The Age of the Airship Returns? 315
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The discouraging prior art (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article it looks like they want to use those machines to survey... Hmmm... Big brother?
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Re:The discouraging prior art (Score:5, Insightful)
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To clarify, the US government (world's major helium producer) prohibited the sale of helium to the Zeppelin Company (generally referred to as a precautionary military embargo, though according to this guy [blogspot.com] it was directly related to the swastikas on the fins), so they revised the design to use hydrogen.
Re:Clarification on Helium Ban (Score:5, Informative)
Sky Captain calling (Score:5, Funny)
Idea full of hot air (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great (Score:2)
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http://www.corrosionsource.com/handbook/periodic/ [corrosionsource.com]
The reason why we use Hydrogen, or Helium is because they are light and actually make it worthwhile to float. Hydrogen is the lightest because it has a weight of 1. Below that is Li which is slightly heavier than H, but just as unstable as H. Though if you look at the noble gasses below Helium is Neon, which has a weight of 10. In other words 5 times heavier.
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What about a vacuum in a cleverly engineered light weight container? Or hot air? Buckminster Fuller had an idea of mile diameter geodesic domes that would levitate from waste heat. They only need to be 1 degree hotter than their environment -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_nine_(Tensegrity_sphere) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Oh great (Score:5, Funny)
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Hydrogen (Score:2)
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Re:Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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'
Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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The question with hydrogen is, "Has technology advanced since then to safely use it", I don't know anything about airships but I will assume that if we can go into space and back safely we can build an airship that can safely use hydrogen.
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Can we safely transport Hydrogen. Yes... Can we safely transport Hydrogen and float? Answer is no...
Using Hydrogen means we need to weigh how much safety to reasonable expect. Unless of course we happen to develop some super tensile spider web type technology that can be used to safely contain hydrogen. Though I would not trust that technology worth a darn. From the periodic table Hydrogen is just too darn unstable... Look at the periodic table and see what it neighbors are...
http://www.c [corrosionsource.com]
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Re:Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Or hours in transit.
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Heck, why can't they even use a non-flammable helium/hydrogen mixture? The cost of
Re:Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
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But not only that, but the Hindenburg had a NAME... it was "unique" as was the Titanic (how many steam ships sank, how many ships sink today, compared to how many planes wreck?).
It wasn't the fact that they were rarities, and there were plenty of survivors. It was that they had names and were memorable, movies were made, books were written.
They were patronized by a variety of big names of their age. Some, (like Astor and some of his high class acquaintance
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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.
While you've got a point, I just wanted to point out that there are a LOT of flights that go on every single day of the year. Statistically speaking, yes, news-worthy crashes are going to happen once or twice a year.
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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].
best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin (Score:4, Funny)
Cool.
Re:best elements of the helicopter and the zeppeli (Score:2, Funny)
A new mode of transport in general? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:A new mode of transport in general?OLD CARTRIDG (Score:2)
Interesting that your drunk hillbilly would select a cartridge that's now 102 years old in design. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.
Re:A new mode of transport in general?OLD CARTRIDG (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:A new mode of transport in general? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Air traffic concerns (Score:2)
I was about to post a similar comment, but you beat me to the punch!
In the age of the airship, there were far less air traffic, so coordinating between different types of air vehicles wasn't that difficult. Now with tens of thousands of aircraft in the air over the continenta
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This again? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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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 fa
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(I was looking up the values to reply to the GP, but you beat me to it)
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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 bec
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Would hydrogen still be a Bad Idea if airships were fully automatic/remote controlled and only used for cargo?
A GPS system could be u
Not an airship.... (Score:4, Informative)
An Airship? (Score:2)
Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly (Score:4, Interesting)
What about shipping? (Score:2)
I'd have thought they'd mostly be competing with long-distance shipping, where speed of delivery isn't necessarily critical. If the developed world is going to try and cut down on carbon emissions and pollutants (which ships are great at even though it's largely ignored), or at least try to make it look as such and start taxing the use of cargo ships much more highly, massive heavy-lift airships might become more cost effective if a few problems are figured out.
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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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Only 40 Years Ago... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
obligatory python reference (Score:2)
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Brett
Airships seem to be more common than most think (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Two questions (Score:2)
Propper modding technique (Score:5, Funny)
hasn't this been done before, long ago? (Score:4, Informative)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Helium Supply (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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).
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Correct. The way you get helium is: go to Amarillo, Texas and drill a hole.
Amarillo sits atop a huge deposit of alpha-emitting radioactive ores. An alpha particle is two protons with two neutrons attached, which from another perspective is a helium nucleus. As soon as it finds two electrons it grabs them, and ba-bing, ba-boom, helium atom.
The consortium that holds the government contract to extract helium has been a major local profi
Dunno, I've heard this before (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with He... (Score:3, Insightful)
Airships! Neato (Score:3, Interesting)
Classic airships were terribly difficult to operate given the technology of the day. Landings were particularly difficult thanks to the strange concept of the mooring tower. Perhaps classic-era zeppelins could have been safer if they used a winch-down technology similar to helicopters on modern destroyers. In heavy seas, the helicopter cannot land conventionally. A cable is dropped to the deck where it is secured in a winch drum. The chopper pilot applies full throttle as he is slowly winched out of the sky. If the deck rises, he rises, and likewise falls when it falls. This prevents him from getting smacked into splinters by an unpredictable wave. For a zeppelin, a few mooring lines dropped from the air could leave it secured against errant wind gusts while it is winched down. Of course, we now have computer-aired control systems and could use rotating thruster pods like modern ships for three-dimensional maneuvering.
While hydrogen is probably still our best modern fuel, I'm curious as to what kind of unobtanium would be required to create vacuum airships, ones that don't just use a lighter than air gas but completely evacuated containers to create buoyancy.
Final thought: I hope they put more thought into this than the Germans who came up with Zeppelin NT [wikipedia.org]. I'm still waiting for Titanic ME.
Two words: wind shear (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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Besides I was just watching some Stargate reruns and got a little confused.
A few relevant notions (Score:2)
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Balloon_20Notions#1154531591 [halfbakery.com]
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Well, seeing as you lot are a democracy, that's kinda how it works.
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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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anti-gravity tech (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Anti-gravity tech (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anti-gravity tech (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. (Score:3, Informative)
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}
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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 :) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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But really, I just meant that one disaster almost a century ago shouldn't bar us from using hydrogen in modern craft.
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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
Re:Helium please :) (Score:5, Informative)
"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."
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>Was the second sentence meant to support the first? Because I don't really think it does.
I think he's saying that the Hindenburg disaster didn't lead to a scarcity in the supply of people. The person supply being as plentiful as it is, we shouldn't be so afraid of spending it once in a while.