Boeing-Skyhook Airship Faces Technical Challenges 185
waderoush writes "Since the Hindenburg disaster, dreams of giant airships capable of lifting heavy cargo have been restricted mainly to Popular Science covers
(with the notable exception of the Cargolifter AG failure) — until Boeing and a Canadian company called Skyhook announced on July 8 that they're building a 300-foot-long, helium-filled craft that will lift loads of up to 40 tons and carry them 200 miles. But an aeronautical engineer at the University of Washington cautions that there are still some big problems to be worked out with mega-airships, including their stability in turbulent weather."
Oblig. Simpsons (Score:4, Funny)
"I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogiro?"
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, when the Hindenburg (which was among a tiny minority of airships that actually crashed) wrecked, a scant few people were killed, a couple injured, and the rest survived. When an airliner crashes... well, survival chances are... not quite as good. So lets get it right, if an airliner pilot wrecks the plane, you're fairly likely to DIE. If a zeppelin or something to that effect crashes, you've got a fairly good chance to tell a "wow look at me" story about your "shipwreck adventure" which is probably why the Hindenburg got such note...
Do your own research on the subject, but they actually were safer than airplanes (and significantly more economic). Either way, hopefully you'll dig up your own research on the subject.
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a crash upon landing -- i.e. the airship caught fire at an altitude of about 100 ft when approaching its docking tower. Your chances of surviving an airliner wreck from 35,000 feet are quite small -- your chances of surviving a crash or fire upon a (somewhat controlled) landing are much greater.
-b.
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:4, Informative)
Well a plane crash-landing from 100 ft. is usually going a couple of hundred miles per hour, getting to zero from that speed usually involves quite a bit of force.
A blimp crashing from 100 ft. while be going at much slower speeds and thus your chance of survival will be greatly enhanced.
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True, airship crashes rarely involved the speeds or energy that are associated with airline crashes. In many airship accidents there are survivors (and more of them).
However, dying in an airship crash is not the only means of dying related to airship transportation. Line men (the guys that guided the airships to the mooring masts) would pull the airship into place (for the fine positioning work). They were accustomed to pulling the airship down and occasionally would be lifted off the ground (think big h
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, chances of surviving a fire on the ground in an aircraft are quite low. Most of the fatalities in air crashes come from people who burn to death shortly after impact, rather than the impact itself.
I'm also reminded of numerous crashes which happen quite close to the ground which result in massive casualties--Tenerife, in particular, comes to mind. The greatest loss of life in aviation history came about because of a collision on the ground.
One of the things that makes airline accidents so deadly isn't necessarily the altitude, but the speed and the fact that these things are carrying so much damn fuel. I wonder which has more energy, the envelope of the Hindenburg or your average passenger jet fuel tank...
(Incidentally, airships can crash land from quite high altitudes with minimal ill effects. Because they're lighter than air, and contain so much lifting gas, even sizable holes leak quite slowly in comparison to the envelope volume, and the airship drops slowly. Fatal airship crashes have usually involved loss of control, rather than a sudden loss of lift; even the Hindenburg, with the entire envelope aflame, crashed rather gently.)
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
I'm also reminded of numerous crashes which happen quite close to the ground
Most crashes happen quite close to the ground, with the exception of midair crashes, which are comparatively rare.
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Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:5, Informative)
One of the things that makes airline accidents so deadly isn't necessarily the altitude, but the speed and the fact that these things are carrying so much damn fuel. I wonder which has more energy, the envelope of the Hindenburg or your average passenger jet fuel tank...
Interesting question. I did some quick googling and math. I wasn't particularly careful, so corrections are welcome.
The Hindenburg had a gas volume of 200,000 m^3, at 0.089 kg/m^3 standard density of hydrogen gas, that is a total hydrogen load of 17,800 kg. Hydrogen has a high energy density of 143 MJ/kg.
A fairly heavily loaded 747 will be carrying 136,000 kg of Jet-A at 43 MJ/kg.
So, the 747 has more than twice the energy onboard, although smaller jets would be rougly equal, all depending on the fuel load. I also did not include the diesel onboard the Hindenburg (or its rather flammable aluminum paint).
One significant difference between hydrogen and Jet-A burning is that the hydrogen is going to rise once the gas bags rupture and not hang around on the ground like Jet-A.
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It is interesting to take a good long look at the news footage of the crash. If you do, you'd notice that all the hydrogen burned off in the first couple of seconds, and by the time the Hindenburg actually hit the ground, it had all gone.
