World's Largest Aircraft Seeks Investors To Begin Operation

An anonymous reader writes: The Airlander 10 is significantly larger than a 747. It's an airship that incorporates elements of blimps, planes, and hovercraft. Buoyed by a vast volume of helium, it's capable of cruising at a speed of 80 knots. It was built as a military venture, intended to be used for surveillance tasks. But as the war in Afghanistan wound down, government officials found they had no use for the airship. They ended up selling it back to the company who made it for $300,000 — after paying them $90 million to build it. Now, a small group of investors are trying to get it operational, in part to show people how safe the technology can be, and to hopefully spur construction of more airships. They say the Airlander 10 is capable of surviving a missile strike, but visions of the Hindenburg still loom large in our cultural memory.

Comments

Hindenburg?

[sound vision]

The Hindenburg always gets brought up here - I'm sure it was a big thing half a century ago. Now, much of the general public probably doesn't know what "Hindenburg" is, and the ones who are scared of airships are the same group who are scared of normal aircraft. I think the bigger thing here, in terms of travel, is that it only goes 80 knots. You can do 80 knots easily in an economy car. Legally too, in many places. 747s cruise at several hundred knots, around 250 IIRC. There's no reason to take this airship for long distance travel unless your goal is chillin' on the ship and looking out the window.

Re:Hindenburg?

[mjwx]

The Hindenburg always gets brought up here - I'm sure it was a big thing half a century ago. Now, much of the general public probably doesn't know what "Hindenburg" is, and the ones who are scared of airships are the same group who are scared of normal aircraft. I think the bigger thing here, in terms of travel, is that it only goes 80 knots. You can do 80 knots easily in an economy car. Legally too, in many places. 747s cruise at several hundred knots, around 250 IIRC. There's no reason to take this airship for long distance travel unless your goal is chillin' on the ship and looking out the window.

The Hindenburg and other airships were filled with volatile hydrogen, modern airships use inert helium. The problem is, helium is quite expensive in that volume. The fear at hydrogen airships was well founded, the Hindenburg wasn't even the worst airship disaster, that only killed 36, the worst disaster was the R101 which killed 48. Airships were not only vulnerable to explosion, they were unstable in high winds and storms. After the Hindenburg airships by and large stopped using hydrogen but there were still a lot of crashes due to weather.

The design in the article uses helium which isn't unstable like hydrogen but the problem of weather still remains. But that isn't what will kill it, it's economics as helium is going to be expensive in the quantities they need and who is going to pay for an airship to freight something at 80 knots when if it isn't time critical, a bulk carrier will do it for less.

Re:Hindenburg?

[ShanghaiBill]

I think the bigger thing here, in terms of travel, is that it only goes 80 knots.

It is not intended for passenger transportation. It is for things like cargo to remote areas, or reconnaissance. If it can be automated, with no crew, then it can use hydrogen rather than helium, since there will be no risk to human life.

 

Re:Hindenburg?

[mjwx]

It is not intended for passenger transportation. It is for things like cargo to remote areas, or reconnaissance.

Again, there are cheaper alternatives.

Also, a lot of remote areas are remote because of weather, not terrain. If you cant get a helicopter in there, a blimp is just asking to crash.

then it can use hydrogen rather than helium, since there will be no risk to human life.

In order for this to be true, it would need to be loaded, unloaded and operated away from populated areas. This gives it a very erratic (ergo, longer) flight path as you cant fly it over cities and a huge logistic cost to get the goods to a remote location for loading and unloading (and these facilities do not already exist). The extra cost does not make sense.

Beyond this, it's daft. The airship cost $90,000,000 (90 million) to build. You dont want it exploding before it returns that 90 mil.

Re:Hindenburg?

[WalksOnDirt]

747s cruise at several hundred knots, around 250 IIRC.

Off by a factor of two. The cruising speed is almost 500 knots.

Re:Hindenburg?

[stridebird]

ok. how do you unload it in the remote location? This is a game of buoyancy. It can't just rock up somewhere remote and unload a cargo. it would shoot up into the air, unless it takes on a new cargo at the same time. This can only be unloaded in dedicated docking stations with anchor tethers to hold the airship to earth when positively buoyant.

Re:Hindenburg?

[stridebird]

hot air is a much better basic principle for this anyway

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

you seem to be under the false assumption that the amount of gas inside the skin of the blimp has to remain constant. There is no reason why it can't be released or compressed while underloading. a simple tether or Anchor would be more than adequate to permit loading and unloading.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hindenburg always gets brought up here - I'm sure it was a big thing half a century ago. Now, much of the general public probably doesn't know what "Hindenburg" is, and the ones who are scared of airships are the same group who are scared of normal aircraft. I think the bigger thing here, in terms of travel, is that it only goes 80 knots. You can do 80 knots easily in an economy car. Legally too, in many places. 747s cruise at several hundred knots, around 250 IIRC. There's no reason to take this airship for long distance travel unless your goal is chillin' on the ship and looking out the window.

The Hindenburg and other airships were filled with volatile hydrogen, modern airships use inert helium. The problem is, helium is quite expensive in that volume. The fear at hydrogen airships was well founded, the Hindenburg wasn't even the worst airship disaster, that only killed 36, the worst disaster was the R101 which killed 48. Airships were not only vulnerable to explosion, they were unstable in high winds and storms. After the Hindenburg airships by and large stopped using hydrogen but there were still a lot of crashes due to weather.

The design in the article uses helium which isn't unstable like hydrogen but the problem of weather still remains. But that isn't what will kill it, it's economics as helium is going to be expensive in the quantities they need and who is going to pay for an airship to freight something at 80 knots when if it isn't time critical, a bulk carrier will do it for less.

The Airlander 10 was designed for DARPA. Weather was taken into account in the design. Structural design and materials have improved since the 1930s. It's in no more danger from weather than any commercial airliner. Less in fact. It is capable of taking cargo from any reasonably flat place on land to any reasonably flat place on land. At 80 knots. Directly. With no transshipment / change in transportation mode required. Passing over land and water in any combination. Terrain, railway lines and roads don't matter. It will be more expensive than shipping, but faster. And believe me cargo planes won't be cheaper, and their capacity is lower. It can stay in the air for weeks. It's landing requirements are pretty basic. You could ship fairly bulky material from point of origin to destination without using a traditional airport. The potential advantages are huge. Helium is the only real bottleneck (besides public fear of airship disasters) and it's not something you expend like fuel.

Re:Hindenburg?

