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Technology

Giant Airships to Deploy Buildings by 2003 101

Posted by michael from the sandworms-can't-get-you dept.
UniDyne writes: "CargoLifter, an airship manufacturer based in Germany, plans to build giant-sized airships to drop modular buildings in remote areas and help with disaster relief. These airships are the size of the largest building in my home city: the NationsBank Headquarters here in Charlotte! This article explains the possible uses of these airships and how CargoLifter plans to build a manufacturing hangar in North Carolina. They kind of remind me of something you'd see in an anime series." Mmmmm, CargoLifter.
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Giant Airships to Deploy Buildings by 2003 More

Giant Airships to Deploy Buildings by 2003

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  • airships deploying buildings? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am having visions of an ship's load being dragged along the ground when the winds change.

  • No more hydrogen? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hindenburg didn't blow up because it was filled with hydrogen (at least, not initially). The Hindenburg blew up because the paint it was covered with was basically powdered rocket fuel - call it lack of forsight on the part of the designers.

  • Never Gonna Happen (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:49AM (#164589)
    I was senior crew on the worlds largest and most successfull airship company in the world. I have seen these far-fetched ideas for airships come and go over the years, and NOT ONE has materialized. NOT ONE!!! The airship has only been viable and only will be viable as an advertising platform. Advertising is the only market that has turned a profit in the airship world. While some of the ideas that have come and gone over the years have been good, for one reason or another, the only ones that succeed are those based on arial advertising. Trust me, I know.

  • If I remember correctly, it was the coating used to protect the fabric of the outer envelope that was the real culprit. The formula used had characteristics similar to those of gun powder, making the fabric burn like a huge fuse.

  • No, in their case, theme park and visitors center are important, because they don't burn money on them, they use them to *make* money. They need the money from the theme park for the development of the big ship. (They already have a smaller scale short range version in balloon shape)

    Regards, Ulli

  • The Cargo Lifter is not meant to be a competition for helicopters, but as a way to carry *large* cargos for long ways. The airship they are developing will be able to carry 160 tons of cargo on the long range (hundreds of kilometers and up).

    One very neat trick they use is water tanks: when they go in, the ship is carrying 160 tons of water. They attach the load, then start dumping water till the load lifts off. At the destination, the load on water till the lines go slack... :-)

    I think, the cargo lifter is no competition for helicopters, because they are much smaller, faster and probably cheaper to operate. However, this system is meant as a replacement for oversize road transports, because they need no roads. Also, they are much faster than road transporting, for example, a big generator! They just attach to the machine at the factory, lift off, and go either all the way to the destination or offload it onto a ship, which goes the rest of the way.

    I hope this clarifies the isssue a bit.

    Cheers, Ulli

  • You quote a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, and then you contribute his mistake to corporate hype?

    I'd say his doctorate should be stripped.
  • Your previous posts have made some good points, but you struck out on this one, AFAICT.

    The ration we're talking about is mass to surface area = mass / area.
    Mass is proportional to volume, which is proportional to distance cubed.
    Area is proportional to distance squared.

    m:s ratio \propto d^3 / d^2 = d

    As d (the scale of the aircraft) increases, so does the m:s ratio. (I have omitted constants, since they don't affect how the ratio scales with d. This is like O() notation in algorithm analysis.)

    > twiddled for drag coefficient and so on - if I'm not mistaken the square-cube law would only
    > apply to the mass (not weight) of the helium
    enclosed.

    No, that's totally bogus. Earth has gravity. Therefore weight is proportional to mass. Helium is lighter than air, so there is more buoyant force than there is weight. If you want to talk about buoyancy - weight as the "effective weight", acting in the upward direction, then it increases when you scale up the craft. Making it bigger increases the volume of air displaced by helium, and also increases the weight of the material the envelope is made of. The mass of air displaced increases faster than the mass of the envelope when you make the balloon bigger, so we have the obvious conclusion that big balloons can lift more than scaled-down versions of the same design.

    However, "effective weight" is not what matters when the wind is pushing on something to make it go faster. Imagine trying to push something heavy on the the space station. You don't have to do anything to keep it in the air, but it takes a while to get it going fast. For a closer analogy, think of the classic fly-pushing-cruise-ship thing. The ship will eventually go somewhere, but it will take a while to accelerate :)

    Now, to consider the issue of what will happen to a big ass airship, I imagine that forces due to the wind could be proportional to the area of the ship (when the ship is anchored, for example). This would require the strength of the ship to go up as d^2, which could be hard to do. When drifting, if forces (due to shearing forces, maybe) are proportional to d, then the absolute strength of a piece of the stuff used to make it has increase as you make the ship bigger. A rope that has to hold more tension has to hold it along every point of its length. Being big wouldn't help an airship withstand large wind forces.

    (I'm probably wrong about something in that last paragraph, since I've never done any fluid dynamics except for some simple stuff in first year.)

