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A recent paper proposes to bring zeppelins back
- eesmith 7y agoI've been hearing about the return of Zeppelins since the 1980s. Still hasn't happened. > But for all their high-tech advances, Hunt said, the new airships would still get their buoyancy from hydrogen, a highly flammable gas that is 14 times lighter than air. It’s the same gas the Hindenburg and the other big zeppelins used in the 1930s. As a reminder, the Hindenburg was originally designed for helium. They were unable to get the US to lift its ban on the export of helium under the Helium Control Act of 1927. > As an additional bonus, Hunt said, the fuel cell would generate as a byproduct water that could be released as the craft passed over regions hit by drought. That's isn't much amount of water, and certainly not enough to affect a drought. Figuring 2km long x 200m x 200m that's about 3E9 mol of gas. You need some lifting gas for the vehicle weight - call it 1E9 mol or 5E8 mol of water, which is 30K tons. That's 27 acre feet, which appears to be enough for about 15 acres of potatoes for a growing season, using numbers from https://www.ardentmills.com/media/1725/colorado-quinoa-sustainability-story.pdf https://www.ardentmills.com/media/1725/colorado-quinoa-susta... . And I think I'm highly over-estimating.
- gus_massa 7y agoNote that 15 acres ~= 2km x 30m, i.e. if the ship in 200m ~= 600ft tall, then the area that can be irrigated is only 1/6 of the shadow.
- jsilence 7y agoWell at least for now we are not running out of Helium: www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-06-28-huge-helium-discovery-life-saving-find
- input_sh 7y agoBut... we are. We're using it at a rate that's faster than the rate it is produced in. Just because we find a pocket or two that we haven't found before doesn't mean that the problem is gone. The new pockets are usually more difficult to extract helium from, and storing it and transporting it is a painful process to say the least. The problem won't be truly gone until we find a way to gather it from outer space.
- zihotki 7y agoBut still there is only a finite amount of it and with each use it disappears into the sky. It's not sustainable and not renewable so it's use must be limited and controlled if we want to leave some of it for future humanity.
- thombat 7y agoPresumably the generated water will be released immediately rather than being condensed to a holding tank, since weight is the enemy of all aircraft (c.f. airliners, which jettison condensate and "grey water" from sinks but hold the foul water from toilets). So there will be a continuous low-volume release of steam/warm water some hundreds of metres above the ground - in dry conditions it doesn't seem likely it will even reach the ground.
- mannykannot 7y agoeesmith is right; the amount of water is utterly negligible in this context. As it happens, however, the helium airships USS Akron and USS Macon had large condensers to recover the water from the exhaust, to reduce the amount of helium needed to be vented to compensate for the reduction in fuel weight. They can be seen as vertical stripes above the propellers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron#/media/File:USS_Akron_in_flight,_nov_1931.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron#/media/File:USS_Akro... Venting hydrogen is not nearly as expensive a proposition as venting helium. Nevertheless, the Graf Zeppelin was fueled by blau gas, which has a density almost the same as air, to avoid the issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas
- DrScump 7y agoFun fact: the original hangar at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale was built for the U.S.S. Macon.
- thombat 7y agoInteresting! I guess that's cheaper/lighter than compressing the helium back to storage tanks. I remember reading that one of the "new Zeppelin" firms planned to rotate the propulsion thrusters to create a downwards thrust when berthing, I think also to reduce problems with excess buoyancy when handling cargo.
- PietdeVries 7y agoWhat would the force of the wind be on a structure 2 km long and 200 meter wide? Just a little breeze will require an amazing force just to keep the thing docked. Think that you have to maneuvre the thing into position...
- eesmith 7y agoIt's 2+ km long when at elevation. From the paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590174519300145?via=ihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259017451... : > Docking airships is challenging due to their large size, limited control mechanisms, and high wind drag. Another particular issue is to keep the airship attached to the ground during windy episodes. The diameter of the airship hydrogen carrier (Fig. 2) is similar to the height of the Empire State Building in New York. It would be very challenging to keep such large airship from collapsing under strong superficial winds. On the other hand, balloon hydrogen carriers are not rigid and vary in size. Their volume on the ground is around seven times smaller than in the stratosphere (assuming a maximum operation height of 15 km). This is convenient because the size of the balloon hydrogen carrier on the ground is only 58% larger than the Hindenburg class airship
- gnikif 7y agoThe only reason to bring them back is the fancy steampunky look. From the practical side, they would be a step back.
