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Dirigible Airship Prototype Approaches Completion

Posted by samzenpus on from the float-away dept.

cylonlover writes "The dirigible airship, the oddball aircraft of another era, is making a comeback. California-based Aeros Corporation has created a prototype of its new breed of variable buoyancy aircraft and expects the vehicle to be finished before the end of 2012. With its new cargo handling technology, minimum fuel consumption, vertical take-off and landing features and point to point delivery, the Aeroscraft platform promises to revolutionize airship technology. The Aeroscraft ship uses a suite of new mechanical and aerospace technologies. It operates off a buoyancy management system which controls and adjusts the buoyancy of the vehicle, making it light or heavy for any stages of ground and flight operation. Automatic flight control systems give it equilibrium in all flight modes and allow it to adjust helium pressurized envelopes depending on the buoyancy requirements. It just needs one pilot and has an internal ballast control system, which allows it to offload cargo, without using ballast. Built with a rigid structure, the Aeroscraft can control lift at all stages with its Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) capabilities and carry maximum payload while in hover. What makes it different from other cargo vehicles is that it does not need a runway or ground infrastructure."

9 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Every decade event by esldude · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems this comes up every decade or so. There are some advantages in niches. But in the end, the large volume craft, at relatively slow speeds, and relatively less useful when winds are up seem to doom it from becoming a highly useful aircraft.

    1. Re:Every decade event by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You have to wonder though if it will ever become more practical than traditional cargo ships. I imagine it would take less energy to stay airborne (given that it relies upon buoyancy rather than thrust) therefore making it more energy efficient than a jumbo jet, and might need less energy to stay in motion than a watercraft given the lower resistance of the air vs water.

      Sure, you might need more of them, but pound for pound can it cost less to transport the goods than a cargo ship? I imagine if they added solar power, that would wipe out much of the operating cost. (Plus I've heard something like current cargo ships have a much larger carbon footprint than most of the world's cars combined.)

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    2. Re:Every decade event by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Short answer: no, airships will always be less efficient than water ships.

      The volume of air that must be displaced vs. volume of water is so much greater than any airship yard you find would be the size of Arkansas. Those steampunk airships you see? They would have to have buoyancy chambers orders of magnitude larger than depicted to float.

      As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the fluid resistance encountered by container ships is the containers themselves on top, since the hull can be made very low-resistance, but boxes cannot. Their fuel efficiency issues stem exclusively for extremely weak regulations on emissions.

      So no, airships will always be tourist attractions. No one wants to pay more money to transport things less quickly.

    3. Re:Every decade event by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Amtrak is a different business than freight rail, which....is doing quite fine.

      They just had their biggest June ever.

      http://transportationnation.org/2012/07/06/u-s-freight-rail-has-biggest-june-ever/

      Keep lying though, nobody will care what frauds you spew as long as you bash unions.

    4. Re:Every decade event by afidel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      25% of all ton-miles, and 42% of all inter-city freight are carried via rail in the US. The percentage of all freight carried by rail has been increasing with the cost of oil because of the significantly higher efficiency. In fact today the US carries about the same percentage of cargo via rail that the EU does.

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    5. Re:Every decade event by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

      My dads company ships tankers and half-tankers of industrial chemicals all the time, they also ship lots of those same chemicals via truck, but if it's going inter-city and the recipient is buying at least a half-tanker it's always cheaper to do it via rail. Also look at automobiles, 70% of autos are shipped via rail, those can obviously be shipped via truck, and they're not exactly low-margin or low-value items, so why do you think that is? Perhaps rail doesn't work for your industry, but there are obviously plenty of industries where it does work.

      --
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  2. Airship Ventures Out Of Business by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

    As you can see on their web site, Airship Ventures is out of business and there's a campaign to save the airship from being scrapped.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  3. Re:Funny idea... He He He... by Zorpheus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Hindenburg disaster was spectacular, but was it really that bad? Nearly 2/3 of the people on board survived.
    And I am wondering how much more safe this could be built. The Hindenburg consisted of hydrogen-filled cells which were located within the air-filled hull. Seems rather stupid to me to build it this way, since only the confined air allowed hydrogen and air to mix without ascending away from the airship. The other thing was that the hull was burning very well since it was soaked in linoleum oil. In a TV report it was actually claimed that the fire we see is only the burning hull, since a hydrogen flame is invisible.
    Where is the danger if hydrogen coming out of a leak would just ascend and get diluted quickly in the air? The pure hydrogen in the cells can not burn.

  4. Re:FedEx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can imagine that they could be used for transporting things that right now there is no easy way to move.

    For example, mining trucks are limited in size by their tires. Since tires must be shipped from the factory in one piece, they can't be more than about 4-5m in diameter or they wouldn't be able to be transported by road. If you could transport them in the air, size would be irrelevant. At 6 tons times 6 tires, you would need a payload capacity of 36 tons to be able to move the tires from the factory to the mine site.

    Another example is oil fields and mines in Alaska and nothern Canada. Since there no roads going to them, equipment can only be moved in the winter when the land and lakes are frozen solid. With an airship, they could move equipment all year long. With a 60 ton capacity, it would be able to haul more than a tractor-trailer, and at 120kt it would go significantly faster too.

    dom