    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • The fabric dopant contained iron particles. Result: the envelope, not the gas, burned. The hydrogen would escape too quickly, and it would not be mixed with air enough to burn efficiently.
  • This [chariot.net.au]

    Vermifax
  • Hell yeah. A number of people escaped from the Hindenberg by just jumping out as it crashed. It's been a while since I read about it, but I seem to recall a few brave souls going back in to get others out.

    Virtually no one survives plane crashes, OTOH.
  • > It is designed for tourism

    *Designed for*. Not "used for and already showing a profit". He might be wrong about "Never Gonna Happen", but for now he's still right about hasn't happened yet.

    On the other hand, Cargolifter and Zeppelin NT are far from the only companies with airship plans - see The Airship Association links at
    http://www.airship.demon.co.uk/net.html

    But yes, I remember when the Skyship 500 (the airship used in A View To a Kill) was going to be the start of a new wave of airships. (I saw it at Farnborough). It wasn't.
    --
  • I hope this comes to pass, Jones County can certainly use the jobs, but I wonder if it might not be better for them to locate next door, so to speak, in Lenoir county, at the Global Trans-Park, which so far hasn't been quite the success it was hoped to have been.

    Plus, that'll put them at least one county farther away from me in case they drop anything really heavy.

  • Maximum payload for the Antonov An-225 Mriya is 551,150 pounds (250,000kg), which can be internal or external. Antonov An-225 was originally built to carry the Russian Space shuttle.

    I remember one of the antonova's going down due to faulty fuel, but I am not sure it was this one. If someone can enlighten me on this I would be grateful.

    Have a look at:

    Antonov An-225 Mriya [theaviationzone.com]

    Or goto the following for a good list of other transport planes: Aviation Website [theaviationzone.com]

  • In BC, there's been talk for *decades* about using airships to haul logs, where helicopters are now used.

    Of course, for *decades* the helicopter pilots haven't feared for their jobs, because not a single airship has ever gone into commercial use.

    Myself, I'd expect there to be huge cost savings over a helicopter, but apparently there just isn't...


    --
  • And it's more difficult to veer into a Chinese fighter jet, too!

    --
  • http://decision.tcc-cci.gc.ca/en/2000/html/2000tcc 982.html

    In the northwest (BC, Washington, etc) we poured tens of millions of dollars into developing an airship capable of hauling up to 16 tons.

    It failed.

    You're proposing a contraption *10 times* larger.

    Should be interesting. I suppose that as long as your paycheque is covered, you're happy. Can't say as I'd want to be an investor, though.

    --
  • Whats the Nations Bank Building compared to Wachovia's HQ in Winston-Salem, NC? (If you have seen their HQ, I hear the concept drawings included "two soft mounds") BTW..... NationsBank is no more... They are now Bank of America.......
  • There is probably enough fear of hydrogen, though, that any upcoming commercial airships will use helium, even though it takes a much larger amount of helium (larger structure, weight, cost, etc.) to get a given amount of lift, compared to hydrogen.

  • How long will it be before we can go online to purchase a home and have it dropped off by UPS 5 days late and damaged?!?!

    "I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."

  • >I remember one of the antonova's going down due
    >to faulty fuel, but I am not sure it was this one

    While it may have been another Antonov, it couldn't have been another An-225.

    >nothing compared to Russia

    Except that only one has ever been built, while the C-5 has seen extensive peacetime AND wartime use.

    The Cossack is an impressively huge plane, no argument, but it's rather like the Spruce Goose - anyone can build ONE big plane. To build and operate an entire fleet is, IMO, a much more impressive feat.

    -LjM
  • Ha! An extra left-over bit of the Kaiser's sichlichkeit there... :)
  • Skin of the hindenburg:

    it was in fact the same aliminum compound as modern NASA solid-fuel rocket boosters. Zeppelin had used alum-oxide to protect the canvas from weathering.

    If you look at the sequence leading up to the Hidnenburg's destruction at lakehurst -- there had just been a thunderstorm and the air was quite charged. The hindenburg made a high approach trailing its landing lines - a landing style the USN had pioneered with Zeppelin/Goodyear dirigibles. The footage shows that the skin burned first -- tus the bright flames and smoke. The actual hydrogen would disappear in a blue-white flash.

    Of course there was hydrogen IN the Hindenburg because the Nazis assumed (correctly) that the US Gov't wasn't going to give them enough helium to fly their zeppelins...
  • 1!

    I have suggested this before but I don't definatively know whether we can build spheres light enough and pressure-resistant enough to hold a near vacuum. It seems like a natural idea but a steel sphere would have to be so thick it would have a negative bouyancy. Maybe some modern carbon polymer would do the trick. The question also is what size to make these armillary spheres as you have the issue of surface area to pressure to thickness et alia.

    Cool Sci-Fi sounding idea though...

  • How (Score:3)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:48AM (#164611) Homepage
    How do they connect the building to the blimp? How do they keep the blimp stationary while placing the building on its destined site? And how do they diconnect the building? I can imagine the blimp will go up like a cork once the building is disconnected.
  • I think that applies for most of the world's cities -and- suburbs.
  • Well, that's what one of NASA's Mars plans calls for anyway now. :)
    Of course, the 'buildings' are rather dinky...understandable when you consider that each has to be a) extremely strong to survive reentry and b) small enough to fit behind a sanely-sized heatshield.

