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. "

Re:Hydrogen

[graft]

The paint theory is not credible. Anyway, it's definitely true that a big bag of unpressurized hydrogen in a thin skin is a dangerous quantity. The Hindenburg was an inevitable tragedy. Hydrogen is a bad idea in a dirigible.

This again?

[Brett Buck]

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:Helium please :)

[node 3]

The Hindenburg disaster wasn't that bad. It only killed a few dozen people.

Was the second sentence meant to support the first? Because I don't really think it does.

People have been saying this for 40 years!!!

[Jane Q. Public]

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.

Re:Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

[brinebold]

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 along at a respectable pace compared to most large ships at the cost of little or no fuel for most of the trip. You would obviously never be able to carry cargo from lets say the E. US to Africa but you could conceivably transport it from the E. US to Europe, Europe to Africa, Africa to US/Central America with very low costs along with a similar route through the W. US, S. Americas, and E. Asia. I don't believe it would be viable, however, for overland transport and I'm just not sure if there is enough of a market to support a fairly slow and destination-limited transportation method such as this but it could very well become a much less expensive method of transportation within some specific routes.

I'm not saying it'll ever meet with the the success of the rail system but I wouldn't be quite so quick to shoot the idea down.

Re:Helium please :)

[timmarhy]

don't worry, the fact that JET FUEL is just as explosive seems to be lost on everyone else....

Re:Hydrogen

[delt0r]

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

[MaineCoon]

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:Hydrogen

[NNKK]

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:The discouraging prior art

[vidarh]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Flies in the ointment.

[Ancient_Hacker]

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]

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).

Re:Hydrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most motor vehicle accidents involving fatalities, it's not the fuel in the tank that kills people in airline crashes: rather it's the sudden stop at the end of the trip.

The problem with He...

[r_jensen11]

is that it's getting incredibly expensive as well.

Re:Hydrogen

[osu-neko]

The Hindenburg was an inevitable tragedy.

I'm not sure that hydrogen is really that dangerous, with proper engineering control you can eliminate accumulations of flammable quantities in the ship and end up with the diesel or jet A used for the propulsion being as likely to explode as the hydrogen.

Yup. I'm failing to see how the Hindenburg tragedy was "inevitable", given that it was, let's see, the 129th or 130th airship built by the Zeppelin Company, and none of the others met such a spectacular end.

It's also a fact that we regularly deal with much more dangerous materials in our technology. The solution is to engineer to minimize the danger. Accidents still happen. Planes have crashed, killing everyone onboard (unlike the Hindenburg, where most of the people onboard got off in time and survived, since a burning hydrogen filled airship is still a lot safer than a burning 747, merely containing hydrogen instead of the much more dangerous jet-fuel), but we engineer better and minimize the risks. All evidence points to a hydrogen-filled airship, even using yestercentury's technology, being safer in a crash/fire than a passenger jet. Today, we could do even better.

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

[mysticgoat]

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.

Two words: wind shear

[Daniel Phillips]

If the atmosphere would just behave itself and lie there docilely, or at least move all in the same direction at the same time, airships would make sense from an engineering point of view. But since the wind is not this cooperative, it is essential to build an airshipstrong enough to withstand the atmospheric equivalent of a rogue wave, and strength is the enemy of lightness. Size magnifies the effect of shearing forces. Also, travelling through the air faster than a stately drift causes vortexes and standing waves on the surface of the structure, a poorly understood phenomenon that is counteracted in "heavy" aircraft by just making the surfaces strong. Again, strong is the enemy of light. To make matters worse, the vortex patterns are speed dependent. In simple terms, a fast moving airship will tear itself apart. That is why blimps have a top speed of not very much, and rigid airships (the rigid part is about keeping the envelope from collapsing as speed increases) have a top speed of not very much more.

Maybe one day when fluid dynamics is better understood and strength to weight ratios have improved enough to get the safety margins into the right zone, the age of the airship will truly return. We are nowhere close to either of those at the moment. The concept art shown here for the Aeroscraft in particular is just stupid. Look at the massive concentration of weight right at the stern. There are good reasons why the most successful airship designs place the engines below the craft, in the middle. This contributes to stability and reduces stress on the structure, which otherwise would have to be heavier. Also the lozenge shape may look good on a magazine cover, but it reduces volume of the lifting gas in relation to surface area. Less gas is the same as more weight.

I have a lot of trouble believing that the designs shown have been subjected to any kind of serious engineering analysis. This is more about convincing gullible people to go take a flyer on a grand venture. See the pretty pictures and send your money here thanks.

To be sure, Zepellins really are back, at least a small number of them. They fly low and slow over Berlin. The design is very traditional, a stubby cigar shape with a nacelle underheath to which the engines are attached. These aircraft are not really good for much other than the spectacle, which in my opinion justifies the effort but this is a far cry from commercial viability as a mode of transportation.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Captain Splendid]

You bastard! Where's my +5 insightful?

Re:Anti-gravity tech

[Captain Splendid]

and have decided to judge all Americans by the actions of those few [Congress]

Well, seeing as you lot are a democracy, that's kinda how it works.

Re:A new mode of transport in general?

[Frantactical Fruke]

Missed the part about hillbillies derailing trains, eh? There is nothing you can do to secure thousands of miles of rails. Just about any drunk lout can figure out how to derail a train. So it happens all the time, right? And nobody uses trains anymore, right? Oh.