[serviscope_minor]

The fear at hydrogen airships was well founded, the Hindenburg wasn't even the worst airship disaster, that only killed 36, the worst disaster was the R101 which killed 48.

I think this statement is taking things very far out of context: in the context of modern or even vaguely recent air travel, that was not a good thing. In the context of 1936, it was barely a blip. Air travel in 1936 was primitive and dangerous: the classic planes like the DC3 were just introduced contemporarily with the Hindenburg. What was common at the time was things like th Ford Trimotor. Long range planes had many engines partly because the engines simply lacked the reliability due to pushing the technology so far: it was routine to lose one engine in a long flight and mechanical problems frequently caused planes to land early. It wasn't long since planes were designed to allow in-flight engine maintainance.

Additionally, crack porpagation and metal fatigue were very poorly understood and as planes transitioned from wood and linen to aluminium in the 30s, this was the cause of some parts flat-out falling off in flight (things like wings).

The main problem with the hindenburg was that it was large and grand and a film crew witnessed it's demise.

Re:Hindenburg?

[adolf]

The airship cost $300,000 to buy. It doesn't matter if it cost someone else $90,000,000 to build it; the loss of $89,700,000 is the government's loss, not the current owners.

Car analogy: I once paid $6,500 for an excellent car that had a new sticker price of $53,000, and I've been driving it like a $6,500 car ever since.

Re:Hindenburg?

[hcs_$reboot]

it was a big thing half a century ago. Now, much of the general public probably doesn't know what "Hindenburg" is

Don't worry, most of /. readers were in college when the Hindenburg caught fire.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's in no more danger from weather than any commercial airliner. Less in fact."

An airliner flies at high altitude to avoid most of the weather.

For this blimp to fly at high altitude the structure has to expand to handle the change in pressure of the atmosphere. The weather balloons launched at sea level expand to many many times their size.

How does a rigid airship expand like this? What am I missing?

Re:Hindenburg?

[tsotha]

The airship cost $300,000 to buy. It doesn't matter if it cost someone else $90,000,000 to build it; the loss of $89,700,000 is the government's loss, not the current owners.

Well, the company bought it back from the government for $300k. That doesn't mean customers can buy it for $300k. Based on what other players in the market are charging if this company doesn't go bankrupt first the airship will probably sell for a whole lot more than that.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

it only goes 80 knots. You can do 80 knots easily in an economy car.

Yes, but would you want to? For short trips, yes. For longer trips, not necessarily. I would rather spend a comfortable night sleeping on an airship than having to stay up focused and driving all night to get to the same place at the same time.

Speed is not everything, even when it comes to getting from A to B. And if getting from A to B is not the only goal of traveling, speed matters even less. That's why people go on cruises.

Re:Hindenburg?

[rioki]

*cought* Cargo Lifter *cought*

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]Again, there are cheaper alternatives.[/quote]
Name one cheaper VTOL alternative.
Does the alternative have so much surface area it can use solar power to run its engines?
Can it run with electricity at all?
[quote]Also, a lot of remote areas are remote because of weather, not terrain. If you cant get a helicopter in there, a blimp is just asking to crash.[/quote]
Black and white thinking. This does not replace or make helos vanish. They can still be used when needed.

[quote][quote]then it can use hydrogen rather than helium, since there will be no risk to human life.[/quote]
In order for this to be true, it would need to be loaded, unloaded and operated away from populated areas. This gives it a very erratic (ergo, longer) flight path as you cant fly it over cities and a huge logistic cost to get the goods to a remote location for loading and unloading (and these facilities do not already exist). The extra cost does not make sense.[/quote]
Again, black and white thinking. ALL flying stuff imposes risks to human life, no matter how small the risk is. Do helicopters have risks, do they have erratic flying paths? What about planes, do they tend to ram into buildings and mountains at at high speed occasionally? Unmanned slow blimps have lower risks than other aircraft, even if they are filled with hydrogen. You cannot deny that.

What kind of extra facilities blimps need in addition to what helicopters need? Because there aren't much. Helium tanks.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Zeussy]

The original rigid airships had a series of bladders containing the lifting gas. These bladders were effectively open bottomed. As the air pressure dropped they simply let the lifting gas vent out of the bottom of the bladder. I thought this was pretty crazy when I read about it, and it did lead to a nasty loss of an early airship. The windscreen of the open top cockpit/gondola created a vortex that trapped the venting hydrogen. This eventually led to a fire/explosion and loss of the airship. Although not as crazy as the really early dirigibles before they mastered mass production of hydrogen. They used coal seam gas as the lifting gas, and even ran the engines from a feed from the balloon.

I would imagine to preserve the helium the Airlander 10 could use a compressor to store the helium in tanks and reduce the internal bladder pressure.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Simon Brooke]

It could take on water or rock/gravel/sand/quarry spoil as ballast, so that isn't necessarily a very serious limitation.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Zeussy]

The Airship era, had some pretty crazy stuff. Engineers in each engine nacelle with a normal sea-ship style Full Ahead, Ahead Standard, Full Reverse etc indicator for what Captain wanted from the Engines. There was also the late WWI German Riesenflugzeug large biplane bombers which either had the engines inside the fuselage with gearboxes and driveshafts transferring power to the propellers out on the wings, or large nacelles to accommodate the engineers. In some desperate attempt to get reliability out of early engines.

Re:Hindenburg?

[dave420]

That is most certainly not what "remote" means. The places this is proposed to be used are literally remote (as in "far away from"), and helicopters can't lift heavy loads for hours (or days), as this thing can. You seem to have misunderstood the word "remote", conjured up your own definition, then used that definition to bash the idea. I hope you realise how absurd that is :)

Re:Hindenburg?

[BitZtream]

Except when its landing, or taking off, or being loaded, or being unloaded, or serviced by humans ... or when it catches fire and falls from the sky in a massive fireball.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how when I said the same thing several years ago (~2010) nobody modded me (Score:5, Insightful). I think Malaysian Airlines and GermanWings have made people more airplane adverse.

Re:Hindenburg?

[serviscope_minor]

And, frankly that was an improvement: some even earlier aircraft had the engineer wing-walking to get to the engine. I can't remember which ones off hand, and my google-fu is weak today.

Re:Hindenburg?

[rossdee]

Funnily enough, the Hindenburg was designed to be filled with Helium. However theworld supply of He at that time was monopolized by the USA, who didn't trust the Nazis to only use airships for peaceful purposes, so denied them thte gas. So the Zeppelin company had to use hydrogen.