  • Caution (Score:3)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @04:27AM (#164614)
    Sure, it sounds good now, but how long will it be until we have Frogstar fighters picking up buildings at will just because they want someone who is inside?

    --
  • My understanding is that what killed it was sabotage. While hydrogen is more explosive, it's also lighter than Helium, and would be usable to fuel the airship cleanly. I'm very much pro-hydrogen, though, I think it's worth the minimal risks, too.
    JMR

  • Can you say Instant LAN Party? :)

    --

  • The Teamsters better get into the blimp business fast.

    It'd give them some interesting tools to put the hurt on someone they don't like.

    "If you don't do what we want, we'll have Joey over here drop a house on youse..."

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I think (except for the ratio being backwards, brain fart on my part) that you're stating what I was trying to say in clearer terms, and correcting the person I was responding to's assumption that larger size would be a big help.

    I was aiming to avoid someone being confused between the effective and real weight (former obviously being around zero when the airship is at neutral bouyancy) when I noted that mass should be used, and trying to make the point with the mouse-size versus elephant-sized balloon comparison that the rationale being offered wouldn't help large airships.

    Note I was assuming the envelope's strength was mainly used to enclose the higher partial pressure needed to keep it "rigid" against the wind, engine-enduced forces, and so on rather than to support the weight hanging from it, the every-point-of-a-rope factor becoming every-horizontal-portion-of-a-sheet with the support structure attached.

    I don't know the relative numbers, I think it would be related to how much of the blimp was attached to the support structure underneath that lifts the cargo too (a longer sheet of the same material would support more weight of course, if evenly attached along its bottom), but yes, the size advantage looks like it is eaten by needing a thicker envelope.

    It also occurs to me on reading your analysis that a larger object would be flatter over a given area, increasing the drag coefficient, but I could be wrong too - my fluid dynamics knowledge is likely less than yours.

  • As long as the airflow is not turbulent, an airship can survive arbitrary large winds by just floating with them. When the airship moves with the same velocity as the wind, the relative velocity is zero. Of course you would not try to *land* in a hurricane.

    Not convinced? Well, weather baloons routinely cross the jet stream which has a velocity of more than 200km/h without damage.

    Umm, yes. "As long as the airflow is not turbulent". I'm afraid you are kind of making my point for me - lets's see one of these behemoths lumber its way out of one of these [noaa.gov].

    And your weather balloon analogy is rather weak - the airship would operate considerably closer to the ground, and at far greater stakes than the potential loss of a cheap radiosonde. Floating along with the wind sounds fine as long as there aren't high tension lines in the way, and as long as the idea isn't currently to stay tethered. In which case this would tend to happen [cnn.com].

  • The larger the dirigible, the greater the ratio of mass to surface area, the less it should be affected by wind. This is going to be a very, very big dirigible.

    You mean "lower the ratio", I think. Square-cube law, sort of?

    That would fit better if the interior of the airship were the same density as the rest of it, instead of a much denser skin containing a mass of helium rather less dense than the air surrounding. If you simplify the math to a sphere, the real ratio would be between R^2:R^3 (square-cube) and PiR^2:4PiR^2 (area of a circle:surface area of a sphere), twiddled for drag coefficient and so on - if I'm not mistaken the square-cube law would only apply to the mass (not weight) of the helium enclosed.

    Not the difference between the square of the wind velocity exerting force to blow away an elephant or a mouse, but to blow away an elephant-sized balloon versus a mouse-sized balloon.

  • blimp habits (Score:3)

    by Velox_SwiftFox ( 57902 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @04:08AM (#164624)
    Although blimps are certainly an attractive idea for unmanned armed forces surveillance balloons, lifting logs out of areas where sustainable lumbering is being done but roads are impractical or undesirable, and other applications where they can be tethered to the ground as well as their cargo, they are notoriously prone to being damaged or destroyed by unforseen winds and weather conditions, or simply thrown out of control and blown away.

    There are good reasons why they are not used for passenger or military service otherwise, repeated attempts to use them have resulted in loss of the airships and their crews, for reasons totally unrelated to the Hindenberg - Bringing up their relative nonflammability is largely a straw-man argument in their favor.

    Yes, they can be made to work in average weather and winds - but expecting this to keep them safe is about as intelligent as expecting building a seaside house at the same level as the average high tide and expecting it to therefore stay dry - and tides are considerably more predictable than sudden changes in the weather.

    Pardon me, but I would greatly prefer these potential juggernauts to stay downwind of wherever I am when loaded down with the buildings, locomotives, et cetra the article envisions - if at all, considering again that the wind direction may change.

