Slashdot Mirror
Airship Company Gets First Civilian Customer
Zothecula writes "Hybrid Air Vehicles has recently achieved two massive commercial wins that seem to indicate that the airship has a very rosy future indeed. The aircraft's versatility plus an ability to stay airborne for 21 days enabled HAV to win a 517million contract (€370million) to supply a Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) to the U.S. Army for deployment in Afghanistan starting in 2012. Whilst the LEMV is a relatively small vehicle designed for surveillance, HAV has now announced a civil customer for their heavy-lift variant."
Can I get it with brass dials, tropical wood furnishings and a ballroom? Oh, and steam engines, of course!
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
of baby eating nazi zombies invading england by airship may yet come true
I can see a large commercial use for this as a replacement for the traditional cruise ship. Imagine being able to take an air cruise, a nice slow trip across the US at a medium altitude. I think it could be a lot of fun.
Would purchasing one with a printed skin texture based on the appearance of the burning, partially skeletonized, Hindenburg shortly before its fatal plunge be tasteless?
Because I am tempted...
I'd love to fly in one of these, and I'd love to see them being adopted massively. As far as I understand Zeppelins were abandoned because of the war and bad mojo after the Hindenburg, in any case they seem to make perfect sense nowadays.
... the airship hasn't been tried again.
We know, blah blah fire etc. How many planes have taken the proverbial nosedive to destruction as a percentage of all that has existed?
How many airships went that way as a percentage too?
Plus, we know significantly better materials science compared to *those* days.
It'd be significantly safer, lighter, faster and stronger than anything that came out of those years.
I'd sooner travel in an airship than I ever will a plane.
So, really, why haven't we done more of this?
Why are we still using ass-backwards wasteful planes?
Hell, the plane companies would save a lot of money, they surely should have some sort of interest
Hello Airplanes? It's Blimps, You Win
Everyone will be like, "it's a bubble" and I'll be "no way man, it's a dirigible". You can't argue with that. Buy on margin and hold til the cows come home.
The US sell-off of helium means the price will exponentially inflate (heh) after 2015, once the US reserves are gone. The price of helium now is around twenty times too low, based on future needs and available supply.
Helium, also, slowly escapes into outer space, and we have to go to space to get it (barring future discoveries of unknown gas pockets), or wait millions of years for uranium/thorium decay to replenish underground stocks.
So, back to hydrogen airships? Just avoid powdered aluminum paint.
In the 1980's I worked for a company that supplied the engines (Mercedes Benz motor car engines brought up to aviation standards) used in gondolas run under Airship Industries (maker of them) blimps. The gondolas ran as mobile generator sets and saw significant usage to power the lighting for the LA Olympic games. Other airships flew over the games sites so as to provide a high vantage point for security services to monitor the event. This led all involved into a false feeling of a new dawn for airships...fancy plans were drawn up for them to run tourist trips in and out of the Grand Canyon for instance and over Ayres Rock in Australia. Some even hoped for African wildlife tourism to be involved and for trips up the Amazon...then we came to our senses as the company (AI) went under. The cost of filling a large blimp with helium is immense and the wretched things leak! To make matters worse in order to move a blimp around a country one either has to wait ages while it covers any noteworthy distance under its own steam or deflate the thing (usually by venting all the helium) and transport the remaining items by more conventional means (road, rail, air or ship) then pay out for a new fill of helium. This made the costs look pretty awful pretty fast. High winds and airships aren't a good combination so should the prevailing conditions grow nasty the owners of the blimps were, again, forced into a deflate/re-inflate cycle so as to protect the structures. In short almost all the proposed uses of the blimps were unable to see a reasonable return on investment and those that had any chance of same were too few to keep the company making the blimps running. I very much doubt that an economic case that can be viable long-term really exists for all but a tiny number of large civilian use blimps in anything but an unrealistic pipe-dream. Small military use ones may be a niche product with a future and that's where money might be made off of these things.
I do like the idea of airships, but they have very few uses as far as I can tell, besides recon which is being considered. If you want to go somewhere, they wont take you anywhere fast, which is pretty much what everything else does.
I do think they would have a relatively strong role as a forward military base though. Being able to stay in the air for quite a long time as well as combining it with HTA technology could yield a very formidable forward base of operations. Especially if you consider that there are really no ultra long term aircraft besides UAVs. We have some that stay up in the air quite awhile, but nothing close to days without in air refueling. Maybe I've seen too many sci-fi shows? But honestly it seems like the perfect match.
Looks like he's fantasizing about the forceful invasion of the North Pole and looting of Santa Claus' workshops!
Hopefully Pia Zadora will put an end to his evil schemes!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Al-Qaeda begins issuing bows and arrows.
I find it kind of interesting that the first use of airborne(-ish) reconnaissance by the US military was by balloon back in the 1860s. Soldiers would use balloons tethered to the ground behind the front lines both to make battelfield maps and observe the action. Now, 150 years later, the US military is going back to using inflated ships because they are unmatched in terms of loiter time and stealth (no noise, can be made of signature-reducing material, can fly up out of naked eyesight). All the cutting-edge technology we've developed over the years, and yet we still go back to century-and a half year(or just century-year old if you go back to dirigibles) old technology and tactics.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Very interesting indeed, this could become a competitor to airlines, not only in price, but also in comfort (not in speed though).
I would love to take a ride in one of those. Even cooler would be to buy and own one, and just live in it!
What the hell, I would want to try it - live on an airship, spending most of my time in the air!
You can't handle the truth.
According to the TV documentaries I've watched it wasn't the hydrogen that caught fire and caused the accident. The fire started when static electricity sparked across gaps in the outer covering which had been coated with a highly flammable substance. So, hydrogen actually has a rather good safety record.
Maybe this will kill off all the 'Ice Road Truckers' tv shows. One can only hope.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It's a small group of misfits, consisting of:
1. A guy with spikey hair and red armor.
2. A guy wearing some sort of ninja-like outfit who can really kick.
3. A gal wearing white robes.
4. Somebody with a pointy yellow hat and blue robes. All you can see of the face is their eyes.
They keep on going on about reviving the power of the orbs or some-such, and are carrying a wide array of crazy-looking potions and a lot of gold that they use to pay for everything.
I am officially gone from
.... they can convert their hangars into an tropical amusement park, like CargoLifter did.
The problems with hybrids are given above - high cost, limited utility.
There is another possibility with greater potential.
Heavy lift, slow speed, low wing load aircraft with a novel configuration.
See
Concordlift.com
A friend of mine had a great idea for and airship: glass-bottom swimming pool!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC