Airships: The Comeback We've Been Waiting For?

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Airships: The Comeback We've Been Waiting For?


Airships: The Comeback We’ve Been Waiting For? Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code UNDECIDED at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/undecided An Airship: the number one sign that you’re in an alternate universe, or a Miyazaki movie. While they may seem like a bad idea, because they’re not as…

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51 Comments

  1. This would solve the problem of container ships being attacked in the waters off east Africa and the red sea and free up the suez and Panama canals

  2. I love these with a major passion but…

    These will never replace sea cargo or airplanes.
    They may augment them for very niche uses.

    The size of the “airframe” vs the carrying capacity means any “airport” they will operate to/from will need to be massive. You can’t keep them out on the ground in the weather when not flying. They need to be tethered when inflated etc. Take a look at why seaplanes as mass transit would never have been able to scale up even if WW2 didn’t bring about the massive advances in aero engineering. No civilian seaplane harbour port ever had more than 2 “clippers” in at same time.

    Cargo wise – 200tn sounds big, and yes great for getting turbine blades across a mountain range or a continent, or deploying a field hospital in a week vs a month. But vs a 5000 TEU ship, nope.

    Sustainable low carbon fuels are here now; the infrastructure to deploy them will grow 1000 times faster than helium infrastructure because they are utilisable right now.

    When u look at the advantages vs challenges of a single airship vs a single plane or ship there is a glimmer of hope – but if you look at the economies of full life cycle and infrastructure required to support a single revenue flight, the idea is batshit insane,

  3. Those who decry the airship, saying that its too slow, etc, forget that we have cruise ships today – huge, lumbering, slow moving ocean liners that take thousands of people around the world, simply cruising along with all the time in the world to visit exotic places during the retirement years. They have no need for speed to get to places. I envision airships, sufficiently large enough to be the cruise liners of the skies to take passengers – sightseers – to places that ships cannot reach.

    Imagine cruising leisurely over Monument Valley or the Valley of the Kings in Egypt or over the Pyrenees or over the Grand Canyon or along the Great Wall from above or the Rockies or any of the lush river valleys, or above the volcanoes or above the African sahara or the amazon jungles, far above from harm while sitting in air conditioned comfort.

    That's my vision of what a modern, well and properly designed and constructed air cruise liner could offer passengers of the near future – if only we are bold enough to grasp the idea instead of looking back at the Graf Zeppelin and dirigibles and their accidents to write off air ships. We have to remember the number of heavier than air aircraft crashes over the years of slowly advance developments to reach the relative safety standards of today. If however, we continue to be cowards of ourselves, we will surely not make any improvements to the quality of life and would do best to stay locked up in our bedrooms sitting on a rocking chair and never eerge – because its is so "dangerous out there".

  4. No they're not the future!
    They're slow, clumsy and dangerous.
    They are retrogressive technology.
    Humans should research further ways of inventing anti-gravity engines instead of assuming that propellers and aircrafts are the limits.
    We should be capable of inventing flying vehicles that don't require propellers, rotors, jet engines, or gases to fly.
    The reason why we have not invented any new type of flying technology in recent years is because we aren't making any research in those areas.
    500 to 1000 years ago when people were moved about by horse carriages, if anyone had mentioned the flourishing of the automobile invention from 100 years ago, no one would have believed them because cars were considered science fiction back then. Even the small tiny televisions we hold on the palm of our hands and use to watch motion picture and communicate with ourselves, called smartphones would have been classified as sci fi a hundred years ago.
    If we research on a new engine that could make cars fly without the need for rotors or propellers, then more complex vehicles for transport will be built. Even the possibility of sending heavier materials to space without the need for propulsion, for the construction of colossal space habitats will be far easier.

  5. Future AirShips need a common use other than the rare transport abilities. A need that replaces an everyday need, such as trucking. A blimp sized AirShip, steel framed, could pick up 8 normal sized containers from the container ship. That would be for every modest sized AirShip replacing 8 single container trucks. The AirShip could deliver the containers to a warehouse in less time, because it replaced 8 trucks and flies over rush hour traffic.