  • Bucky Fuller also wrote in 'A Critical Path' about building huge geodesic spheres half a mile or more in diameter, from aluminium and glass. At that size he reckoned the weight of the structure is insignificant compared to the weight of the air it contains.
    Make it airtight and wait for a sunny day, open the windows and the greenhouse effect heats the air within, which expands and drives some air out, and it floats. Then close the windows to retain the pressure difference.
    I think this idea is also mentioned in passing by William Gibson in the short story 'Red star, winter orbit' from 'Burning Chrome'
  • Well, Mr. Anonymous Coward, you're a bit confused. The Zeppelin NT has been successfully built and tested and has achieved type certification and is about to go into serial production.
  • Near where I used to live, there was a company that made small buildings. Being as how this was in Wichita, KS, which at the time was home to the corporate headquarters of Pizza Hut, Inc., one of the buildings this small company had build was a small Pizza Hut restaurant intended for use as a temporary site (e.g. for servicing an event like Woodstock).

    The building was a prototype, and thus sat on the lot of the company for some time. My friends and I always referred to it as P.H.E.D - Pizza Hut, Emergency Deployable.

    Considering that the fast food chains have the art of setting up a building like this down to a science - a friend of mine went to work one day past an empty lot, and that evening the lot contained a nearly fully complete Pizza Hut - I wouldn't be too surprised to see the Big Boys using an idea like this.

    Kinda like in Unreal Tournement - You get on the radio and call for a drop, they tell you to get clear, WHUMPH! There's a new Pizza Hut.

    Or worse yet, McDonalds (shudder...)
  • The Hindenburg was designed and constructed to be filled with Helium, but it was filled with hydrogen. The U.S. Senate did not allow the delivery of helium for the Hindenburg, since Germany was under Nazi rule.
  • This is a very interesting reply in that the Snr Crew member gives NO information to lead us to believe he was a snr crew.

    I'm not saying he's not, just that he gave no concrete info. Not even a set of search words in lieu of links.
  • I often misspell. Doesn't bother me much.

    And what credentials would you check? I proposed nothing. I just thought it interesting that many ppl will take his word as gospel, but w/o proof.

    However, we now have recieved proof. Or at least links. Would you have accepted a contradictory argument from ME if I had submited no info to prove it?

    I hadn't meant to offend the original poster (any one else is ancillory(sp?) dmg, and I don't much care). Mostly I had meant to make an observation on how trusting ppl can be "I read it on the internet (/.), so it must be true!"
  • I mis-read the preceding posts. Ignore the part about checking my credentials.

    Work gets in the way of reading . . .
  • "the NationsBank Headquarters here in Charlotte!"

    Or even the Bank of America building......
  • If one of those airships crashes, the entire population of Charlotte will be talking like mickey mouse.
  • Youre absolutely right, Hydrogen wasnt what killed the Hindenburg, the matrials it was made out of did. hydrogen burns with a clear flame, you cant see it. The hindenburg burned with an orange flame, typical of the varnish and other coverings of the airship.as long as you make your airship out of non flammable matterials, fiberglass maybe, you can easily use hydrogen with no more chance of explosion than say your average jetliner, which is to say nonzero, but minimal. Danger is inherent whenever you need concentrated power in a small package.

  • How do they keep the blimp stationary while placing the building on its destined site?

    They build zeppelines of different sizes. For the _very_ larg ones you will have portable "harbours". You will need conventional ground heavy weight transport for that, but it is still much cheaper and much mor easy then to transport everything on ground.

    And how do they diconnect the building? I can imagine the blimp will go up like a cork once the building is disconnected.

    This is actually a problem. Two solutions:

    use counter weights. e.g. punp water into the ship while disconnecting.

    fluidify the Helium to reduce buoyancy.

    both versions have huge disadvantages. water may not be availabe in the needed amounts. or the other way round, where do you put it once at the location where to lift the weight? If you could fluidify the Helium when desired it would be perfect, but this is not easy at all. Impossible as for today.

    Cheers, Peter

  • A ship that big probably couldn't be taken down quickly by a Scud. It's over a thousand feet long, and it's not a gasbag, it is composed of independent cells of gas. Not that the ship wouldn't have an interesting time of it as the center of gravity whipped.... it'd kiss the ground, but probably at a slower rate than a plane would.

  • I've been reading about these monster airship/trucks for over twenty years now, and I can say in that time I've had some thoughts.

    The most apparent thing, to me, was that it gives homebuilding a whole new dimension of economy. Imagine if you can a car built in your back yard -- importing the steel, the laborers, the machines to stamp the parts, all of it -- how much would that car cost? Well, that's how houses are built. Stick by stick, on the ground (yes, I know modularity has increased and all that). Theoretically, a house built in a factory, with quality control, on an assembly line, would reduce the price of houses to a commodity item.

    As I am now old and cynical, I know that even if they cut the cost of home manufacture in half, we the buyers would never see the price decrease. The factories would eat the entire savings as new profit, put stick builders out of biz if possible, and use the profits to buy up related industries and strive for a vertical monopoly in time-honored fashion. Sigh.

