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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Helium please :)

[Jehosephat2k]

Also, good perspective. If this thing is anywhere near the size of the Hindenberg, SIGN ME UP.

http://www.ciderpresspottery.com/ZLA/greatzeps/german/Hindenburg.html [ciderpresspottery.com]

The R101 doesn't get nearly the historical attention of the Hindenberg, but it was just as bad:

http://www.currell.net/models/r101.htm [currell.net]

Re:Helium please :)

[WK2]

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:Anti-gravity tech

[Masami Eiri]

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.

Not an airship....

[Warbothong]

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

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[porl]

you are thinking of hydrogen.

Re:This again?

[Khyber]

Umm, once you compress helium, like mentioned, it becomes a LIQUID. Show one one liquid on this planet that is lighter than air - oops, that's not exactly possible, is it? release the compressed helium = inflated dirgible and floating. Compress the helium = it turns into a liquid and is essentially a deadweight.

Control might be an issue, but that's where DARPA's helicopter-hybrid design comes into play.

The problems are starting to get solutions. Don't knock it until you've personally tried it and seen it fail, otherwise you're nothing more than an armchair geek.

And I've flown planes and helicopters. They are not without their problems, and in fact share many of the SAME ISSUES as zeppelins do.

Re:Oh great

[wizardforce]

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 give a decent buffer zone to absorb impacts and lessen the dangers of fire.

Re:Hydrogen

[wizardforce]

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:Helium please :)

[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:This again?

[delt0r]

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

Re:This again?

[WalksOnDirt]

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)

Re:Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

[morethanapapercert]

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:Anti-gravity tech

[Swampash]

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

[Morgor]

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:Hydrogen

[vidarh]

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:Oh great

[Hognoxious]

Below that is Li which is slightly heavier than H

And happens to not be a gas in the first place. One other thing - the periodic table you linked to shows atomic numbers - those aren't the same as relative densities (and neither are atomic weights, for that matter).

Re:The discouraging prior art

[hughk]

Not as simple. There were two companies, Cargolifter AG and a separate company used for raising finance and running the treasury, something like Cargolifter Finanz or something. The original concept was a good one and they had a lot of interest from oil companies and relief agencies amongst others. For whatever reason, Cargolifter sat clear of the markets with high-transparency requirements in Frankfurt and stuck to the 'official' unregulated market. They collected a lot of money both as startup aid from the part of the former East-Germany where they established their construction hangar and also from investors. What was happening to the money remains a mystery, but perhaps their financial management company was too busy doing other things in the market, although there was never anything that came out of the insolvency hearing.

Re:Helium please :)

[nusuth]

...JET FUEL is just as explosive...

No it isn't. That is movie physics. One can make an explosive out of anything combustible, by mixing it with a suitable amount of oxidizer, so it is true that jet fuel is explosive in a sense. However it is not nearly as explosive as hydrogen. Hydrogen has a very wide explosive range. Therefore hydrogen can explode when it is mixed with some air, even if the amount air in the mixture is very low or very high. Hydrogen is also very flammable. So once mixed with air, any spark can initiate explosion. Hydrogen-oxygen reaction is also very fast, so its blast is powerful. And finally hydrogen oxygen reaction releases a lot of energy, on a mass or molar basis, so its blast carries more energy and is hotter than hydrocarbons of a similar mass or molar amount. OTOH to explode jet fuel, you have to mix it very carefully with the just right amount of air and initiate burning with a sufficient energy source. Exploding jet fuel is almost impossible in context of accidents, exploding hydrogen gas is the major mode of hydrogen related accidents. And even if you manage to explode jet fuel, it doesn't react as fast nor with as high exotherm, therefore explosions are milder. So, no, jet fuel isn't just as explosive as hydrogen, not by a stretch.

hasn't this been done before, long ago?

[v1]

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]

Re:Clarification on Helium Ban

[andrew618]

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.

Dunno, I've heard this before

[giminy]

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:Hydrogen

[canajin56]

Gold sure is toxic. Occasionally lethal. Causes heavy metal poisoning, severe kidney and liver damage, the usual stuff. Treated by chelation just like lead and mercury and arsenic poisoning. But its elemental form is quite harmless due to the fact that it'll just sit there and not react, since its in a non-soluble, non-ionic form, and doesn't react with anything typically found in a human body. Lead is bad for you because even in its elemental form, there are a number of things in your body that can react with it and form soluble compounds, though I heard somewhere that this isn't much of a danger for say, a bullet lodged somewhere, mostly just a danger of ingestion (though this is not true for lead salts like those used in paints and glazes, which are already in a soluble form). Swallowing a gold ring, on the other hand, isn't dangerous, since it won't react in your stomach and will remain just a chunk of gold. Gold salts (which is what they call soluble gold compounds even if they aren't technically a salt) are used in electroplating stuff, as an anesthetic agent, and for treating arthritis, and these are the danger. Since gold won't become soluble in your body, having a soluable form of gold enter your body is a bad thing, but its the ONLY way to get gold poisoning. I seem to recall an episode of House where a woman was poisoning her husband with whichever gold compound is used to treat arthritis. House might not always be a good source, but gold poisoning from overdosing on this medication is a very real danger. It's also a very real danger for those whose job it is to electroplate things with gold, and there have been a few rare deaths from lethal gold poisoning as the result of workplace accidents.

Re:This again?

[njh]

Compressing He (4) to 8 atm makes it more dense than air (29). That is trivial (800kPa). Helium gas tanks, for comparison, operate at 1000atm (100MPa). A more interesting question is how much energy such compression and decompression would take.

If you are lifting 1e6 g of stuff using helium, you need at least 1e6 / (29-4) mol of helium, compressing that by a factor of factor of 8 requires -nRTlog(V1/V2) work, which is 90MJ per tonne. In practice you would need considerably less compression than that because you don't need to completely remove the bouyancy, only reduce it enough to make it managable at ground level. Some energy might be worth recovering with a gas engine.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[bozojoe]

I seem recall hearing about an american air base which stored massive amounts of helium in the bedrock beneath the base. As memory goes there was an issue with closing the defunct base as selling the helium on open market would have crashed the helium market.

There's memory for you

Nope.

[Joce640k]

>"helium is twice (?) as heavy as hydrogen, so it has half the lifting power"

Nope.

Lifting power comes from the difference in density between the air and the gas in the balloon.

Air has a molecular weight around 15 so the difference between hydrogen and helium is the difference between 13 and 14, ie. not very much at all.

{nb. yes, it's a VERY simplified explanation}