The fire and most casualties were from the combustion of the diesel fuel and other combustible materials in the structure, not from the hydrogen itself.
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:4, Informative)
I thought most of the casualties were from people jumping -- the people who stayed with the wreckage as it settled to the ground were mostly ok.
-b.
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Jet-A also more closely resembles kerosene than it does Gasoline.
It burns rather slowly, and generally not explosively. Granted, if a tank full of jet fuel ignites, it's definitely a very bad thing, but it'll take more than a few minutes to burn.
An airship full of Hydrogen gas will combust almost instantaneously.
You also have the issue of public perception. The Hindenberg disaster was a fairly horrific spectacle (big explosion, people running around on fire, etc....). This is why we've spent billions (t
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As you say, you left out the fact that Hindenburg loaded about 60,000 kg of diesel fuel on takeoff and usually had almost half that left on landing. There was also about 15,000 kg of flammable fabric and doping compound (your "paint"). Doped cotton fabric similar to that on Hindenburg has been tested many times and is hardly astonishingly flammable, despite Dr. Bain's sensational claims*.
I would put the two craft fairly equal in readily liberated energy content; however, Hindenburg landed literally at zer
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Actually,
The greatest loss of passenger life in a aviation history happened when a Cessna 152 crashed over a cemetery in Poland in 1982. To this day, they are STILL recovering bodies.
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Smoke inhalation, rather than burning. Look at the CO (carbon mon-oxide) figures for their bloodstreams, smoke residues inside the lungs. Dead before cooked, normally.
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:4, Insightful)
but they actually were safer than airplanes (and significantly more economic)
Not if you factor in that time = money. Then they aren't so economically competitive with jet aircraft because of how slow they are. Now maybe compared to a cruise liner...
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:5, Insightful)
For business trips, I agree with your point. For vacation travel I might disagree, depending on the cost and luxury of airship travel. A airship ticket from NYC to London that costs the same as the airplane ticket might be a good deal if I have a decent sized seat and can walk to a dining area and eat real food on my 24 hr trip as opposed to being cramped in an economy seat with a microwave meal for 7 hrs. If the trip is actually part of the vacation it could be worth it.
Time vs Money airfare (Score:2)
For many of us, air travel is beyond our means, or a luxury we can archieve a couple times in our lifetime - I can't find exact statistics but I'm pretty certain that more than half the population in the world has never flown, or moved outside their country. I'd be willing to bet it's actually something like 4/5ths of the world population (I didn't find the actual stats but I found one that says only 7% of the world's population has ever owned a car).
If you offe
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Airship travel might be worth it the first time as part of the holiday. But after that only if you really like airship travel - just like people who like those ocean cruises to "nowhere".
24 hours from NYC to London isn't bad but it assumes the airship can sustain 230 kph.
I believe most current airships are slow max 70-80 knots (130-150 kph). If the airship only manages 70 knots it wil
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You got modded Troll *twice*. It looked like a thoughtful post to me. Was it secretly one big, long dick joke and I just can't fit it into my head? Or are the mods just being anal again?
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When you factor the taxes / wars and occupations that need to be done in order to keep unfriendly oil producing nations under control, I'd say you're not factoring in ALL the costs. Also, given the level of abuse and control in airlines (some justify it by saying that a private air control solution wouldn't work) I'd say the price we're ALL paying for airlines is abusive. I would prefer to not have regulation (because of the slowness of the airship) and be able to have my own without having to undergo the
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but they actually were safer than airplanes (and significantly more economic) Not if you factor in that time = money. Then they aren't so economically competitive with jet aircraft because of how slow they are. Now maybe compared to a cruise liner...
Aircraft are more economic than ships because they spend less time in transit and the cost of labour is lower. Airships seem to be a step in the wrong direction. I expect that semiballistic transport will be economic sooner than we expect because of increases in the cost of labour.
Re:Oblig. Simpsons (Score:4, Informative)
At a rest stop in ohio, I noticed a sign about the crash of the shenandoah, an earlier version of these. Still, high time they came back. Skyhook is a brilliant name for it.
They should give Randall Munroe a free ride.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10432 [roadsideamerica.com]
America had four zeppelins of its own in the 1920s and 1930s. One -- the Los Angeles -- was built by the Germans, flew successfully for a decade, and retired with dignity. The other three -- the Shenandoah, Akron, and Macon -- were built by Americans, and each crashed less than two years after its first flight.