    I love the idea of simply building the house as a well-designed unit and flying it to a foundation somewhere. BUT -- think of this -- it means that houses could be built in national parks, wilderness areas, all the places it was impossible to get to before... but now it could be done. There is no advance so wonderful that humans can't find an evil use for it...

    Another thing I thought of, long ago. A lot of municipalites are not going to allow factory-built houses to be flown in, to protect the local building trades. And most certainly Americans will panic (they are good at that -- the safest country in the world is the most personally paranoid) at the thought of a house flying overhead at 60 MPH. The Hindenburg is still, wrongly, viewed as the end of airships because they were unsafe.

    A last thing. A few years ago, a researcher got a hold of an actual swathe of the cloth used on the hull of the Hindenburg. Apparently, the paint was incredibly flammable. When the Hindy went up, it was the paint that made it go WHOMPH into flame, not the hydrogen. The hydrogen, if you look at the film, was burning up in any case. The passengers did not by and large die of the fire -- they died from jumping off the ship. I remember it being said that if most of them had kept their heads and jumped off just before the ship hit the ground (and, I assume, ran like hell), they would have had a good chance of survival.

    Pity -- primarily because of that disaster, airships died in the U.S. as a commercial venture. They were such magnificent beasts!

  • Cool! It'll be just like Final Fantasy! I wonder if they'll have the cool propellers on the ship too. Although then wouln't it be Final Reality?
  • Yeah, I've seen that article and his sketches. He proposed dropping a bomb to make a crater for the foundation, too.

  • Priorities (Score:4)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @08:24AM (#164640) Homepage
    The CargoLifter web site resembles a dot-com with too much venture capital and a bad business concept. The product isn't ready, but the theme park and the visitor's center are open. They have seven locations and twelve business units. They did all the irrelevant stuff first.

    If they had one medium-sized airship ferrying around bulky medium-weight stuff like drilling rigs and transmission towers, and real customers using it, it would be a better company.

  • If you read the site... before the "hospital" or what have you is unloaded at the target, they have to pump in ballast water to compensate for the weight of the cargo.

    If you're carrying a 160 ton hospital, thats a good deal of water... where are they going to get it? They're going to take it from the village or whatever enbattled area they're helping out?

    "Sure, here's a fully equipped hospital, but we'll have to take your entire supply of drinking water in exchange."

    hrmm... looks to me like the "humanitarian" uses are a feel-good smokescreen for the real underlying capitalistic uses... I'll doubt its ever used on a single emergency relief situation.

  • Moon - no atmosphere - you couldn't use airships.

    Mars's atmosphere is pretty thin, you'd have to make very very light airships. It'd be hard to make them strong enough to lift stuff.


  • DAX, Deutscher Aktien Index, German stocks index.
    Watching news concerning the economy will often show the DOW, DAX, FTSE and other indices side by side, allowing you to make remarks about the size of other nation's dipsticks.

    See:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/wei.html?sidena v= front

    Marcus

  • They are quite serious about it, indeed. (Score:5)

    by mmkhd ( 142113 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @04:57AM (#164644)
    I have read a lot of dismissive comments about cargolifter here. And it is true that they face a lot of technical difficulties.

    But they are very serious about building this keeled airship (not a blimp, not a zeppelin).

    They have build the production facilty in Germany, an incredibly big hangar. They do have lots of investors, many of them companies that will benefit from the finished product.

    Yes their stock is slumping, but that is no wonder in the current climate at the stock exchanges, it _is_ a very risky venture.

    But this is not some crazy venture, von Gablenz is going about it in a very level headed way. When they premiered on the stock market during the bubble, they did not go to the "Neuer Markt" where the bubble economy was rampant. They went into the MDAX. The DAX is Germany's equivalent of the Dow, the MDAX holds the next 100 smaller companies (not small caps, more like middle caps, damn my restriceted vocabulary). This means that they are very interested in a steady, level headed developement of Cargolifter, instead of making big bucks fast.

    To sum it up: Cargolifter is a risky, crazy thing, but they are very sure of accomplishing this technological feat. The already have funding up to the finished full scale operating prototype (their estimates).

    So watch out! If it can be done, their doing it. It is incredibly interesting technology and it will be fun to watch how they are going to do it. Their web site holds a lot of information and many good pictures of side projects and the big hangar. http://www.cargolifter.com

    Marcus
  • "accidentally" start dropping buildings on London this could be a bit of alright.

    KFG

  • Wired Article - Much more in-depth (Score:5)

    by NevDull ( 170554 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:44AM (#164646) Homepage Journal
    Wired ran a much more in-depth article about this last August [wired.com]. It also discussed worldwide helium shortages which may come about because of such increased demand.

    -Nev

  • Re:Never Gonna Happen (Score:3)

    by sfstich ( 173141 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @04:07AM (#164647)
    But have any of those other projects had a 400 M$ budget.

    The company seems to be quite determined, so if they can find a decent solution for the two obvious problems (wind and getting the thing certified by the state governments), there probably would be some market for them to tap. (It's at the moment incredibly hard and to transport very bulky freight).

