The Age of the Airship Returns?

Popular in Victorian and Steampunk fantasies, airships and zeppelins evoke a certain elegance that most modern travelers don't associate with the airplane. Some companies are capitalizing on that idea, and a need to move cargo by air in an era of ever-increasing fuel costs, to re-re-introduce commercial zeppelins. Popular Mechanics notes four notable airship designs, all with specific design purposes. One craft in particular, the Aeroscraft ML866, is being funded by the US government's DARPA group. It looks to combine the best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin. "The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings, Aeros says. It hopes to end the program with a test flight demonstrating the system. "

The discouraging prior art

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG [wikipedia.org]

Re:The discouraging prior art

[SerpentMage (13390)]

Funny I was thinking the same thing. Cargo zeppelins was actually a very promising area. My brother's company that makes custom machinery wanted to use Cargo zeppelins to move their heavy machinery. Right now their machines are assembled, taken apart, and then driven piece by piece via road. The zeppelins were supposed to make this moot by being able to ship the entire machine.

From the article it looks like they want to use those machines to survey... Hmmm... Big brother?

Re:The discouraging prior art

[vidarh (309115)]

Only to people who don't bother to read enough of it to realize that a major reason for the disaster was that the paint on the Hindenburg was more or less rocket fuel. Bringing up the Hindenburg is like using a disaster involving one of the earliest planes to discourage commercial flights with modern jets.

Re:Clarification on Helium Ban

[andrew618 (1213740)]

I'm the "this guy" mentioned above. I guess I should clarify what I wrote in my blog post. The ban on selling helium to the Nazis WAS based on military priorities. The presence of the swastika had nothing to do with the ban (other than making sure there wouldn't be an exception made). Eckner admired the Americans and was less-than-thrilled by the Nazis (although he accepted their funding). The economic realities of the day meant he had to place the swastika on his airships, thereby "dissing" those he admired. Sorry for any confusion.

Sky Captain calling

[Travoltus (110240)]

he wants his world of tomorrow back.

Idea full of hot air

[Tablizer (95088)]

(sorry, had to be said)

best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin

[charlesbakerharris (623282)]

So, whirling rotary blades combined with When The Levee Breaks?

Cool.

A new mode of transport in general?

[mlts (1038732)]

Airships have their issues, but I recall reading somewhere that a blimp large enough to carry massive amounts of cargo can do so for the fraction of the fuel spent on ship-based transportation. Ships have to keep expending energy to push through water, but an airship needs far less power to keep a course through the air.

I see a couple hurdles though.

The first is designable around -- damage to the hot air or helium part due to lightning, or tears due to other factors. Having multiple "balloons" might help this situation, so if one is ruptured, the airship still can stay up, or descend in a fairly graceful fashion.

The second is a bit harder, but sort of related to #1. There are people out there (in most areas of the globe) who wouldn't mind taking potshots at an airship. It could be a drunk hillbilly who is playing with his new 30/06, or someone who has a RPG and is hoping to knock the thing out of the air completely. Oddly enough (and I have little or no aerospace expertise), I wonder if, even with major damage from a missile hit, a well engineered airship still can land gracefully (assuming the gondola isn't what is damaged.) Could an airship fly high enough so the chance of getting hit by ground fire be minimized?

Lastly there is a third problem. There is a ton of air traffic already. I wonder how hard it would be to factor in large, slow vehicles into the aviation corridors without impacting takeoffs and landings of jets and prop based traffic.

Re:A new mode of transport in general?

[brinebold (1209806)]

The second is a bit harder, but sort of related to #1. There are people out there (in most areas of the globe) who wouldn't mind taking potshots at an airship. It could be a drunk hillbilly who is playing with his new 30/06, or someone who has a RPG and is hoping to knock the thing out of the air completely. Oddly enough (and I have little or no aerospace expertise), I wonder if, even with major damage from a missile hit, a well engineered airship still can land gracefully (assuming the gondola isn't what is damaged.) Could an airship fly high enough so the chance of getting hit by ground fire be minimized?