The first, and the only one to crash on land (and thus be suitable as a tourist attraction) was the Shenandoah. In September 1925 it was ordered to conduct an ill-advised publicity tour of midwestern state fairs. Less than 24 hours into its flight "the strongest airship in the world" was caught in a thunderstorm, torn to pieces, and scattered across the rolling hills of Noble County in southeastern Ohio. Amazingly, 29 of its crew of 43 survived.
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I've never had the pleasure of flying on a jet airliner THROUGH a thunderstorm. I wonder how that would turn out. Hell they make people turn off their laptops and cellphones, and those cause MINOR interference, I wonder what a thunderstorm would do. Since a thunderstorm several miles away causes my speakers to crack every time it thunders.
Seriously, never been in a storm with a jetliner. Anyone have any experiences to relate?
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I have. It's not at all pleasant, and not something that you can sleep through by any means without serious medication. I know that we didn't fly through the heaviest parts -- that can actually be lethal due to hail and some seriously evil wind, and planes have been knocked from the sky by this -- but it was bad enough that I would prefer to avoid it, though I don't mind most turbulence. I can't find it right now, but I've seen photos of test planes that were flown through thunderstorms, and they came ba
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I'm always surprised that, when flying through weather, the other passengers never seem to stare coldly at me when I put my hands up in the air and shout, "Woo!" with every big drop...
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They're too busy trying not to spew. Turning the head during motion like that can worsen nausea. Otherwise, they probably would.
Now, if you consider the question of why you haven't been "accidentally" smacked by one of them, you may have a real question on your hands.
Private Pilots Night at Six Flags (Score:3, Interesting)
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The strongest airship in the world?
Someone's been working overtime to overstate a falsehood. The Shenandoah, Akron, and Macon were (I might have one wrong) in the class of airships that were built using either stolen information from Zepplinwerks or war-plan Zepplin design.
The big difference was that anti-aircraft, rockets, and high-altitude air flight was pushing into the previous "safe" altitudes for airships. As a countermeasure the airships were being built even lighter for a higher maximum ceiling.
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Airships really don't work well in inclement weather, and many crashes were at least in part caused by unexpected bad weather (even the Hindenburg). The thing that makes revisiting airships in the modern era potentially interesting is that we now have very good Doppler radar, weather satellites, etc. So, it shouldn't be that hard to fly around bad weather in many places.
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Hindenburg was hydrogen filled with hydrogen. Although there are lots of ideas about the cause of the accident, the effect would have been much less fatal in a modern, helium filled airship.
So a modern version of this would have had near to 100% survival as is would have just settled to the ground and collapsed.
mod up (Score:2)
Airshipwreak (Score:2)
.
I suggest as a quick corrective Len Deighton's 1978 book Airshipwreak. - a 74 page photo book of crashes with brief explanations of their cause.
Rich Archbold and Ken Marschall's The Hindenburg: An Illustrated History is less scathing an overview, but doesn't gloss over the problems.
It would be more truthful to say that only the Graf survived until retirement.
The structural integrity of the rigid airship wa
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Interestingly, this was announced on the 170th birthday of Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
Again, I read the article (Score:5, Insightful)
This is, once again, a stupid and worthless article. Allow me to summarize again.
1. Someone's trying to build something
2. Someone else says it was hard a few decades ago
That's it. Gee, thanks for the news. Once again, "Someone is going to try to do something" is not a headline!
Oh, its a headline alright, to many people. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Once again, "Someone is going to try to do something" is not a headline!"
Sure its a headline.
But, for you, when people are doing something huge, you apparently dont want to know till its done. Many news stories are worthy just that someone i undertaking the challenge, usually because of the scope of the challenge and implications. Some things take longer. Like USA decides to go to the moon was pretty big back in the day. That certainly is/was news to even try the feat. You seriously wouldn't be interested
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Your ideal newspaper would read "2020: The USA successfully set up their base mars yesterday after 12 years of work on the project"?
That actually sounds awesome. No more bs news flogging vaporware stories anymore...
Re:Oh, its a headline alright, to many people. (Score:5, Informative)
You mis-understand me. "people are trying to build an airship" is news-worthy even if they were built every day. But that's not this article's focus. This article focuses on how some other people (not the airship builders) mention problems with airship design. This article is about raining on someone else's parade.