- thombat 7y agoOne of the new Zeppelin firms is right beside the Friedrichshafen airport, and part (all?) of their business is scenic flights. There's certainly a frisson watching a zeppelin rise into the winter sunshine with the Swiss Alps behind it; made the RyanAir flight I was waiting for seem more than usually tame. Tame, but also quick, cheap, and safe. I'm glad I'm not an investor in such a firm, but also quietly glad that others are.
- chr1 7y agoStep back from what? A middle sized autonomous airship carrying one container, would be a huge step up from semi trucks, as it would be 2-3 times faster would not cause damage to roads, could be used in places where there are no good roads, and if thin film perovskite solar cells become reality would generate the energy needed for its flight by itself.
- thombat 7y agoA standard 6m shipping container has a maximum gross weight of 30,480kg. The current Zepplin NT craft have a payload of 1,900kg and are 75m long. So it seems that quite a substantial airship might be required, e.g. a modern version of the 240m long "Hindenburg" would be able to deliver a shipping container, given that [1] quotes it as having about 20,000kg of payload capacity (including crew, passengers, food) but allowing for further weight savings with modern aero engines, etc. [1] https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/calculating-lifting-capacity-of-airships-48df5cd7d147 https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/calculating-lifting-capacity-o...
- eigenloss 7y agoThey state the dimensions in the OP: a mile and a half long at altitude, 10 times larger than the Hindenburg, payload of 20,000 tons. No, not 20,000 pounds - tons.
- aww_dang 7y agoAllied forces went to great lengths in creating specialized bullets to ignite hydrogen from zeppelins. The common conception of zeppelins being wildly flammable seems misplaced in this context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomeroy_bullet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomeroy_bullet In my eyes zeppelin travel would be a welcome alternative to current air accommodations. In the same way I prefer taking a room on a train to air travel, I would prefer a cabin on an airship to either. If cargo can be transported, then I would expect a similar arrangement to the existing container ship passages.
- rgblambda 7y agoIn the article they talk about how the airships would be unmanned due to the risk of fire.
- squarefoot 7y agoWhich is a very shortsighted view from them IMO. An unmanned hydrogen filled airship may spare passengers and crew in case of an accident because there is none of either, but if catches fire over a stadium or a highway while carrying 5 grand pianos that wouldn't make it less deadly than the Hindenburg.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoCompared to a landing accident with a plane an airship is safer.
- CalRobert 7y agoThey can plan routes to avoid places like that, and most space is not populated (fields, etc.)
- bewo001 7y agoIn fact, two thirds of people aboard the Hindenburg survived. Since the we had a lot more aircraft landing accidents where all passengers died in the jet fuel fire.
- bubblewrap 7y agoThis thing is recurring every couple of years.
- kstenerud 7y ago“The idea would be that the whole process would be automated so that in case you have an accident, no one will be injured — only the equipment and the cargo,” "And in other news, tragedy struck earlier today, as hundreds were killed when a cargo blimp exploded, dropping its 250 tonnes of cargo 40,000 feet into an apartment block in Chicago..."
- yoz-y 7y agoA completely naïve question: Is there any chance we could get buoyancy from void if the materials are strong enough?
- frabert 7y agoIn theory, completely possible. In practice, strong enough materials to hold a vacuum are too heavy and nullify the buoyancy.
- goodmachine 7y agoFrom https://www.o-boot.com/en/faq/ https://www.o-boot.com/en/faq/ 8<-----------------------snip 6) Have you done structural calculations on the vacuum ballon yet? What material can be strong enough to withstand air pressure and light enough to rise in flight? There are two models: a basic model and an evolution model. The first one, on which a degree research was done at the Polytechnic of Turin, is a sandwich with ceramic skins and foam in between. This model is lighter than air (obviously if emptied of inner air) and holds an external pressure (with zero internal pressure) up to 1.7 atm. The second model should withstand a similar external pressure but be lighter and easier to build. If you want, you leave us your email, and we send you the research thesis that was made on the first model, with all the structural calculations. Unfortunately, all information regarding the second model is confidential. 8<-----------------------snip Fingers crossed for December 13th!