  6. The first and critical use of airships is…….to lift harvested big trees out of the forest. Cutting trees does not harm the forestland (trees fall all the time, naturally); what harms forestland is building roads to take the trees out. Airships would allow you to harvest the trees without scaring the land. You could even 'tie' the trees on before you cut at the base and the trees wouldn't even fall; they would simply be lifted out. Another good reason to first put airships to this use is there would be very little damage if there were to be any kind of failure.

  7. The only economically viable Zeppelin is one using hidrogen and nuclear powered and with water as ballast.

    The nuclear reactor produces electricity to power the engines and generate electrolisis, so hidrogen will be extracted from water. Also it will generate heat, than will be transferred to the gas, making it more efficient.

    This is the only way

  8. I look forward to the time when we have materials that are strong enough could be used to house a near absolute vacuum without imploding, while being light as carbon fiber. Building airships using pockets of vacuum would be better than hydrogen or helium and ballast issues would be easier to deal with as you just flood the vacuum chambers with regular air and purge it of air when you want to rise again.

  9. I always found the fear of hydrogen weird. 1 accident happens and everyone freaks out and doesn't want to see it used anymore. Meanwhile car accidents happen every day, and plane accidents and mishaps happen semi regularly as well. Shit happens, sometimes we have to learn from it, improve things, then continue on.

  10. I have a question what would you want to call a lighter than air based single stage spacecraft? It can't just be a spaceship, void-ship reeks of too much world building and too little research in names, Starship is already taken. I've been messing around since before I was in high school the idea of bringing back airships and finding new niches, a lot of the solutions and ideas companies are saying they're going with was stuff I was thinking of in my teens. The most recent iteration of my personal idea of what would be the best use of the technology is instead of condensing your hydrogen rocket fuel, why not have it in bladders that can be mechanically compressed to help vacuum balloons lift your craft out of the atmosphere in a more passive manner.

  11. Solar Hybrid powered Airship with Cabins and Starlink for interstate trips, nice. Can we add a cabin ? If the price would make sense, I would not mind taking more time to get there and be refreshed to destination , take a nap with a decent diner/lunch (think trains in EU/Asia experience). The cargo could be the cabin module, passengers walk to the cabin super module and airship picks it up and go. There's is a business plan.

  12. Do they need to be fully buoyant? For instance, the thing about using choppers in France to fly things over the forest. Well, what if a smaller airship had helicopter blades? Realeasing the load would just require reducing the amout of power to the routers. And, the butt blimp design can probably be altered into an 8.

  13. Airships are a dumb idea. They are obsolete by alternatives. They are too slow and carry not enough cargo to be viable. And besides that, they can't be used in most wind conditions. Transportation goes forward when more is moved for cheap. Not less for more expensive. Container ships become bigger, trains longer, planes more efficient. An airship it's use is unreliable as it can't fly with a little bit of wind and it can do what a helicopter can do better, even when it's 3 helicopter trips to carry the same load.

  14. Why don't they use momentum? They could just spin the weights so that they don't actually cause problems and when they need the weights they stop spinning. They would be able to do this dynamically.

  15. I am sorry, may be I didn't understand you.
    Are talking about delivery of the windmills or installing them in higher altitudes to benefit from faster winds.
    If it is the former then I am totally on board as it is part of the cargo shipping that in general could have huge benefits and any one who can get there is going to be the biggest company in the world.
    I thought it was the later that needed more consideration and re-examining the trade offs and added value.
    The French government is after the same plus delivery of forestry products from remote areas in France.
    Building roads suitable for this kind of transportation is too expensive and never adequate.
    I am dissapointed with the British and U.S. collaboration that has stopped now and airlander is being viewed as yet another superrich leisure cruise ship in the sky.
    As usual it was stopped too quickly. DARPA has no doubt got what they wanted and walked away again. The British as usual won't follow up on it and now anxious to sell it off to another bunch of Sheikhs from the middle east with unlimited cash to spend on toys.
    This is why I mentioned the Sabre engine that DARPA took over completely and is in hiding now until a complete system is developed or set aide without fanfaire.
    The ingenious part of that engine is in its fast cooling mechanism that to be honest was never quite discussed openly. If those claims are true could be key to the problem with Airships.