What makes it particularly stupid is that these people who are predicting the builders' failure are doing so in an industry where virtually nothing has been done for decades. So essentially they are using antiquated data to argue against current endeavours. That's not only mean, it's retarded -- in the correct sense of the word.
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So, you don't want to see critiques either - just, as deft said, news of either completion or failure?
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I mis-spoke. It's not that you misunderstood me, it's that you misunderstand challenges. In any venture, of any kind, "challenges remain". That's not critiquing someone else's plans.
If I were to critique an airship builder's plans, I might say something to the effect of: "they've decided to use an elongated shape, which is unlikely to succeed because an elongated shape would make the ship more susceptable to wind turbulence.".
That's a critique. But that's not what these guys said. They say the equivale
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Had the author spoke in generalities, you'd have a point.
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Here's what happened. Someone got wind (heh) of an airship being built. Gregory T. Huag was assigned the journalistic task of covering the story. So he called Boeing and SkyHook to say that we was covering their story. They gave him their standard media pres kit that said it's big, it's blue, and it's scary, but it's a friendly monster too. Here are three dimensions, and a capacity. When he asked for more, he got things like "not available for comment" "that's confidential" "we can't discuss it at thi
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No, by my logic, if someone were trying to fly to the moon in a helicopter, it wouldn't be news-worthy because we don't need "any sensible engineer" to "point out problematic issues". We can all do that ourselves.
The whole purpose of getting an expert opinion is to bring some sort of expertiese to the issue. It's not to make the news official, it's to include something that the reader doesn't already know -- that the common person doesn't already know.
Sometimes, and it's really funny when it's true, reade
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Don't worry, assuming they do succeed, they'll just say it's not reproducible.
Assuming they do build a second ship, then it's not scalable.
There's always news to be made in pointing out that old solutions are old and therefore not likely to work in the modern world. But then again, there's always news to be made in pointing out that the modern world is more modern than it need be and old solutions are making a comeback.
I don't think that there's news to be made on how news in itself isn't considered compel
Where's the beef? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's good to see that Giant Engineering Firms are still taking on big engineering challenges.
Keep playing, guys and gals.
Airships are intrinsically fragile (Score:2, Interesting)
Almost all the large airships that were built in the past crashed, Google can tell you that [google.com] (I removed Hindenburg from the list because that was a fire, not a crash). As a matter of fact, I think they ALL crashed, except but one, that is I think I once read about a large airship that was retired due to old age, but I'm not sure.
Being fragile is an intrinsic condition of a structure that must be very large, yet very lightweight. Heavier-than-air craft are much sturdier, just because they are, well, they are
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Well, they may have all crashed, but we have had the better part of a century of aircraft engineering since then. Add to that, Helium is no longer a strategic gas, and thus rationed.
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What about a helium shortage? [wired.com]
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Maybe some research into safer hydrogen based airships would be in order. I have no clue what they could do but I don't think anyone has looked into it.
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I think they ALL crashed, except but one
As a child I watched airships sail over the pacific ocean and Tillamook Bay [wikipedia.org] during the summer months. They would launch from the old military blimp hangers, only one would survive and it would go on to become the Tillamook Air Museum [wikipedia.org]
And in high school they payed us to roll the bastards up for storage as they were no longer to be taken to the skies... So I can tell you sir, with the utmost confidence that all the airships did not, in fact, crash.
Blimps are non-rigid and small (Score:3, Informative)
Blimps are relatively small craft, made of rubberized fabric, they are in a different class from the larger airships with metal structures.
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The main types of airship are non-rigid (or blimps), semi-rigid and rigid. Blimps are small airships without internal skeletons. Semi-rigid airships are slightly larger and have some form of internal support such as a fixed keel. Rigid airships with full skeletons, such as the massive Zeppelin transoceanic models, all but disappeared after several high-profile catastrophic accidents during the mid-20th century.
Re:Where's the beef? (Score:5, Interesting)
We certainly do. The one for aerostatically-suspended vehicles is "Fly in nice weather".
An airplane suspends itself entirely with aerodynamic force, which the pilot can manipulate to a high degree and on a very short time scale. Hit a downward bump, pull back a little on the stick, lift increases, flight path remains nearly constant.
An airship suspends itself principally with an aerostatic force which can't be modified very much, and maintains the desired flight path with relatively small aerodynamic forces which are manipulated in the same way as an airplane. The latter forces just don't have enough range to deal with serious turbulence.