"the worst disaster was the R101 which killed 48"

But it didnt happen live on radio, or with the cameras rolling , thats why people remember the Hindenburg.

" Airships were not only vulnerable to explosion, they were unstable in high winds and storms."

fixed winged aircraft of that time were also vulnerable to storms, but they didn't carry as many people as the big airships.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hindenburg's hydrogen content was not the primary fuel when it burned. Hydrogen is much lighter than air, and escapes quickly upward. Most of the hydrogen in the Hindenburg probably just escaped without burning.

But the canvas panels that protected the outside of the airship were coated in a paint made with a mix of aluminum and iron oxides. Thermite. Landing it during an electrical storm sparked it, and it burned like thermite does, quick, hot, and unresponsive to efforts to quench it with water.

A hydrogen airship is only marginally less safe than a helium one, and a lot cheaper to keep afloat. Just don't paint either kind with thermite and you should be okay.

Re:Hindenburg?

[mjgday]

Hydrogen is less explosive than petrol.

Hidenburg era airships didn't have plastics to make the gasbags from, modern Hydrogen airships could be safer than petrol powered road vehicles which crash and burn regularly.

The difficulty with all large, lighter than air craft is ground handling. You have a massive, bouyant structure and a small breath of air results in a huge amount of momentum which can all too easily result in the airship hitting things and damaging itself or them.

The solution is to never come below 30,000 feet, higher if the ground rises, launch once and use triplanes to get on and off.

Relevant picture

Re:Hindenburg?

[GTRacer]

I once paid $6,500 for an excellent car [...]

Did you? What kind of car is it?

Re: Hindenburg?

[rahvin112]

Hate to break it to you but the US is still the only nation to ever spend the money to build a facility to collect helium and remains the only source of helium. It would be nice if someone else did so as well but good luck getting anyone to care.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, much of the general public probably doesn't know what "Hindenburg" is, and the ones who are scared of airships are the same group who are scared of normal aircraft.

People don't know the Hindenburgh? Oh the humanity!

Re:Hindenburg?

[cusco]

This might be interesting for use in the Andes and Himalayas, where much of the terrain is too high for helicopters to operate reliably and too rough for long airstrips.

Re: Hindenburg?

[cusco]

Just start a fusion power plant! It should produce plenty of helium! Fusion power is only 20 years away . . .

Re:Hindenburg?

[ralphsiegler]

Hydrogen not the issue with the Hindenburg, flammable metallic paint that burned like solid rocket fuel was. Hydrogen is superior lifting gas with twice the lift, should be used instead in a proper compartmentalized balloon system

Re:Hindenburg?

[budgenator]

You are assuming that this Airship is in fact bouyant where

The airship was a hybrid air vehicle (HAV) and had a number of advantages over fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A HAV uses aerodynamic lift like a conventional airplane to take off before using helium to keep it in the sky once it is airborne. Engines on board are then used to move while it monitors events on the ground.[15] The LEMV’s skin - a blend of Vectran, Kevlar, and Mylar - would have been able to cope with a “reasonable amount of small arms fire.”[15] Northrop estimated that the biggest threat to the craft was weather, where high winds or thunderstorms could buffet the craft. Hybrid Air Vehicles HAV-3

that is not the case. The design isn't even that radical, Mc Phee envisioned hybrid airships 3 times the size of the Airlander back in the late '70s.

Re:Hindenburg?

[MechaStreisand]

My god, Photobucket sucks ass. They now automatically try to sell prints of every single picture on there, even if they have to crop off the interesting parts of the picture. Just look at the ones at the bottom of that page.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

The airship cost $300,000 to buy. It doesn't matter if it cost someone else $90,000,000 to build it; the loss of $89,700,000 is the government's loss, not the current owners.

Well, the company bought it back from the government for $300k. That doesn't mean customers can buy it for $300k. Based on what other players in the market are charging if this company doesn't go bankrupt first the airship will probably sell for a whole lot more than that.

Also, the article fails to mention the reason it only costs $300,000 to buy back was that it had crashed and was damaged.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem was not the hydrogen, look at the films. Hydrogen is lighter than air, and would burn at the top and above.

It was the skin of the Zeplin that was burning.

Hydrogen is better than Helium, and reasonable safe in practice.

Re:Hindenburg?

[TheTurtlesMoves]

And yet airline accidents have been and are far worse. Probably the up to 100 tons of volatile jet fuel on board.

Re:Hindenburg?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't the hydrogen that made the Hindenburg burn, it was the fabric.

Hydrogen is just plain better than helium in every respect. It's much cheaper and more plentiful, lighter, and the molecules are larger, meaning that it leaks less. If we could banish this stupid superstition that it will catch fire, then at a stroke the capital and running costs of airships would pretty much halve.

Re:Hindenburg?

[ShanghaiBill]

That doesn't mean customers can buy it for $300k.

It doesn't mean it costs $90M per copy either. Much of the original $90M was likely NRE.

Re: Hindenburg?

[rickb928]

80 knots uninterrupted across an ocean is pretty attractive.

Especially for cargo slightly less valuable than most air freight, and much less volume than a boat can justify.

Re:Hindenburg?

[stridebird]

That occurred to me too subsequently. I don't have any specialist knowledge and I haven't even read TFA, I just like studying engineering problems.

To alter the buoyancy there are four main possibilities as I see it. Alter pressure. Alter volume. Alter gas mix, Alter temperature.

The delta pressure that could be achieved is limited by the structural and hermetic integrity of the gas envelope. It's probably quite feasible to build an envelope capable of pressurisation above atmosphere to perhaps 1 bar which would certainly give you a good range of buoyancy control and I think an operating ceiling of 5000m, possibly more, based purely on range of alitudes where neutral buoyancy is obtainable.

Volume changes could be effected with some kind of mechanical bellow. But as this results in a delta pressure it's similar to the above.

Temperature change is the most promising mechanism. Additional lift could be created using hot air balloon principles. You would get fairly fast reaction control

Gas mix changes would allow for trim changes as the craft ascended or loaded / unloaded. It's easy to conceive a system of pressurised gas containers that can be selectively opened to adjust the gas mix. Nitrogen would be the obvious candidate for this. But the problem lies with recovering the helium. Unless you can fit a scrubber system that can selectively leach the gas and return helium, under pressure to the onboard storage. If this device leaks helium - and it almost certainly will - then it is a) evil and b) useless.

But I appreciate this machine is a hybrid and most of the buoyancy issues are taken care of by generating aerodynamic lift. However, they would want powerful trim controls so at least some of the above must be designed in to the craft.

Re:Hindenburg?

