5 ms·

Trains (etc) require a lot of infrastructure, especially if you've forgotten to plan for them for a century or so. In Australia, the Sydney - Canberra - Melbou

by Jedd 8y ago

Trains (etc) require a lot of infrastructure, especially if you've forgotten to plan for them for a century or so. In Australia, the Sydney - Canberra - Melbourne route would be a potentially interesting one for this, as road travel averages 100km/hr, but has obvious downsides. These are short leg trips, though I don't expect this tech would alleviate most of the land-based delays, and (traditional) incumbents would not be happy if they did. Either way, a less painful than jet, cheaper than jet, (slightly) faster than car, less attention demanding than car, travel option would certainly be relevant to quite a few people's interests around the world.

Pxtl 8y ago
I'd assume everywhere in Oz is serviced by roads that normal trucking could handle.
- bigiain 8y ago
  That kinda only makes sense if you define "everywhere" as "everywhere people currently want to go". There are _huge_ swathes of Australia that probably don't have a single passable road within 100km. Once you get much more that a couple of hundred km from the coast, Australia is effectively empty. Any population is way down in measurement noise.
petre 8y ago
Not to mention safer than a car or jet. Airships are quite safe, contrary to what people think after what happened to the Hindenburg. I wonder how this hibrid airship behaves in high winds.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >I wonder how this hibrid airship behaves in high winds. Worse than an aircraft of similiar capability and better than an airship of similar capability. So somewhere between "tolerable" and "don't even try"
- bigiain 8y ago
  I'm not sure I'd classify modern passenger jets as "unsafe".
  - petre 8y ago
    They aren't unsafe but hybrid airships with the current air passenger transport procedures in place could be even safer. If a HAV goes down with 150 kmh speed and 60% buoyancy there's a better chance the passengers would survive provided there is no pressure loss. Here's a video of the Airlander 10 prototype crashing: https://youtu.be/Mg-RPTiVa_Q https://youtu.be/Mg-RPTiVa_Q

by Jedd 8y ago

Pxtl 8y ago

I'd assume everywhere in Oz is serviced by roads that normal trucking could handle.

bigiain 8y ago
That kinda only makes sense if you define "everywhere" as "everywhere people currently want to go". There are _huge_ swathes of Australia that probably don't have a single passable road within 100km. Once you get much more that a couple of hundred km from the coast, Australia is effectively empty. Any population is way down in measurement noise.

petre 8y ago

Not to mention safer than a car or jet. Airships are quite safe, contrary to what people think after what happened to the Hindenburg. I wonder how this hibrid airship behaves in high winds.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>I wonder how this hibrid airship behaves in high winds. Worse than an aircraft of similiar capability and better than an airship of similar capability. So somewhere between "tolerable" and "don't even try"
bigiain 8y ago
I'm not sure I'd classify modern passenger jets as "unsafe".
- petre 8y ago
  They aren't unsafe but hybrid airships with the current air passenger transport procedures in place could be even safer. If a HAV goes down with 150 kmh speed and 60% buoyancy there's a better chance the passengers would survive provided there is no pressure loss. Here's a video of the Airlander 10 prototype crashing: https://youtu.be/Mg-RPTiVa_Q https://youtu.be/Mg-RPTiVa_Q