Besides making maneuvering difficult or impossible, turbulence presents another threat: stress. While the aerodynamic forces the pilot can apply are small, the ones a thunderstorm can apply are not. Aerodynamic forces depend on the surface area of an object, and the surface area of an airship is huge. Big forces, big stresses on a necessarily lightweight structure.
rj
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Unless they are massively overpowered, lighter than air vehicles are only appropriate for calm conditions.
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I can fix that one ... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, duh. Don't fly them in a storm them. Geez, do these guys need to have everything explained to them?
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Cost Benefits Can Be Evaluated (Score:3, Interesting)
Mankind does Life Threating actions everyday; Flying Aircraft is but one dangerous occupation. And when the weather is rough, good pilots change flight plans. One benefit would be that Truck Jackings would go down, (a bad use of words here...). But what is the cost per ton by the Consignee? What is the average ground speed for cargo delivery. What are the Logistics of this Grand Design? I know this; "Point to Point Delivery" would open up our congested Freeways, that's cool.
Just a thought, but what about a "Sport Light Aircraft Blimp"? Just please don't call this Aircraft an "Icarus".
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For some really big things, roads are not enough.
Sure, there's a lot of ways you can load trucks. You can make them double-wide. You can purpose build them for specific loads. I've even seen videos of hovercraft-like enhanced weight distribution systems for trucks (no idea if it ever went into production).
Still, there are some items that are really so big, you have to start building the infrastructure to move them prior to building them. A ship like this would remove the need to build, maintain, lease,
200 miles? (Score:3, Insightful)
It can carry 40 tons of cargo but only enough fuel to travel 200 miles? I can see this being useful for heavy construction, but c'mon- it can't be too hard to sacrifice a little bit of cargo space in order to extend the range dramatically. What am I missing?
-b
Mods on crack? (Score:5, Insightful)
+ 200 miles in a blimp = 8 hours You fly around with a refinery cracking tower for 8 hours you gonna want to take a leak.
+ Any long distance you do by ship or train. Pick up your oversized baggage directly from the ship, and fly it to its final destination.
+ If I can add my own: the weather can change a lot in 8 hours. Flying into a storm with a 50 ton windmill hanging from your butt is bad news.
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+ Any long distance you do by ship or train. Pick up your oversized baggage directly from the ship, and fly it to its final destination.
+ If I can add my own: the weather can change a lot in 8 hours. Flying into a storm with a 50 ton windmill hanging from your butt is bad news.
I think that the idea is for these to be able to haul large or awkwardly-shaped cargo to remotely-placed sites where transportation by ship/train isn't an option.
For instance, large portions of buildings can be completed in a workshop, and then flown and dropped into to their final sites.
In other cases, remote locations (like the oil fields of the Alaskan north slope) can be extremely problematic for transporting large equipment or goods using traditional methods. Although the range problem will still need
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nuetrally bouyant? (Score:2)
... I just had a thought: why not make the thing positively bouyant with the rotors tilted upward holding it down? Then the rotors could rotate around when it picks up a load. Then it could carry a heck of a lot more stuffs. Brilliant!
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Or.. just include staged compression pumps and high pressure helium tanks. Pump the helium back into the tanks to maintain neutral buoyancy. Then you only need replace leakage, rather than inefficient maneuvering wastage.
Obviously, I'm assuming that the fuel for the pumps is less valuable than the helium in the bladders.
What do you expect... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course there would be problems with an airship based on skyhooks.
Jeez
Too Much For Too Little (Score:2, Informative)
My problem with this aircraft is that for the complexity and cost of 4 heavy lift helicopters plus a giant airship all you get is twice the lifting power of a helicopter that was designed 30 years ago!? WTF? You can rent a Mi-26 today. [utair.ru] This project doesn't make any sense.
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"the complexity and cost of 4 heavy lift helicopters"
What makes you say that? It hasn't been built yet, so how do you know how much it will cost?
"all you get is twice the lifting power of a helicopter that was designed 30 years ago"
No, that helicopter can lift 60 tons, this vehicle can lift only 40, but the difference is that this vehicle does not need to lift itself.
"This project doesn't make any sense"
Sure it does. It moves twice the cargo, but generates only 2/3 the lift, so it's probably three times m
What is the advantage? (Score:2)
I love the idea of seeing giant airships make a comeback, but what is the practical angle? The article says that this ship can only lift twice the capacity of the most powerful helicopter (40 tons vs. 20 tons). Why not just split the load and take two choppers? Loads that can't be split to under 20 tons are probably rare, and they'd be non-existent in the drilling and mining operations this is designed to support.