[adolf]

In ~2004, I bought a used, relatively clean and option-loaded 1995 BMW 325i with sport suspension for $6500.

I've spent about $4000 on repairs and general regular maintenance (from an auto-to-manual transmission swap, to the current valve cover/intake-parts rebuild, and including tires, wheels, and oil changes) in the past 11 years.

So I'm in for about $11,500 for over a decade of the very best car I've ever driven.

It sees some downtime, but I'm ~40k ahead of the game. And $40k buys at least a few $11,500 cars for fun spares.

Re:Hindenburg?

[adolf]

Typo: $5k in service and repairs, but whatever. If you want to pick on my old and awesome car, you'll do so no matter what, +/- $1k.

As long as it's not windy

[GrahamCox]

Most people seem to focus on the safety of airships, in the light of the Hindenburg, R101, etc. Surely a more significant problem is the wind? Any amount of wind is going to make landing and takeoff hazardous, and making much headway against a strong headwind is going to take a lot of power with that much windage. Good luck to them, maybe there are enough fair-weather opportunities to make it pay, but this aspect is seemingly never discussed.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[Ralph Wiggam]

I would think that most significant problem would be finding a place to put it.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[thegarbz]

Why? Far more realestate is required to land an aircraft than to dock an airship.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[michelcolman]

and making much headway against a strong headwind is going to take a lot of power with that much windage.

Just to clarify a common misconception about wind and "windage": many people seem to think that wind affects airplanes the same way as cars, needing more power to keep moving in a headwind. That is not the case. Airplanes fly in the air, they don't care about the ground. If that air happens to be moving, they move along with it. It's an extra speed vector to be added to airspeed, nothing more. Like walking on a conveyor belt, you don't get more or less tired (per minute) when walking at the same pace, but you do move more quickly or slowly depending on the direction of the belt. Airplanes don't "feel" crosswinds either, they just fly straight through the air, but end up moving sideways relative to the ground because of the addition of the two speed vectors.

The only reason why airplanes often use more power in a headwind, is because the pilot may elect to fly faster to (partially) compensate for the wind. An 80 kt airship in a 40 kt headwind will only have a ground speed of 40 kt, so the pilots may well choose to increase power to get a higher ground speed. The economic optimum speed for total fuel consumption over a given distance is at a higher airspeed in a headwind, and at a lower airspeed in a tailwind, simply because the math works out that way: the airship in a 40 kt headwind will get a 10% boost in ground speed (44 i.o. 40) for only a 5% boost in airspeed (84 i.o. 80), which shifts the economic optimum speed upward. But fuel consumption per minute at the same airspeed is the same no matter what the wind is.

So headwinds don't affect the airship any more than it affects a small plane with a cruising speed of 80 kts.

Changing gusts of wind are a different matter, of course. The plane or airship definitely does "feel" those.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[tsotha]

When I rode the Zeppelin NT they told us it can safely fly under the same condition helicopters are safe, though they did say they wouldn't carry passengers once the winds started to get gusty since it tends to make people sick.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[Livius]

Changing gusts of wind

I.e. all winds in the real world.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[michelcolman]

The GGP was talking about making headway against a strong headwind. In a steady headwind, any airplane with an 80 kt cruising speed will see the same effect from that headwind. The fact that the airship happens to be really big does not change the fact that it simply gets the same wind speed vector added to its airspeed.

Gusts would just make the flight more turbulent, but would not change the average speed much.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[DerekLyons]

Just to clarify a common misconception about wind and "windage": many people seem to think that wind affects airplanes the same way as cars, needing more power to keep moving in a headwind. That is not the case

True, but misleading - while they don't need more power to maintain speed relative to the airflow, they do need more power to maintain speed over ground. (To "make headway" as the sentence you quoted states.) Airships (and the occasional small HTA craft) have been observed making negative speed over ground while maintaining a positive speed relative to the local airflow.*
 

So headwinds don't affect the airship any more than it affects a small plane with a cruising speed of 80 kts.

All your irrelevant handwaving bullshit aside, you've left one absolutely vital factor out of your idealized calculation - an airship isn't a small plane. It had a sail area orders of magnitude (or more) higher, which means the effects of a given wind (head, tail, or cross) are much higher than they are for a small plane. While a heavier than air craft might have to increase power 5% to overcome a given headwind and maintain speed over ground, the larger sail area of a lighter than aircraft means it may have to increase power by 100% or more (and it goes without saying that they rarely have that much reserve power).
 
Or to put it another way, you're wrong. Wind (head, tail, or cross) do affect airships more than they do small planes. Airships can be, and have been, blown all over creation by rather modest winds which a heavier than air craft simply plows right through. The concerns over their ability to make speed over ground (headway) and maintain course are based on observation and engineering reality, not "misconceptions".

*This difference between speed over ground and speed versus local airflow is why aircraft carriers turn into the wind for launch and recovery operations.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... Drag?

Re:As long as it's not windy

[mrchaotica]

The only reason why airplanes often use more power in a headwind, is because the pilot may elect to fly faster to (partially) compensate for the wind. An 80 kt airship in a 40 kt headwind will only have a ground speed of 40 kt, so the pilots may well choose to increase power to get a higher ground speed.

The other reason why airplanes use more power in a headwind is that the pilot still wants to get from point A to point B, which are fixed relative to the ground. If he has a headwind, it means he needs to cover more "effective distance" (relative to the air) to get there and thus use more fuel even if he doesn't increase his airspeed.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[PPH]

they do need more power to maintain speed over ground.

Not exactly true. There is an optimum airspeed and power setting for any aircraft (and weight). Pushing it harder to go faster tends to be inefficient. What one needs when flying into a headwind (lower ground speed) is more time and fuel.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[michelcolman]

If an airship can fly at 80 kts (which is very fast indeed for an airship), it will *not* require 100% more power to increase its speed by 5 kts. That's just preposterous. Drag probably increases with the square of the speed just like (roughly) for airplanes. Obviosuly an airship will have more drag at any speed because of its huge frontal area, but the shape of the drag curve will not be drastically different. Certainly not to the point of requiring twice as much power for 5% more speed.

So the comparison with a small plane that has a cruising speed of 80 kts is in fact perfectly valid.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[michelcolman]

That's exacty the reason I gave in my explanation, if you read it again. (Just after your cut)

Minimum fuel consumption per mile (ergo total fuel consumption for a trip from A to B) is at a higher airspeed in a headwind, and a lower speed in a tailwind.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[cusco]

A 40 kt headwind is 50% of the speed of an 80 kt airship, but only 10% of the speed of a 400 kt airliner. That's the difference between taking twice as long to arrive at your destination, or only an extra 1/10th of the time.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[Ralph Wiggam]

But far more space is required to store and/or service an airship.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[GrahamCox]

Point is though, that an airship (or any aircraft) is only actually useful if it makes some progress OVER THE GROUND. So sure, it doesn't need more power to maintain a particular airspeed, put it does to actually get somewhere in a headwind. And with that huge frontal area, that's a lot of drag to overcome.

Re:As long as it's not windy

[thegarbz]

Yes but there's no problem with finding a place to do that. You don't need to do that anywhere near a tight residential area, and there are far FAR larger buildings in the world than one that would need to fit a few of these airships for maintenance.

Heck I'd wager that one of these would fit in most aircraft maintenance hangers already given how oversized those typically are.

oh jeez.

[ihtoit]

Hindenberg was full of flammable hydrogen. Helium is not flammable. No crewed or uncrewed airship in service today uses hydrogen for buoyancy - FAA regulations prohibit it.

884283: a 747-400 cruises at just shy of Mach 1 (actually 0.855, or 920km/h/570mph) at 35,000 feet (10700m). LTOL (Laden Takeoff/Landing) speed is 250kt. That's shy of 290mph. 80kt=92mph. Not legal anywhere really apart from the German Autobahn and certified race tracks (most places in the US are limited to 55mph and the UK has a (laughable) limit if 70. I say laughable because it's less a limit, more a goal - most roads you'll be lucky if you hit 40).

Re:oh jeez.

[Coeurderoy]

In practice blimps would be usefull if they could be run using hydrogen.
Helium is a limited and expensive ressource, hydrogen is comparativelly "free"...

And I suspect that the issues with static electricity, heat, etc... are much better understood today than 80..90 years ago.

The weather forecasts are also much more accurate and the risk of loosing a blimp to the wind are way lower than in the 30s...

The advantage of blimps is that they do not need as much infrastructure as planes, and if you compare the safety records of antique hydrogen blimps to some of the developping world countries airline, ... one might reconsider ....

Re:oh jeez.

[hcs_$reboot]

1) Helium leak
2) (Fast) Descent
3) Landing / crash

Re:oh jeez.

[kwbauer]

Most freeways (autobahn equivalent) in the US have a speed limit of 65 or 70 mph. 55 only happens in large urban areas and on the two lane highways.

Re:oh jeez.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Helium leak

Helium cannot be reasonably contained. Helium will leak out of Stainless Steel, and it has roughly half of the lifting capacity of Hydrogen.
However, 3He has a lifting capacity roughly halfway between 4He and 1H2, and since it is a Fermion, it obeys the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
I last paid $110 for a STP Liter of 3He from Russia, which is expensive, but since it is a byproduct of other processes, the processes just need to be scaled up.

Further details can be found at enolirpa.ru

Re:oh jeez.

[tsotha]

In practice airships are quite practical using helium. It's not that expensive, and you don't consume it as part of normal operations. A modern design will only vent lifting gas in an extreme emergency.

Re: oh jeez.

[jo7hs2]

Most places in the US are limited to 55MPH? Um... Nope. Almost all States in the United States have maximum speed limits on Interstates (presumably we are talking about highways and not rural two-lanes) of 65MPH or greater. Have for many years. And the limits are gradually increasing to 70MPH in a increasing number of states, with some going even higher. Some states even allow greater than 55MPH on rural two lane roads! Your information is several decades out of date. Check: http://www.motorists.org/speed...

Re:oh jeez.

[dave420]

They're equivalent in as much as they're the fastest roads, but when you start to compare engineering, "equivalent" is one hell of an insult to the Autobahn :)

Re:oh jeez.

[demonlapin]

most places in the US are limited to 55mph

Maybe in the Northeast, but not generally true across the country, and especially not so out West, where 75 is normal on freeways. In Texas, the speed limit tends to be 70 even on two-lane roads.

Re:oh jeez.

[MancunianMaskMan]

... Helium .. has roughly half of the lifting capacity of Hydrogen....

not really, the "lifting capacity" is from the difference in mass between lifting gas and surrounding air. Air is ~29 g/mol, so the ratio of lifting capacity of H2:He is

[(29 - 2) / 29] : [(29 - 4) / 29] = 27/25,

works out at 8% difference. The containment vessel's weight is typically more significant than the gas itself in a lighter-than-air craft.

Balloons with He3 give only 3% more lift than He4, lunacy!

Re:oh jeez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!
Check your Calendar.
BTW, that bit about $110/Liter for 3He was true, at one time.
The little cylinder had a "Radioactive" sticker on it, because of the residual Tritium.
Savannah River was charging ~$600/Liter for a lower chemical purity, but essentially Tritium-Free product.

Re:oh jeez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the guy who's apparently never seen the mountain cuts in the American west. The US interstate system is a feat of engineering much more impressive than the autobahn. Yes, I've driven both. They're both suffering from the same decay. And, last time I drove west from Kansas City, I didn't slow under 140 KPH for about 4 hours. Then I had to piss.

Re:oh jeez.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that replying to myself was once considered rude online, but the bad math and the "Lunacy" comment deserves a less flippant answer.
"Lifting Capacity" is the literal meaning. In Transport, it is much the same as "Payload", but in fixed applications like for Barrage Balloons and WiFi or Cellphone coverage, it is the actual equivalent force that must be accounted for in tethering, since in these applications, altitude is fixed statically, with minor Lift corrections for Barometric Pressure and Air Temperature.
There is a reasonably accurate description for Transport here:
http://www.airships.net/helium-hydrogen-airships

In the case of the U.S.S Los Angeles Zeppelin, the useful Lift was ~101,000 pounds for 1H2, and ~63,000 pounds for 4He1. Note that this was for a Rigid Airship,
Blimps carry much less Infrastructure, and generate more lift for a given volume of gas, but because of their explosive nature, (See Weather Balloons- they eventually explode due to Altitude.), they are generally confined to lower Altitudes.
Also:
http://www.thesneeze.com/art/razz/raz.gif

Re:oh jeez.

[budgenator]

Actualy He2 is a very small molecule and like H2, it tends to difuse through most practical materials; so it is consumed as a part of normal operations.

Re:oh jeez.

[tsotha]

But only in small quantities. Not enough to affect the bottom line. In the early airships they would simply vent hydrogen if they needed lower buoyancy, so they took on hydrogen along with fuel and ballast when arriving at the destination. You don't need to do that with helium. Or rather, you don't design a helium airship such that it's necessary.

The biggest drawback to helium is it gets contaminated by other molecules moving the other direction. Not really sure why that happens. Anyway, that's why Zeppelins undergo periodic maintenance in which the helium has to be pumped out and purified.

Re:oh jeez.

[tehcyder]

last time I drove west from Kansas City, I didn't slow under 140 KPH for about 4 hours.

That's about 90 mph and it's speeding. The point about autobahns is that you can go 300kph+ legally. (Well, in places anyway).

they've begun

[Anonymous Coward]

This must be the beginning of the April fools jokes

Re:they've begun

[hcs_$reboot]

What's the point of showing you're clever and sniff hoax, then post as an AC?

Cruise Ships

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see this being a boon as a tourist-y style way of travelling, like cruise ships, stopping off at ports here and there to resupply, watching the world go by as you play croquet and sip your Earl Grey (I have absolutely no idea what people do on Cruise ships)

Especially seeing as this has the major advantage of being able to travel over land as well as sea. Imagine, seeing the Fijian islands, stopping in Sydney for some shopping, then it's off to Uluru!

Not so fast

[jklovanc]

They say the Airlander 10 is capable of surviving a missile strike, but visions of the Hindenburg still loom large in our cultural memory.

It is the spector of traveling in an aircraft at 80mph that I am concerned with. If I am going to get off the ground in an aircraft I will be going a considerable distance. Eighty miles an hour is much too slow to be efficient.

Re:Not so fast

[stridebird]

and travelling through clouds too. This isn't a high altitude machine. Bad weather kills it.

Re:Not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

in good weather that 80mph translates into a much higher speed than what is achieved on the ground as you can proceed in a direct line, most places you travel on the ground you would be lucky to achieve half that as you are almost never going directly from point A to B. You also get the benefits of any tail winds (though the disadvantages of headwinds too).

Re:Not so fast

[michelcolman]

I wonder how it would survive a missile strike. OK, the helium is not going to explode, but if it leaks out through a big hole in the hull, you're going to go down anyway. You'll need lots of compartments to limit that, and those compartments would add quite a lot of weight.

Re:Not so fast

[tsotha]

There was a Zeppelin in WW I that survive the explosion of a AA shell inside the ship. And that was filled with hydrogen. The crew was able to land it safely in the UK and had to destroy it with a flare gun. Those things are a lot more durable than you'd think, since the sheer volume of the lifting gas means you've got to tear the thing apart to make it fall out of the sky.

The reason they say it would survive a missile strike is most anti-aircraft missiles have very small warheads. An AMRAAM, for example, has either a 40 or 50 pound warhead, which is going to do less damage than an artillery shell. They only bring down airplanes because 1) airplanes are full of flammable fuel and 2) tiny changes to the shape of an airplane make it disastrously unflyable.

Re:Not so fast

[michelcolman]

It was filled with hydrogen, and an exploding shell did not make it explode?

Re:Not so fast

[tsotha]

Correct:

Alois Böcker in the L-33 was the first to arrive over the capital. He dropped most of his bomb-load on the East End, around Bow and Stratford, with the airship crew reporting visible fires and explosions with each bomb burst . However, a shell from the defenses over Bromley exploded inside the ship, causing tremendous physical damage but no fires. She dropped much of her water ballast, reported by the ground spotters as a smoke screen, and made her way eastward, losing 800 feet of altitude each minute. After a dangerous encounter with a British airplane which pumped several drums of Brock-Pomeroy ammunition into L-33 to no effect, the airship came to earth at Essex, where Böcker and his men jumped to the ground and fired several flares into her. They were promptly captured as L-33 burned to the ground, mostly intact.

Hydrogen only burns in the presence of oxygen (for our purposes, anyway). That's also why British aircraft had so much trouble setting airships alight with incendiary rounds - the rounds would pass straight through without ever getting the right H2/air mixture for ignition. Incendiary rounds performed so badly the Brits thought the Germans were putting a layer of some inert gas just inside the airship skin.

It wasn't until they switched to a mix of explosive and incendiary bullets that they began to have success. The explosive rounds would tear big holes in fabric and allow hydrogen and oxygen to mix. It still took a couple drums to get the ship burning, though.

Re:Not so fast

[jeffmeden]

I wonder how it would survive a missile strike. OK, the helium is not going to explode, but if it leaks out through a big hole in the hull, you're going to go down anyway. You'll need lots of compartments to limit that, and those compartments would add quite a lot of weight.

They probably mean that a missile strike is basically the missile shooting through one side and out the other since the skin isn't thick enough to trigger a detonator. A small missile sized hole is enough to down it, but not very fast.

Re:Not so fast

[dave420]

Seeing it's more for cargo, unless you are posting yourself somewhere, you need not worry.

Re:Not so fast

[Rei]

Most people's perception of how airships should behave from holes is wrong, and it's based on their experience with party balloons. The reason for the differences are:

* Party balloons are pressurized - the skin is stretched taught. The skin on airships are loose.
* Skin area (and thus leak rate) scales proportional to the radius squared, while the volume scales proportional to the radius cubed. Airships are many, many orders of magnitude larger than party balloons. Consequently the rate in which gas can leak out of a hope is drastically lower.

Even large holes in airships don't take them down quickly. Even a moderate sized airship can generally continue flying to its destination and then fix the damage and refill there.

Re:Not so fast

[wmorrow]

To elaborate on tsotha's explanation that "Hydrogen only burns in the presence of oxygen": an explosion requires a nice mix of something flammable and oxygen. If the mixture isn't of the right proportions, no explosion. If the flammable molecules and the oxygen molecules are not nicely mixed, no explosion. Drop a match in a bucket of gasoline: no explosion. Throw the bucket of gasoline into the air and walk into the mist with a lit match: big explosion.
Hydrogen does have a high flame speed. So a better choice for lifting gas might be methane - super abundant and cheap, albeit with half the bouyant force of hydrogen.
The potential explosiveness in a fully fueled 747 likely exceeds that of the R100.
I'm too lazy to look it up, but I suspect the majority of deaths in the Hindenburg accident were from falling or choosing to jump or poorly designed escape routes.

Re:Not so fast

[budgenator]

80kn is about 92mph or 148km/h, so it would be more in line with fast trains in the US; and not constrained by tracks.

Re:Not so fast

[jklovanc]

But they are constrained by where they can take off and land.

Re:Not so fast

[budgenator]

The Hawk missile MIM-23 had a 54 Kg warhead that produced approximately 4,000 8-gram (0.28 oz) fragments that move at approximately 2,000 meters per second (6,600 ft/s) in an 18 degree arc; the MIM-23B 74 kg (163 lb) blast-fragmentation warhead produces approximately 14,000 2-gram (0.071 oz) fragments that cover a much larger 70 degree arc.
The MIM-104 Patriot M248 Composition B HE blast/fragmentation with two layers of pre-formed fragments and Octol 75/25 HE blast/fragmentation, weighes in at 200 lb (90 kg).
Any of those warhead would be pretty devastating to an Airship.

Re:Not so fast

[tsotha]

Might be, depending on how close the missile was. Getting sprayed with fragments (assuming the people aren't killed) isn't that devastating for an airship. They just go right through. The thing that might destroy an airship is a blast rips a giant hole in the envelop.

Re:Not so fast

[tehcyder]

They say the Airlander 10 is capable of surviving a missile strike, but visions of the Hindenburg still loom large in our cultural memory.

It is the spector of traveling in an aircraft at 80mph that I am concerned with. If I am going to get off the ground in an aircraft I will be going a considerable distance. Eighty miles an hour is much too slow to be efficient.

It would be fine as an alternative to driving though. I know Americans are more used to long car journeys, but here in the UK, a long drive from (say) London to Edinburgh, which is about 400 miles, would take 5 hours in this airship, plus you could have a drink, stroll around looking at the views, read a book, etc. Driving would be at least 8 and probably more like 10 hours assuming some toilet/coffee breaks and you'd be tired and fed up by the end of it.

I know you could do it by train, but that is less fun and probably more expensive.

Re:Not so fast

[tehcyder]

I wonder how it would survive a missile strike.

How well does a commercial airliner or passenger train survive a missile strike?

Re:Not so fast

[tehcyder]

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I suspect the majority of deaths in the Hindenburg accident were from falling or choosing to jump or poorly designed escape routes.

A quick look at Wikipedia shows that it was a mixture of these plus burns/smoke inhalation. What is interesting is how many people (relatively) survived:

" Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crewmen), there were 35 fatalities (13 passengers and 22 crewmen). One worker on the ground was also killed, making a total of 36 dead."

Re:Not so fast

[jklovanc]

I know you could do it by train, but that is less fun and probably more expensive.

Or you could take an aircraft and be there in under an hour.

Any remark about price difference is just guessing as there have been no prices set for travel by the airship.

World's largest aircraft?

[taylormc]

"Significantly larger than a 747", eh? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare it to an A380?

Re:World's largest aircraft?

[bogaboga]

Wouldn't it make more sense to compare it to an A380?

No, maybe the Antonov 225 as it's bigger than the A380.

Re:World's largest aircraft?

[serviscope_minor]

No, no they should compare it to the H4!

Or they could use any since they're all about the same size anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Re:World's largest aircraft?

[Carewolf]

No, no they should compare it to the H4!

Or they could use any since they're all about the same size anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

That list seems to be missing special purpose civilian aircrafts. Both the Boing 747 and Airbus 380 has larger modified versions used by respectively Boing and Airbus to ship parts of airplanes.

Re:World's largest aircraft?

[serviscope_minor]

The 747 dreamlifter has a much larger cargo volume, but it's got the same wingspan and same empennage so the height, width and length is the same.

Not sure about the A380, except that it's wings are too short because of airport limitations. It ought to be bigger, but non aerodynamic practicalities got in the way.

Re:World's largest aircraft?

[Carewolf]

I was thinking of a wrong base aircraft. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The height certainly isn't the same. I know Boing has a similar one. These are not the freight version, they are specialized versions. Though the maximum weight is probably likely same, just much more volume.

No one mentions the cost

[Anonymous Coward]

We paid 90 million for something we sold back to the builders for 300k.

What the hell man?

Re:No one mentions the cost

[bloodhawk]

yes it is pretty amazing, normally they actually end up paying them to take the stuff away rather than get anything back for it.

Re:No one mentions the cost

[arglebargle_xiv]

We paid 90 million for something we sold back to the builders for 300k. What the hell man?

Probably out of embarrassment. It may be called the Airlander but Flying Buttcrack

would be a better name. If that thing was flesh-coloured instead of white it'd be on porn sites.

Re:No one mentions the cost

[LabRatty]

They were billing the government/military, everything had an extra zero added to the end of the cost.

How many passengers can it carry?

[Flytrap]

I am really excited about the possibility of a week long cruise over Europe or a 5 day low altitude cruise across an African savanna or game park aboard a cruise liner such as the Airlander. However, when reading articles about the Airliner, it is always about the technical gobbledegook that engineers and airship geeks get off on... never does it cover the things that matter to the potential investor or future passenger.

At some point there was a view that future airships would be able to gently cruise the skies for days on end much like ocean liners of yesteryear. Future airships were said to be able to carry and support 200-300 passengers and crew over a few days or up to 1000 passengers and crew on a single transatlantic voyage. These were the promises (or dreams) being made a few years ago.

Now, with the Airlander, we have an opportunity to evaluate those promises and see how close to the dream of luxury airship liners, reminiscent of old school luxury ocean liners, we can get. And suddenly everyone appears to be silent about those prospects... nothing to fire up the imagination of a dreamy eyed 12 year old except for the fact that the Airlander's "unusual shape emulates a wing, giving it lift as it is propelled forward by its four engines, as well as from the 38,000m3 of helium that fills its hull."

Yawn!

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[swb]

If an ocean liner is the Waldorf-Astoria, a think an airship would end up being more Holiday Inn express. From what I've read, the Hindenburg was pretty spartan in terms of accommodations, especially in comparison to the liners of its era.

The Hindenburg was a lot bigger than the Airlander and carried a maximum of 72 passengers. It's hard to see the smaller Airlander carrying more than 30 passengers, maybe less depending on the level of amenities and size of berths. Carrying 2-300 passengers would seem like it would take a massive airship that would make the 800 ft long Hindenburg seem tiny.

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[dave420]

We have much lighter materials now than we did in 1937, so you'd need to put in a bit more work before condemning this thing :)

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[DerekLyons]

However, when reading articles about the Airliner, it is always about the technical gobbledegook that engineers and airship geeks get off on... never does it cover the things that matter to the potential investor

If the potential investor isn't interested in the technical gobbledegook, he probably shouldn't be investing. Or at least he shouldn't be at this point, when the technology is still unproven and the hardware still in the prototype stage.

On top of the irony that on a site for "news for nerds" a comment is highly rated which complains the article is "too technical" rather than sounding like a marketing pitch designed to "fire the imagination of twelve year olds".

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[will_die]

In Friedrichshafen, Germany at the Zeppelin museum they have a full scale replica of a section Hindenburg passenger, and they are very plain and small. Bunk beds, metal frames, a small sink.
However the plan was you would only sleep there and spend the rest of the time in the lounges, bars and dining rooms which were very nice and based on the reproduced lounge comfortable and roomy.

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[Kinthelt]

Yeah, but the passengers are heavier. So I'd say it's a wash.

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[dave420]

Touché!

Re:How many passengers can it carry?

[Anonymous Coward]

But this has less lift. Helium is heavier that hydrogen - basically twice the weight.

Lacking lift

[schweini]

The PDF on their site says that this will be able to lift up to 10.000kg. This doenst seem too impressive, considering that your run-of-the-mill CH-47 Chinook helicopter can lift up to 12.000kg.

Re:Lacking lift

[Anonymous Coward]

But how far can it carry that 10 tonnes a Chinook can probably only fly with it for a couple of hours max. As the buoyancy of this thing will be supporting the weight, it may be able to take it very long distances.

Re:Lacking lift

[u38cg]

Depends what the cost of that lift is.

April fools

[viperidaenz]

Why would it come out on April 1, and why would you compare it to a 747-400, not even the largest 747?
The An-225 is 84m long.

Bruce Dickinson has also done several April fools pranks before.

Re:April fools

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely not a prank, it's been written up elsewhere.

Re:April fools

[bcmm]

Bruce Dickinson has also done several April fools pranks before.

Bruce Dickinson also really, really likes aviation.

Re:April fools

[asylumx]

FYI The article is dated Tuesday 31 March 2015 03.40 EDT

Knots?

[skovnymfe]

Why is the speed measured in knots? Do they throw ropes off the side of airplanes to measure how fast they're flying? I'm not in that business so I genuinely don't know. I just figured km/h, or mph if absolutely necessary, would paint a clearer picture. I mean if I ask Google what 80 knots is, he says its 148.16km/h. I can work with that number. I can relate to that number. But who measures things in knots? And why?

Re:Knots?

[Anonymous Coward]

A knot is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is... "approximately one minute of arc measured along any meridian"*. IOW, it's used in the marine and aviation worlds (including weather) because it makes notepad speed and navigation calculations easier.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile

Re:Knots?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who actually navigate across the world speak the language of their profession. It's been ages since i used a sextant, and your right, explaining how a sextant works is too much math for the average android borg like moron who has no use for knots as th3y pay to be shipped around the world like baggage. Fuckin morons. Face it, the metric system is used to keep stupid europeans in slavery.

Total fucking ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Visions of the Hindenburg? Really? Speak for yourself you ignorant twat. I know the differences between Hydrogen and Helium because, you know, education.

Also, the "size" claims are silly

[Ecuador]

They say it is larger than the 747, but the comparison is meaningless, since they should be comparing the cabin of the airship to an airplane - otherwise we might as well add the length of the jet fumes to the length of a plane. In fact, the lift capacity of the huge airship is quite disappointing, it can only carry 10 tons of cargo. For comparison a 747-8 can carry over 150 tons...
I like the idea of airships in general, but I can't say they would be a game changer, weather, lift capacity, speed, cost, all being factors. The huge advertising space I guess is the one advantage I can see.
Coming from a country with many islands, the one mode of air transportation I thought would make a comeback someday is seaplanes. They seem to me like the best way to transport a few people from one small island to the next (I would pay a premium for that service over the hassle of an airport), however nobody seems to think about seaplanes anymore. Oh, well, maybe I'm biased from growing up with "Tales of the Gold Monkey"?

Eh, that's not good

[Ecuador]

comparing something to one of the most dangerous modes of transportation (1+ fatality in 100k hours of flight is dismal compared even to cars that are thought dangerous) is in generally not a good thing.
Hey, guys, don't worry, we don't crash more often than Windows ME!

it's HELIUM, you fools. helium doesn't burn.

[swschrad]

unless you use it with hydrogen and a nuclear bomb, then it burns (fuses) real good. like this one I happen to have here....
afd0awre
a0as8ufaspd[q43wk
adi

\-- modem disconnected

Lunacy of the government

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That much of helium alone could be worth more than $300,000. We still have the strategic helium reserve, pay companies to make, (not make, it can't be made) to collect helium, store it in some abandoned mines, and get that supply of helium may be for free for the defense department, fill it up in a balloon, abandon the project, sell it to private companies at some ridiculous throw away prices.

People have been looting our US government from the day it was founded. George Washington spent post presidential life trying to get a canal built using federal money through Cumberland gap into the Monongahela valley in south western Pennsylvania. He had bought all the land that is today Washington County, PA. That shining example set by our founding father is a well trodden path. Flat-as-pancake land is declared to be "mountain" to extract quadruple the federal subsidy for transcontinental railroads. There are literally thousands of companies and individuals whose only ability is extracting money from the government.

And usually these are the folks who are in the fore front decrying government waste citing some poor black inner city single mother who probably gets 400$ a month.

Should you invest in this?

[slashmydots]

"As well as from the 38,000m3 of helium that fills its hull."
NOPE! Might as well fill it with vaporized gold, it's about to be less rare.

Yes, completely true

[DerekLyons]

*sigh* Do pay the fuck attention.

The statement wasn't about efficiency, it was about the ability to maintain speed over ground. Aircraft (and airships) do need more power to maintain a given speed over ground in the face of a headwind, period. All this bull about efficiency and relative airspeed is just pedantic nitpicking that fails to make you look intelligent.

Re:Yes, completely true

[PPH]

relative airspeed is just pedantic nitpicking

Well, that's how pilots fly. You've just failed ground school. Along with those guys who didn't care to learn how to land.

$90 million goddammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone threw $90 million dollars out the door? I wish people would get fired for things like this, goddammit!

No way

[DriveDog]

This is pretty elaborate for an April Fool's joke, having previously planted all that stuff all over the net.

I could see this

[Anonymous Coward]

As a "ocean going liner", or as a cargo craft, but not for anything else.

Fear of hydrogen is unfounded

[GPS Pilot]

Hydrogen is a safe lifting gas for airships. “Odorless, Colorless, Blameless” by NASA employee Richard Van Treuren (Air and Space/Smithsonian magazine, April/May 1997) provides a great explanation. Here's a summary: http://www.green-energy-news.c...