- edynoid 7y agoDon't know about the material science behind it. But from a purely physical point of view, the problem there is that void (= vacuum) does not have any pressure. So the frame would have to support itself against the atmospheric pressure instead of the gas doing it from the inside – that is a big technical challenge. The catastrophic failure scenario (hull breach) would be an implosive compression of the entire hull, which kinda sounds worse than a hydrogen-fuelled fire.
- roenxi 7y agoIf luck was kind there might be a sweet spot making it possible to make a small lighter-than-air vaccume hull, and then add a lot of those to a craft. Something suspiciously like attaching a large number of balloons to a frame. Maybe some wonder material; carbon seems to do everything according to the headlines. That'd solve the implosion problem since presumably all the little hulls wouldn't fail at once.
- weinzierl 7y agoCargoLifter [1] tried to bring Zeppelins back in the late nineties. They started building a gigantic manufacturing building but ran out of money before they even started to build a Zeppelin. The hangar was later turned into an aqua park but ran into troubles because the heating expenses were too high. Not surprising given the hangar was designed to be open at both ends. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter
- ul5255 7y agoThe aqua park is actually doing quite well nowadays https://www.tropical-islands.de/en/ https://www.tropical-islands.de/en/
- weinzierl 7y agoGood to know, I always wanted to visit it. Maybe I'll do...
- kiney 7y agoMy father actually bought quite a bit of "Cargolifter AG" stocks. Obviously they are worthless now. The guy that founded CargoLifter (Carl-Heinrich von Gablenz) is still at it and his "new" company "CL CargoLifter GmbH & Co. KGaA" actually manufacture balloon cranes much smaller than the original CargoLifter design.
- jaclaz 7y agoSeemingly the Airliner 10 is now starting production (but as always happens with this type of stuff better wait until they have actually manufactured a few, 2020 is near enough): [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_HAV_304/Airlander_10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_HAV_304/Ai... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46810151 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-4681015... [3]https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/ https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/
- stubish 7y agoWho are the people always cited as being concerned by using hydrogen, every single time there is an article on airships? Do they exist? If so, are they just contrarians we can ignore? The technology is doomed if every time someone suggests it they start by explaining why it won't explode like that incident that happened 80 years ago that your parents might remember from a Led Zeppelin album cover. "Unlike blimps built in the last 50 years, the the suggestion is to revert to an even older technology and using hydrogen for lift, cheaper, safer and more environmentally friendly than the alternatives."
- WalterBright 7y agoAirliners take off full of fuel. Many airliners have ended in fiery crashes. Yet we still fly in them, all the time. Myself included. We drive around in cars full of fuel, that burn, too. People even drive around in hydrogen fueled cars. Why should Zeppelins be held to a far higher standard than airliners?
- weinzierl 7y agoMakes me thinking: What is the total energy of a full airplane vs a Zeppelin for roughly same cargo or passenger number.
- jcims 7y agoJust stubby pencil work here because I'm up at entirely the wrong hour and this might help me go back to sleep. Envelope volume of the Goodyear blimp is ~8.5e6 liters. Density of hydrogen at STP is ~0.09g/L. If we filled the Goodyear blimp with that we'd have ~765kg of hydrogen gas. Let's round up to cover the slight operating pressure and say we have 800kg of hydrogen. Energy density of hydrogen is very high, 141MJ/kg. Energy density of Jet A is ~45MJ/kg. So our hypothetical blimp has the equivalent of 2600kg of Jet A on board. The Goodyear blimp only holds 8 passengers plus two pilots. A similarly sized jet would be the Learjet 60. It holds 3500kg of fuel. So, most jets probably have more on takeoff and less on landing.
- yk 7y agoThe thing about zeppelins is, that (party) balloons give the completely wrong intuition about things that float in air. A balloon does float quite freely and without much air resistance, but by contrast a zeppelin is a substantial piece of machinery with a lot of area to generate air resistance. Actually to the point, where it is less energy consuming to use a plane, instead of fighting against the wind.
- esotericn 7y agoEh, I wouldn't say that a balloon floats without much air resistance. Trying to throw one to someone else is difficult, for example. The cheap footballs that are thin skinned - we used to call them 'flyaway' balls when I was younger. Because even those, substantially heavier than a balloon, would go off in random directions due to their susceptibility to wind from the low weight. But actually, I've never thought of a zeppelin this way before. It gives a good intuition - but for the opposite reason you've stated, that they _do_ act kind of like balloons, and that's not what you want from a directed vehicle!