Ultimately the factors that will matter are speed, safety, weather tolerance, and the cost per
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The price of helium ain't nothin' compared to the way the oil market is behaving.
Good thing, too. It would be tough to invade the sun.
Re:IF it works (Score:5, Informative)
Unless we run out of helium.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html [wired.com]
"At our current rate of consumption, Cliffside will likely be empty in 10 to 25 years, and the Earth will be virtually helium-free by the end of the 21st century."
Re:IF it works (Score:5, Funny)
Use nanotubes containing a vacuum.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think Stephenson created dirigibles built from nanotubes that "stored"(?) a vacuum. No hydrogen or helium needed.
It's all in the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.
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Did you even RTFA? Helium is a byproduct of oil extraction. If the oil dries up, no more helium, either. Unless you think transmuting elements is something that can be economically done on a large scale.
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How cool would it be to have a fusion-reactor-driven zeppelin that replenishes its own Helium?
OTOH, I'd imagine people would object to the possibility of a fusion reactor dropping on their house in case of an accident.
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OTOH, I'd imagine people would object to the possibility of a fusion reactor dropping on their house in case of an accident.
You mean more than they'd object to the possibility of say a jet engine or an entire jet liner dropping on their house in case of an accident?
Honestly, I think most people wouldn't complain if it happened to their house, as they'd likely be inside at the time and thus die from it.
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I was just thinking with amusment what would happen if the cargo itself were Evian water. you load it with 40 tonned of evian fly it to NY city, then unload it as you pump onboard 40 tonnes of NY city tapwater. Then dead head it back to the evian plant. where they now have to dispose of 40 tonnes on NY city tap before they load it up again.
Kinda makes bottle water transport seem even more ridiculous.
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Nice comment. Except for the part where you make the assumption that the ship is neutral with it's cargo. The article is talking about a ship that is neutral without it's cargo. Then it as rotors, just like an helicopter, for lifting the cargo. The rotors are compensating for the weight of the cargo. To go down, just slow the rotors. When you unload, the ship just stay there.
Try to read the article next time ;-)
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There is a reason EVERY picture of an airship teathered to the Empires state building looks the same - they only did it once
OR transfer lift gas... (Score:2)
...from the airship to the dock. It could be sold to the dock for money or "lift gas credit." Then when a load is being picked up, buy more gas/spend the credit. The tough part would be adding more gas in the right amount as the cargo goes on board...but a similar system is used with ships when adding/removing ballast when unloading or loading (except the ballast is basically free).
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Large pressurized tanks. Of course it will take some energy to run the compressor, but it shouldn't be anything compared to the cost of the gas itself. I'd also imagine it would be possible to recover some energy when refilling the airships, maybe with something like a centrifugal compressor in the filling line that powers a generator (like a car's turbo that has a generator in place of the compressor turbine). Just open a valve and the generator spins up, and the gas flows into the airship.
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your suggestions seem a bit dreamy. First the gas in the ballon won't be pure. and suppose you pressureized it to 1500 psi, or 100 times as dense as the ballon. This is going to take many narrow thick steel cyllinders, and still occupy 100's of the size of the balloon. Thermodynamics says you can't get back the work.
Your suggestion is however not impossible just so far over the line its unlikely to be practical.
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If you read the fine article you will discover that the helium in this airship exactly compensates for the weight of the vehicle, i.e. the tare weight, and uses propellers to lift the cargo (and to provide thrust). For most vehicles (anything bigger than a bicycle, I guess) the vehicle weighs more than the payload and most of the output of the engine has to go towards moving the vehicle rather than the payload. Here, the vehicle effectively weighs nothing and the entire output of the engine can be used to
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tonne != ton
1 tonne = 1,000 kg = 1,000,000 grams
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It does if He says it does.
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Re:Obligatory Hindenberg reference (Score:4, Funny)
Did you post a Hindenburg link expressly with the intention of garnering a "Flamebait" mod?
Genius!
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I think that a 40 ton container could be quite irrelevant when combined with a balloon the size of a jumbo jet when winds decide they will carry it in the wrong direction.
Re:Helium Crisis Approaching (Score:5, Interesting)
-b.
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Yes, American politician and TV pundits, there is an excess of them...
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Also this is a relatively conservative concept. The Cargolifter was supposed to be able to lift 160 tonnes.
If Ariships were to catch on again, we would probably see more efforts to scale it up a little.