    But as the stock price [comdirect.de] shows, quite a lot of people don't think they will be successful anymore.

    --
    This signature has been deprecated...

  • The DAX is Germany's equivalent of the Dow
    No, it is not. It is Germany's equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow is merely a convenient dipstick indicating the health of the overall market, and selected market sectors.
  • But have any of those other projects had a 400 M$ budget.

    maybe it's just having been reading slashdot for too long, but i instinctively read the 'M$' in your comment as 'Micro$oft'. what would you do with a budget of 400 microsofts? that's a hell of a lot of low-slung, seafoam green buildings on well manicured lawns to fill. you might be able to use one of these airships to build them.

  • This is what I thinkis the biggest attraction. [It is from the article of course]
    The idea for the CL160 came from manufacturing and transportation companies frustrated with what CargoLifter calls b.u.f. - big, ugly freight.

    Moving it often means working in the middle of the night and yanking utility lines out of the way or building roads and bridges into remote areas. Companies spend thousands of extra dollars assembling and disassembling large equipment that could be moved intact.

    The bottom line: The biggest, ugliest thing about moving big, ugly freight is usually the cost. "Folks we talked to were desperately searching for something new," Edwards says. "Existing technology was holding them back."

    So for a lot of folks , the idea of being able to move something straight up and over interevening obstacles makes sense.

    In disaster areas I can see roads and transport being messed up badly, so againthe ability to go over the obstacles makes some sense there as well. Although clearing the landing site from things large boulders, errant children, panicked refugees, etc are separate issues.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Hindenburg Uncertainty Principle. (Score:3)

    by fantom_winter ( 194762 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:46AM (#164651)
    A German company is making plans to build huge dirigibles capable of picking up already-assembled fast-food restaurants, locomotives, even fully equipped hospitals and setting them down in villages with no roads or in big cities tangled in traffic or in Third World settlements recovering from disaster.

    Hmm.. sounds like a wonderful target for a scud missile.

    Or maybe just a good way to perform McDonalds Drop Testing. Hmm.. Science project, anyone?

  • Senior Coward to Tymanthius:
    Your reply erks me so much that I couldn't help posting again.

    I don't think we need to check your credentials. If you really had something to say about airships, you'd use a better argument than an appeal to authority.

    By the way, you misspelled 'irks'. Need I say more?

  • tsa:
    And how do they diconnect the building? I can imagine the blimp will go up like a cork once the building is disconnected.

    Perhaps, if the engines aren't enough, the airship could hand out more rope and rise higher 'till it reached the height at which it's naturally bouyant. I'm sure it won't have to rise far.

  • tsa:
    And how do they diconnect the building? I can imagine the blimp will go up like a cork once the building is disconnected.

    Having sussed out the sucky navigation aids on the site, I found this Rendering [cargolifter.com]. I know bugger all about airships, but those yellow blobs are somewhat suggestive of a fish's swim bladder to me.

  • Punikki:
    How much lift would it need, for example, to have 3 or four meter thick advanced panzer?

    Steel is about 8000kg/m, 1m of helium can carry a 1kg load. For a given radius r, the volume of a sphere is (4/3)pi*r and its surface area is 4pi*r

    I'd say you need a sphere 20km across, with 40,000 megatonnes of steel.

    I think you should paint it like a beachball to avoid early detection by the enemy.

  • Link to CargoLifter's CL160 Page (Score:4)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:53AM (#164656)

    Here's a link to the company [cargolifter.com]'s info on the CL160 airship: http://www.cargolifter.com/2001/content/solution_e /index-160.htm [cargolifter.com]

    Additional info on the company and its other products, etc. can be found here: http://www.cargolifter.com/2001/repository/portal_ noscript_e.html [cargolifter.com]. There are even links to a theme park!

  • THis was in Air & Space a while ago. Actually, the formulation is similar to what we use today for solid rocket fuel.
  • i assume that if the airship is carrying something as important as a skyscraper, and there was a real threat, there would be an esort. but you're right, they are eaisy targets. will be, rather.

  • hm. (Score:3)

    by SmellMyTeenSpirit ( 207288 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:51AM (#164659) Journal
    Buckminster Fuller had some idea akin to this. His plan was to mass produce his Dymaxion Houses and airlift them by zeppelin to where ever. I can't find an exact refrence to this, but I know I read it somewhere. Here's a good Buckminster Fuller page. http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq.html
  • No, this is typical slashdot misinformation. The reason the skin burned so fast was because it was painted with something very close to solid rocket fuel. The reason the whole thing went up in flames was because of the hydrogen. The amount of paint was small, the amount of hydorgen was huge.

    Hydrogen is still dangerous to use as a fuel, and helium is a much safer alternitive. This is because you do not need 'fuel', just a substance lighter than air.
  • a scud is ground to ground missile.

    You would need a ground to air missile, the various russian SAMs would be a good choice.
  • Yeah, well BC isn't exactly the best example. Just look at the 'superferries'. I guess you just can't get anything done with 40% of the population stoned at any given time.
  • And how do they diconnect the building? I can imagine the blimp will go up like a cork once the building is disconnected.

