting a lot of expensive helium or using cheaper hydrogen.
...though we'd need to sort out the attachment technique used for the stone blocks (i.e. uncoupling would be tricky if using encircling rope, rather than an attachment point above the center of mass, which would presumably leave a trace).
The envelope material, aerostat structure, maneuvering approach, and gas capture/production and control might also pose some issues.
Presumably heated air could be used, but the lift ratio would be comparatively low, and Egypt seems to be historically associated with warmer weather. (Night-time work, perhaps?)
Making flying, burning, explosive bombs is [...] Not so great for civilian transport though...
Tell that to the airline industry, which still routinely flies civilians in flying, burning, explosive bombs that just happen to be heavier than air rather than lighter. Or perhaps that was your point ;-)
Klaus Wulfenbach on line 1.
More seriously, mining companies might be interested in it as a way to transport temporary housing to and from minesites.