Slashdot Mirror
World's Longest Aircraft Gets Full-Production Go-Ahead (bbc.com)
The Airlander 10 -- the world's longest aircraft -- is set to go into full production with the model designed to take its first passengers. "It comes after the prototype Airlander 10 -- a combined plane and airship -- was formally retired following successful final testing," reports the BBC. "As a result, Bedford firm Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) has been given Production Organization Approval from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)." From the report: An eyewitness said the aircraft appeared to "break in two" after breaking its moorings and deflating, in November that year, less than 24 hours after completing its sixth successful test flight. The firm was given Design Organization Approval from the European Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) in October. Stephen McGlennan, HAV's chief executive, said 2018 had been very good, with Easa's backing a "huge highlight." He said the firm had changed its focus last year towards the production of Airlander 10 as a commercial aircraft for customers. "The prototype served its purpose as the world's first full-sized hybrid aircraft, providing us with the data we needed to move forward from prototype to production standard," he said. It is now hoped the full commercial model will take to the skies with its first paying passengers "in the early 2020s." Approval from the CAA and Easa now puts the firm in a "strong position to launch production."
DOA approval. /s
It's 92m long, which may make it the longest currently [soon] in production, but the Zeppelins were 235m long back then.
Also, would not have hurt to put the length in the summary, would it?
Our IT janitor is wide, not long
I thought Helium was a finite supply on Earth. Is this a good use for it?
Aviation has been 99% planes-with-wings and helicopters the last few decades. Blimps were used as advertising billboards and PR attractions mostly. So its nice to see an airplane-airship hybrid being tested. Maybe this design has some decent benefits, for air-cargo hauling, leisurely sight-seeing from the air and similar? (Not "putting all your eges in one basket" and so on...)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Do people just pepper hyphens at random into their sentences? If you're going to hyphenate full-production and go-ahead, why not hyphenate longest-aircraft too?
And is as useful for flight as bollocks?
Good jorb.
I think there could be a niche market for this, a luxury cruise in the air. I'm not convinced anyone would want to use it for A to B transport though because it is so much slower than traditional aircraft.
some still calling this 'weather'? cease fire stand down.. there are mothers & children in every town.. starvation & deception remain as the leading killers of us..
The USA military has been funding airship development, in order to have a cheaper way of transporting stuff in Afghanistan, than military transport helicopter. You can transport stuff by truck, but the locals tend to support the Taliban.
Yes, it is the longest. I imagine its volume and body width are amongst the highest as well. But the cool thing about this plane is it combines a plane and an airship. It requires very little in the way of runway length, has an absolutely massive cargo bay, has a low carbon footprint, is reasonably fast (nowhere near as fast as an airliner but faster than most other means of transport), the ability to fly very slowly, and offers a flight endurance measured in weeks.
Hope it goes better than the Piasecki PA97 Helistat - A helicopter-blimp hybrid heavy-lift vehicle https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
i'm selling all my bitcoins and gold bullian and putting it into inflatable aircraft!
Isn't Helium the second commonest element after Hydrogen?
In the universe? Yes. On Earth? No. We're talking about helium accessible to us. I don't think we're about to go mining the Sun for helium. We're not going to run out this minute or anything but we have a finite supply currently available to us. It doesn't help we waste a lot of it on party balloons and other frivolous uses.
Contrary to certain media scare-mongering, helium is fairly abundant.
We're not going to run out in the next few years if that is what you are talking about. But our supply of readily accessible and economically available helium is limited unless we find new ways to extract more. It's nothing to lose sleep over at the present but it is worth worrying about in the long term. There have been some shortages in recent years but these are more due to supply chain disruptions than anything else.
Extracted natural gas contains as much as 7% helium.
That number is only true for a few fields - most have less than that and not all have enough to make it economically worthwhile to extract it. Natural gas reportedly needs to have more than 0.3% helium for it to become profitable to extract it.
Can someone calculate/guesstimate ?
It requires very little in the way of runway length,
Evidently not true. The LEMV required at least 300 m (1,000 ft) of runway (violating the runway-independent requirement), and a tether point with a 100 m (300 ft) clear flat area around on which to park, which prevented them from operating at most large bases and all small bases.
has an absolutely massive cargo bay,
Not true. It can carry 10 tons which might sound like a lot but it isn't. A 747 can carry up to 130 tons in certain configurations.
has a low carbon footprint,
Citation needed.
is reasonably fast (nowhere near as fast as an airliner but faster than most other means of transport),
It has a cruising speed of 70 knots. That's at best comparable to highways speeds over land. Over water it's not clear why you would prefer this to a large fixed wing aircraft for transporting goods or people.
the ability to fly very slowly, and offers a flight endurance measured in weeks.
Pray tell what the civilian use of those capabilities might be? It doesn't dare fly anywhere near a storm just like any other lighter than air craft. It's also not entirely clear who the market for this could be. Originally it was developed for the military for recon and communications and they cancelled the program. I think they're hoping there are civilian uses for it but they are rather vague about the use cases. It's not clear what economic problem this would solve better than the currently available alternatives.
of helium? How are they going to keep these things in the air?
Wait , weren't they bitching and complaining a few months ago that we(the world) were running out of helium? And now we have a surplus we can dump it into some Hindenburg part Deux. (....and yes I know Hindenburg was using Hydrogen being sarcastic if you didn't get that)
Massive in terms of volume. 10 tonnes is, at least a usable
Unless you are planning to ship a lot of air, that isn't especially impressive. Frankly it looks like a solution looking for a problem.
It's what the company claims. Even if they're wrong it seems a more interesting thing to talk about than the sodding length, at least.
Yeah I'm not really sure why I should care about how long the aircraft is. I care what it can do. In this case the answer seems to be not much if we care about economics.
80 knots. Which is comparable to a perfectly straight traffic free highway. But most road transport is not on perfectly straight traffic free highways.
I have news for you. This thing isn't going to get cargo to its destination in a straight line either. Recall that you still need special facilities to load, unload, and in most cases land this aircraft. There are VERY few freight applications where this thing could take what it is hauling straight to its destination without involving intermodal transport. You'll have to land it at an airport in most cases which raises the question what the point of the thing is?
Let's be frank. It hauls less and is slower than a large fixed wing cargo jet. It's less flexible than a truck. It will be more expensive and carry FAR less than an ocean freighter. It will require special airfields and docking to be compatible with existing infrastructure. It can't land many places other than airports for practical reasons. It's fragile and can't operate in bad weather. It's not clear that it has any meaningful economic advantage for any practical use case. Maybe there is some corner case where it makes sense but so far nobody seems to know of one. Every 10-20 years someone takes a run at making lighter than air aircraft and it always is a failure because it can't compete with existing options on speed, reliability, and/or cost.
So don't hold your breath if you're waiting for your turn.
https://www.keyt.com/lifestyle/travel/worlds-biggest-aircraft-moves-toward-commercial-model/974472393.
Issuance of a production certificate is a complete non-event. The important authorization is the "type certificate". That is nowhere in sight. This story is pure noise.