    1. remove gas from the bags to reduce buoyancy (discharge overboard or compress and pump to storage tanks), and direct propeller thrust upwards to move the ship downwards;
    2. stop doing this when the cargo touches the deck and the lifting strops go slack;
    3. disconnect the cargo lifting strops;
    4.use the engines to gain height and move off site, reflating gas bags as required.

    duh...

  • It's about time that the world discovers that they can be user for other things than flying beer advertising.
    Hmm banner ads in the sky. :-) Don't use cookies and can't be filtered out.

    --------
  • Yes, they can be made to work in average weather and winds - but expecting this to keep them safe is about as intelligent as expecting building a seaside house at the same level as the average high tide and expecting it to therefore stay dry - and tides are considerably more predictable than sudden changes in the weather.

    That's the thing the aerodynamic forces on such a large ship would be incredible.

  • Thank you! I was hoping someone would point that out! Kudos to the PBS special that brought this attention to the public.
    Hydrogen good, ignorance BAD!

    Mike

    ________________________________________________ __
  • Why don't we write LiGNUx and keep saying Linux?
    because it looks ugly

    -Kraft
  • Sounds like the StarCraft mechanism for moving and relocating buildings. Perhaps a model for relocatable buildings with 'plug-n-play' utility and land connections will be develop as a result of this ability. That is, companies can relocate their buildings on demand and plug them into landing platforms anywhere in the world. It also would be a major plus, as the article mentions, to land a hospital right in the middle of a crisis area.

    Maybe the sight of giant buildings floating in the sky will become more common in the later century?
  • Some possible unvoiced concerns:

    "I'm worried that one of these things will blow away with my new house attached to it."

    or...

    "I'm worried one of these things will drop a skyscraper on my house."

    "What would happen if I poked it with a pin....?"
    ________________________________________________

  • You're wrong. Another company here in Germany has succeeded in developing another big Airship (Zeppelin NT, website is here: http://www.zeppelin-nt.com/index_uk.html) - Its not as big as the Cargolifter, but definitely bigger than the Advertising blimps. It is designed for tourism, making possible very low and very slow flights, but at the same time not as loud as if you would use a helicopter. i think it is designed for somewhere around 20 passengers... By the way, both the Zeppelin NT and the Cargolifter are not simple blimps but more sophisticated zeppelins (they have a solid frame).
  • When i read a popular science article over a year ago pertaining to this subject, i laughed. Now, i see that many of the predictions that were made are coming true...
    Airships are simply safer and more economical... I dont think that anyone would think of using hydrogen anymore :-)... and if the engines die, it doesnt crash, and can be controlled slowly down to the ground, or it can wait for help.

    They're more economical because they dont need engines to support them, and the helium (or whatever) can be reused.
  • How do they connect the building to the blimp?

    Wireless connection is the latest hot trend over here in Europe, and I think in the U.S. as well. Does this answer your question?

  • "How do they connect the building to the blimp? "
    They will probably use cables, or just land the blimp on the building and connect it that way.

    "How do they keep the blimp stationary while placing the building on its destined site? "
    They will probably have to constantly use the engines to compensate for the wind. Much like floating oil rigs are constantly compensating for wind and water movements.

    "And how do they diconnect the building? I can imagine the blimp will go up like a cork once the building is disconnected."
    Im sure again they will use there engines to keep it from climing too fast. But i don't think this will be a real issue. The blimp won't launch like a cork. (or rocket) Just take a helium filled balloon (like one you get at a carnival) and tie a rock to it. Let it sit on the ground and then cut the string. The balloon will go up but it won't shoot of like a cork.
  • "And then there's N.C.'s aviation heritage," Hoyt says. "The fact that powered flight began with the Wright Brothers in 1903 just a couple of hours away from our site is a nice connection."

    "Hopefully, in the late part of 2003, the prototype will be ready to come out of the (German) hangar and be certified," says Mike Hoyt, CargoLifter spokesman. "That will be the go signal for us here in North Carolina. Once that prototype is certified, then we will begin to clear land and start building here."

    The first of these ships will be launched 100 years after the original, and everybody knows that the number three is significant. Something very important is afoot here.

    In other news...
    Germany starts a another World War. Plans to produce Hospital sized thermonuclear devices, or "H-Bombs", are presently under development.
  • "We are approaching 2003, which is the centennial for flight," says Bellur Nagabhushan, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at St. Louis University. "And I'm really hoping the CargoLifter will be a reality by then.

    The centennial for POWERED flight, perhaps, but airships (or at least their ancestors) were around long before the Wright brothers got off the ground. Sometimes corporate hype astonishes even me :)

  • Hmm, good point... but most disaster sites these days aren't short of water. There's generally a river or a sea or something. Drinking water, now, that's another matter. But these things could just take it out of the nearest river, typhoid and all.
    And if you have to ship a hospital to the middle of a desert (or even, say, a great big tank of water) I guess sand or rocks would work just as well as ballast. Get the refugees to pack it into containers. One man can shift a cubic yard of sand in one hour - halve that for famine victims - only a day's work for a few hundred refugees. And 160 tonnes of water would take care of their needs for months.
  • There are photographs at NASA Ames (where I happen to work) of blimps being used to raise the girders of the 40'x80' wind tunnel (near where my office is) in the 1940's. Ames is located on the south-west end of the San Francisco bay and gets fairly constant winds (great for kites) but not terribly strong winds (surely 25mph.) I'll keep my eye out to see if winds are much of a problem for blimp-based construction... A small version of the photo is available at: http://www.arc.nasa.gov/about_ames/timeline.html Nonetheless, if you get a chance and can find your way onto the base (likely to become easier once that end of the base is converted into the research park) there's a wonderful aviation museum in Hanger 1 covering the dirigible that was housed there and used in WWII as an observation vessel (the U.S.S Macon.) Also see: http://code.arc.nasa.gov/jf/history/ (P.S. Ames is the west-coast "hub" for blimps, maybe you'll see more blimps in the valley with increased interest...There haven't been any blimps around for about a year now. :( )
  • fluidify the Helium to reduce buoyancy.

    Of course that would reduce the bouyancy by a great deal but you don't need to go that far. The bouyancy comes from the relative low density of the hydrogen gas compared to the atmosphere. You can compress gasses a lot; the significant reduction in volume shoves the density way up and so your bouyancy decreases.

    A sufficient array of gas bottles and decent pumps would do the trick I reckon. If you've even used Helium you know you can get one hell of a lot of gas into a 'small' bottle but the bottles sure aren't floating around ;0).

  • I wonder if airships could be armored and outfitted to function as high altitude carriers, that are not waterbound? Crimson Skies used this idea extensively. Could it be possible to make a flying carrier? Jets could return to be rearmed and refueled, no need to fly back to the sea. How much lift would it need, for example, to have 3 or four meter thick advanced panzer? It could also have defence turrets and all that. And imagine it dropping bombs from WAAAAAAAAY above. Flak couldn't hurt it's heavily armored below. Okay, I'll stop dreaming, you keep on talkin'
  • (warning: crap science approaching at warp 9.999)
    how about scrapping the whole standard panzer idea, putting only the cover needed to protect from bullets, and put LOTS of anti-missile defences on it. After all, it could be the flying fortress, a defensive carrier that goes pot-shotting missiles from flight. Heck, isn't DARPA already drawing powerarmors and putting massive lasers on jumbo jets? Why not try to build a zeppelin based on the best modern technology, with rigid frame made of composite materials. Also, the whole balloon thingy could be made thick and rubbery below the light protective layering. How much passive protection would it need to withstand a salvo(4 or 8) of modern air-to-air missiles? How about outfitting a fission reactor on it, and giving ACTIVE thrust downward, imagine a massive jumpjet system used on harriers and on other similar short/vertical takeoff planes... a continual push upwards... a 500000 kg flying fortress would need 4905000 newton effective thrust to stay afloat. I'd imagine it creating massive heat below it, not to mention the amount of air it would circulate, it would make a fucking hurricane. Large fins would let it direct the thrust for movement... but, my point would be: Not for bombing, but carrying fighter planes, maybe drone fighter/interceptors.
  • I'm guessing it's a matter of what the engineers consider acceptable safety margins. Assuming they want 30 years out of the aircraft without it falling apart, it's better to put less strain on it during long stretches of peace-time. During wartime, who cares about a little extra wear-and-tear on the plane when urgent supplies need to be flown...
  • ... a helium-filled airship that can carry 350,000 pounds.

    Compare that to the C-5 Galaxy, max wartime payload: 291,000 lbs (source: U.S. Air Force Online Encyclopedia [af.mil]). More than the biggest transport aircraft in the US! But easier to shoot down of course.
  • It's not to hard to get a city to approve the movement of a few power lines and some police escorts in order to move some BUF. But can you imagine the bureaucratic nightmare that asking to be able to float a McDonald's over a residential neighborhood would produce? Would you want them floating the first one over YOUR house?

    Like a lot of other things, the biggest problems are technological (that only takes a litle talent and money to solve forever). The big problems are social.

  • IMHO, an interesting path of development this technology might follow is the advent of really giant airships, maybe ten miles long, carrying domed cities on top. They would stay in the air permanently and the inhabitants could spend all of their lives drifting around the globe.
  • This sounds like what the incredibly genius visionary Buckminster Fuller talked about in his Dymaxion Home concept - modular homes delivered and installed by aircraft/helicopter.
  • Man, I love these things. When I was a kid (well, a younger kid), I used to dream of piloting a giant airship. Come to think of it, I still do. There's something magical about a machine that moves through the air gracefully and silently, and looks as big as a mountain. Airplanes are cool, but they don't have that magical feel - it's very obvious that they are in the air through brute force, that the sky given the chance would hurl them to the ground. Airships just seem to belong among the clouds. Am I making any sense?

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