For the .30/06 its like shooting a parachute with a pistol. Enough holes would be dangerous but the helium bags aren't under enough pressure to pop like a balloon and a hole roughly 1/3 in. in diameter isn't going to be enough to bring it down before a patch can be made. Also, with the exception of some serious firepower like the .50 and .75 caliber rifles, bullets don't actually travel too far before dropping. Your chances of hitting a blimp with a hunting rifle or an AK when its in the air are practically nonexistent outside of takeoff or landing. The maximum effective range of an AK-47 (the area at which you could expect to hit a large target firing horizontally, though I think a blimp is a bit above the large target in this standard) is generally estimated around 250m. add the distance you are away from it and account for the upward angle you're firing at and I believe it'd be quite impressive to to hit a blimp with small-arms fire.

As far as the RPG goes, I'm not sure what we could hope for there... military aircraft don't stand up so well to direct RPG hits. Commercial aircraft simply can't be designed for that particular level of abuse.

Re:A new mode of transport in general?OLD CARTRIDG

[mysticgoat (582871)]

The 30-06 is still one of the best general purpose rifles around. In hunting, it easily handles powder and bullet combinations from a 150 grain deer round to a 220 grain round suitable for moose and large bears. There are now sabot bullets in the 95 grain region that make the 30-06 a good varmint rifle. It is a favored hunting rifle for reloaders because the cartridges can be fire-formed to custom fit the rifle's chamber, the brass is thick enough that they can be re-used multiple times, and the wide selection of powders and bullets allows custom tailoring of rounds.

In my experience, rural rednecks who know enough to acquire a 30-06 rifle are very unlikely to have it in hand when they are drinking. The redneck rule in southern Oregon is: no beer or other alcohol until the day's hunting is over; no handling of any of the guns after the drinking has begun. Break the rule and you find that none of the good old boys will hunt with you any more. My impression is that this is universal throughout rural USA and Canada, and probably world-wide. There would be fewer rednecks around if it wasn't for centuries-old customs like this one.

City-bred rednecks are another story: they do drink and shoot simultaneously. But they generally aren't savvy enough to buy a 30-06. They want something more macho like a .300 magnum to go with their huge fourwheeler that they don't know how to drive.

This again?

[Brett Buck (811747)]

About every 10 years or so, someone proclaims the return of the airship. The problems with airships are the same they have always been - high susceptibility to winds and difficult ground handling. Those problems are essentially insoluble - it's *lighter than air*. The combination helicopter/blimp had been tried at least half a dozen times, all unsuccessfully.

      The hydrogen/helium thing not an issue. It's not going to use hydrogen. Whether that's what got the Hindenberg, or not, flying around with tens of thousands of cubic feet of exceptionally flammable gas, with a HUGE range of fuel/air ratios at which it can sustain ignition, isn't going to happen. It's a *bad idea* and wouldn't pass the laugh test for FAA certification.

            Brett

Re:

[delt0r (999393)]

Um, Helium does not become a liquid until it gets down to 4K (-269C). It never becomes a liquid in the suggested design.

Re:

[WalksOnDirt (704461)]

It's 4.22 K at one atmosphere. At higher pressure it stays liquid at higher temperatures. At the easily achieved critical pressure of 2.24 atm, helium will stay liquid all the way up to 5.19 K, but that's as good as it gets.

(I was looking up the values to reply to the GP, but you beat me to it)

Not an airship....

[Warbothong (905464)]

That's [popularmechanics.com] no airship, it's Thunderbird 2 [bbc.co.uk]!

Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

[flyingfsck (986395)]

The trouble with blimps is that they don't compete with aircraft, since they are too slow. They compete with trains and trucks, but don't have the carrying capacity to do that, while they do have the maintenance cost of aircraft. So altogether they don't make economic sense and they likely never will.

Re:

[brinebold (1209806)]

They may be able to squeak out some profit carrying cargo internationally, where their competition isn't trains (for large amounts of cargo long distances) and trucks (smaller amounts and shorter distances), but instead ships (large amounts of cargo slowly) and planes (small amounts of cargo quickly and expensively).

If you'd bother to check, then you'd realize that winds are quite reliable along the ocean and tend to form very predictable patterns that at the higher altitudes would likely push a dirigible

Re:Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

[morethanapapercert (749527)]

The Skycat 220 is supposed to have a payload capacity of 220 tons. (No, I dunno if those are metric, long or short tons) That handily beats any on-the-road wheeled vehicle I know of. They can go to remote places where roads and rails don't run. Thus beating the trains. They can carry more weight and go further than a helocopter for less money. They are also much quieter and cheaper to operate than a jumbo jet. And unlike those trucks and trains, LTACs are pretty good at crossing oceans. These things aren't intended to compete with trucks and trains, not directly in thier narrow fields anyway. They compete with trains on flexibility of destination, with trucks and helocopters on total payload, with conventional aircraft on cost and with ships on speed.
I agree with your basic point that a blimp is not nearly as good at other transport systems are best at, but for some particular uses it still has some advantages. Here are some cases where I can see a major economic advantage to using some sort of LTAC over more conventional transportation:
1) carrying heavy gear to remote locations. (Mining, military, telecom etc)
2) anything that involves hanging around in the sky for long hours. (police patrol, weather research, space launch monitoring, customs patrol.)
3) many things that involve getting a better view than you can get down here. (air traffic control, high altitude research, some types of cosmic ray research, military reconnaissance )
4) the Skycat in particular, with it's self landing systems, would make a damn fine traveling medical clinic and disaster response vehicle for Canada, Russia, Australia and pretty much most of Africa.
5) I'm not sure how such a large and light vehicle can handle itself in the turbulence of a forest fire, but if they can be made to handle that environment they'd have a LOT more capacity than any chopper for water or fire retardants and a lot more flexibility in where to refill.
6)Avalanche control. You could get right up close to a potential avalanche site without making as much noise as a chopper, giving you more flexibility and control in triggering it.
7)wild life monitoring. you can quietly drift over a herd or flock without disturbing it as much as a helicopter would. (come to think of it, it wouldn't be as vulnerable to bird strike would it?)

Bottom line, no one, not even the optimistic writer of TFA is claiming that these craft will render trains, trucks, heavier than air aircraft and ships obsolete. We're just in the process of bringing back a very unique tool into our logistics chains.

P.S. The Skycat company also promotes their design as a possible executive aircraft, something I am dubious on. But imagine what a wonderful RV it would make for the ultra rich! With a payload of 20 tons for even the smallest, you could pack out an entire cabin and camp site, preloaded and provisioned for any remote fishing or hunting spot you can imagine.

Re:Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

[scourfish (573542)]

Blimps don't need to make economic sense because they are fun. Also, if we don't have zeppelins, then how am I supposed to fulfill my dream of throwing somebody off of one and then saying "No ticket"?

Only 40 Years Ago...

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

"The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings,"

It was only about 40 years or so I read about this system. Of course, this was the Mad Scientists Club in Boy's Life magazine that competed in a balloon race and handled the buoyancy problem in this advanced manner. Maybe some of those Boy Scouts grew up to fly like Eagles and design airships.

(P.S. I also read Arthur Clarke's original short story Sunjammer in BL, before he had to go and change the title to the far less elegant The Wind From The Sun title, after some other author also used the same original title in another story that same year.)

People have been saying this for 40 years!!!

[Jane Q. Public (1010737)]

I have been reading about the return of the Zeppelin (mostly for cargo carrying) in the science magazines ever since I was a small child. Popular Science or Popular Mechanics have seemed to have an article on the subject just about every year... for many, many years. So pardon me if I am skeptical! I will pay attention when I actually see a commercial version fly overhead.

Airships seem to be more common than most think

[UnderCoverPenguin (1001627)]

I've driven past Moffet Field, in California, which NASA uses part of, and seen several airship hangers. The ships I saw were not advertising or such, but appeared to be actual "workhorse" ships, whether for cargo or research, I don't know, but it seems airships have been around and doing useful work with almost no attention, so it is hardly surprising to me that more uses are being considered.

A very interesting use is being worked on by a company called JP Aerospace (http://jpaerospace.com/). Their idea is to build an airship-to-orbit system. Not in one go. It would involve transferring from a ground capable airship to an extreme high altitude airship.

Propper modding technique

[EGenius007 (1125395)]

Shouldn't all comments referring to the Hindenburg be modded "Flaimbait"?

hasn't this been done before, long ago?

[v1 (525388)]

I recall reading something about what amounted to a flying aircraft carrier. A zeppeline-like airship that launched biplanes.

The USS Akron (ZRS-4) based in Lakehurst, NJ and the USS Macon (ZRS-5) based in Sunnyvale, CA were helium filled rigid airships developed by the Goodyear-Zepplin Company (a joint venture of the Zepplin Company of Germany and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company) for the United States Navy. The airships were designed for coastal patrol and had the ability to carry and launch five small biplanes.

More info here [pacificaerial.com]

Flies in the ointment.

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

A few gotchas:

• Blimps are unlikely to get very high, so they have to fly through the weather, or land and hide in a hangar. So they're no good for any kind of dependable, scheduled service.
• Even if good weather, blimps have a terrible safety record.
• 220 tons sounds like a lot of lifting, but it's only two rail cars. It's never going to be economical to replace two super-reliable, all-weather $100K rail cars with a million dollar blimp that can only fly in good weather.
• Consider how much real-estate it takes to moor just one blimp.

Helium Supply

[Johnny Mnemonic (176043)]

I recently toured the Naval Air Station Tillamook [nastillamook.org] and learned two surprising things related to this discussion:

• The US is far and away the largest, if not the only, producer of helium; and
• we'll probably be out of Helium within 10 years.

As Helium is used, it must be recovered. If it simply left to evaporate, being lighter than air it will rise to the highest level of our atmosphere and there be stripped of by the solar wind. So once it's gone, it's gone--and there appears to be a finite supply, as we have only been able to extract it from natural gas deposits that have had the further advantage of being proximate to a radiation source.

There are different estimates [chicagotribune.com] about how much more of it we have, and the Moon is a possible supply. But I sure wouldn't want to attempt to build an airship industry around it. By the time airships became feasible again, we may well be out of Helium by then (or in enough cheap abundance to make it the lift medium infeasible).

Dunno, I've heard this before

[giminy (94188)]

In the 1980s, my dad worked on a project for the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation. It was called the PA-97 Helistat. There are some pictures and info about it on the Piasecki Aircraft website [piasecki.com]. It was designed to lift heavy objects using a derigible and a few helicopters. Unfortunately, the helicopters motor frequency became resonant with the flimsy frame structure and it fell apart, killing one pilot. One thing that has always intrigued me is that the German version of wikipedia has a lot more info about the Helistat than can be found anywhere else: link [wikipedia.org].

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

No, the Stargate program has control of that. Go talk to Captain Carter and see if she can give you a few pointers.

Re:

[Masami Eiri (617825)]

You must have missed the memo, Carter was promoted to Colonel a few years ago, and recently got appointed head of the Atlantis Expedition, so she's not even in this galaxy ATM. Also, Area 51 is not part of the Stargate program, though they do work together. Finally, I don't believe they were working on anti-grav tech.

Re:

[MisterLawyer (770687)]

Just get the Floater Stone [wikia.com]!!!
It's in the ice cave just west of Crescent Lake. (But first, you'll need the Canoe from Lukahn.)
*ducks*

But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships? [nytimes.com]

Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[porl (932021)]

you are thinking of hydrogen.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Colin Smith (2679)]

you are thinking of hydrogen.

thinking?
 

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Swampash (1131503)]

But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships?

Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the American public-school education.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Robber Baron (112304)]

But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships?

Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the American public-school education.

I noticed his handle is "MisterLawyer", which ought to explain the ignorance. He's probably been hitting his head on the ass end of too many ambulances.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Morgor (542294)]

And according to this [scientificblogging.com] link (no myminicity, I swear!), Helium is in danger of being in short supply due to among other things that it's not captured and recycled after use and while being available in big supply in the universe, the Earth supply is actually a bit limited.
According to the article it is an issue the next generations of scientist are going to have to struggle with. So maybe a Helium-based airship is not that good an idea, although I don't have to background to propose a different scheme.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Hognoxious (631665)]

You can make it from hydrogen. It's a bit tricky, though.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Silver Gryphon (928672)]

I hear the sun's been doing it for years. Maybe we should ask it for advice.

Re:Helium please :)

[WK2 (1072560)]

Hydrogen is much cheaper, and is pretty safe if done properly. Hydrogen zeppelins of the first half of last century had an excellent safety record.

The Hindenburg disaster wasn't that bad. It only killed a few dozen people. And it involved other shortcuts that shouldn't have been done. The only reason that the Hindenburg seems so bad in retrospect is because there were a buttload of reporters at the right place at the right time (they planned to report a successful zeppelin trip), and because zeppelins don't die quietly, but rather in a huge exploding fireball.

Re:Helium please :)

[by Anonymous Coward]

Oh, please stop the FUD. From wikipedia:

"Despite the violent fire, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. The two dogs on board the ship also died. Most deaths were not caused directly by the fire but were from jumping from the burning ship. Those passengers who rode the ship on its descent to the ground survived. Some deaths of crew members occurred because they wanted to save people on board the ship. In comparison, almost twice as many perished when the helium-filled USS Akron crashed."

Re:

[wizardforce (1005805)]

helium is mainly obtained from natural gas fields [heloium apparently collects in these deposits] which means helium will probably be reasonably accessible for a while. now assuming we did run out of cheap Helium, we should be able to build airships that *ahem* use hydrogen or another light gas to replace Helium. the big limitation of course is the danger of fire although a series of gas bags situated toward the outside filled with Nitrogen or some other reasonably obtainable relatively inert gas should g

Re:Oh great

[Fallingcow (213461)]

But since love is irrational, then only a float is going to be at all useful.

Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

it's certainly much easier to get hydrogen than helium.

And it lifts better too!

Of course vacuum would provide the best lift of all in the atmosphere. So why is it that my beautiful 21" crt monitor, which is little more than a big cube of vacuum, is so damn heavy?

Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum

[Faylone (880739)]

Think how crushingly heavy it would be if you broke the vacuum!

Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum

[vtcodger (957785)]

***So why is it that my beautiful 21" crt monitor, which is little more than a big cube of vacuum, is so damn heavy?***

Because it is too small to have much lift. Depending on how it was built, you might need weights to keep a 21 meter monitor from drifting off.

Re:Hydrogen

[wizardforce (1005805)]

If I remember correctly, they used aluminized layers alternating with iron oxide layers. aluminum can react with iron oxide in a thermite reaction. Iron oxide is the oxidizer and aluminum is the reducing agent, because of the violence of the reaction it is used in some cases to dispose of computer hardware to reduce/eliminate the risk of data recovery by unintended parties. That being true, it is certainly possible that the paint increased the risk of fire but the fact that the gas inside the balloon was very flammable didn't help anything. would the ship have caught fire if the outer coating wasn't flammable? probably eventually, all it takes is a tear in the skin of that ship to expose hydrogen to air and really at that point, it is only a matter of time before something causes ignition of the gas. OTOH, had the gas been helium, the only fire hazard would be the paint which if comprimised would be bad but likely a lot better than the whole ship catching fire.

Re:

[vidarh (309115)]

If the skin burns, the ship goes down whether or not the gas inside is flammable, as the gas quickly escapes. I very much doubt whether the gas inside burns would make much difference. Especially as a lot of the fatalities with Hindenburg were people getting hit by falling debris (burning hydrogen would be escaping upwards - what they were hit with were either the skin or from the gondola) or jumping in desperation to avoid the fire.

Re:Hydrogen

[MaineCoon (12585)]

People also seem to forget that 2/3s of the passengers of the Hindenburg survived, and it was the only notable airship disaster, whereas most airplane crashes that involve fatalities seem to kill a good majority (if not all) of the passengers, and seem to happen at least once or twice a year lately.

Re:

[ddrichardson (869910)]

There is a Mythbusters episode that investigates this. They called it a bust. The paint did burn readily but it was nothing compared to tthe hydrogen exploding.

Article [nytimes.com], episode itself [spikedhumor.com].

Re:Hydrogen

[delt0r (999393)]

And you saying its not credible makes it un-credible because you are credible? Please back up your claim.

Over half of the people survived the crash. How many survive 747 crashes? Perhaps the 100+ tons of JET fuel in the wings and under the floor is not safer than hydrogen after all?

Re:Hydrogen

[NNKK (218503)]

There are around 43,000 traffic fatalities per year in the US. If we posit that a mere 60,000,000 people (only 1/5th of the US population) get in a car or cross the street on foot every year, that's a total death rate of about 0.00072%.

There have been 439 astronauts. 19 of them have died in flight. That's 4.5%, meaning you are, given the above incredibly pessimistic estimate, more than 6000 times as likely to die in a spaceship than in the rolling deathtrap called a car. And by the way, 14 of those 19 deaths have happened in the Space Shuttle, the most advanced manned spacecraft to currently fly on a regular basis.

You'll therefore excuse me if I find your risk assessment lacking.

Re:

[Brett Buck (811747)]

That means it's not too long 'till the Golden Age of Colonic Irrigation!

          Brett