- MayeulC 7y ago> Because even those, substantially heavier than a balloon, would go off in random directions due to their susceptibility to wind from the low weight. Just be sure to keep in mind that while zepperlins, dirigibles and aerostats are subjected to non-negligible amounts of buoyant force due to low density, that does not make them light, nor easy to push around. If you carry 20kt of cargo, plus the weight of the vehicle (including the weight of the lifting gas), I don't think a wind gust would blow you away, regardless of how strong it is. Try to push around a big buoy, that gives an idea of the challenge. Moreover, spheres are one of the aerodynamically poorest shapes (if not the most), actually worse than a flat sail. That's probably the biggest reason for Zeppelin's shape (or the rugby ball, for that matter).
- dredmorbius 7y agoBalloons are drift bodies rather than directed bodies (blimps, dirigibles). The only control is elevation, via dropping ballast, releasing gas, or application or gradual loss of heat (for hot-air / heated-gas balloons). Otherwise, it's your drag itself that's providing directional control by way of winds.
- lcnmrn 7y agoAn electric Airbus Beluga will be a lot more efficient.
- mannykannot 7y agoWeather is the enemy of airships: three of the four large helium-filled US airships were brought down by structural damage from bad weather. Forecasting is now good enough that bad weather can probably be avoided, but airships are not fast enough to be routed around developing or fast-moving storms, so regions of unsettled weather might be off-limits for days at at time.
- solstice 7y agowould it be possible for them to rise above the storm systems and thus avoid them? Or is that where the jet streams are? I have wondered about a similar thing in the context of solar panels floating on the oceans: if the weather and the waves get too rough, just go drive to -5 meters or so to avoid damage from the waves and surface after the storm is over. But of course, salt water corrosion and growth of marine life on the panels is going to be a big problem with that
- pixl97 7y agoI think you miss the scale of strong storms. Updrafts and their corresponding downdrafts can commonly reach 40,000 feet with severe storms far higher than that. Many storms, especially in the central US can exceed 65MPH in forward ground motion.
- mdorazio 7y agoI think you miss how high balloons can go. Strong storms top out at roughly 60,000 feet. Weather balloons can easily reach 100,000 feet and are often only altitude-limited by the fact that their skin is designed to burst after they reach a certain point. There's really no reason you couldn't design an airship for flight above storm conditions as long as its weight to lift ratio is kept low enough.
- mannykannot 7y agoAt launch, a high-altitude balloon is just a bubble of helium in a mostly-empty envelope. An airship with that much room for expansion would be enormous, even by the standards of airships. In WW1, Germany flew some "height climber" zeppelins, which could reach 20,000 feet (still well within the range of stormy weather), but they could carry very little payload. They were also fragile, vulnerable to damage by quite ordinary weather. I think all other airships were limited to a few thousand feet, at least in practice.
- alex_duf 7y agoThey've been coming back for 30 years, I think I'll be excited when I see one
- C1sc0cat 7y agoIt is really cool I saw Airlander flying before its crash and I can almost see the Cardington Sheds from my office window. And years ago ago I remember seeing Airship industry flying around.
- cafard 7y agoQuite apart from the dangers of hydrogen, zeppelins handle bad weather only so well. The US Navy had a couple of large zeppelins in the 1920s. They used helium, but both, as I recall, were damaged and lost in storms.
- Darkstryder 7y agoA wild dream of mine is to build a 1/4 scale replica of an Imperial Star Destroyer that would actually be a zeppelin in disguise. Just imagine that thing floating mightily in the sky like the actual starship from Star Wars. You could even jump with a parachute or a wingsuit from the starfighter hangar bay. If any zillionaire out there wants to tackle this...
- mkl 7y agoLet's try maths on that! An Imperial Star Destroyer is ~1600m long, and has a volume of ~9.3e7m³ [1]. At 1/4 scale, it would be 400m long and have a volume of 9.3e7/4³ ≈ 1.45e6m³. The largest zeppelin ever made was the Hindenburg, which was 245m long and had a volume of ~2e5m³ [2]. I think your dream is unlikely to come to fruition, but zillionaire is in the right ballpark! [1] http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=117422 http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=117422 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg-class_airship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg-class_airship
- rwj 7y agoBring on the 1/8 scale model!
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoLet's make it 1/8 scale, then.
- mxuribe 7y agoOh, that sounds like so much fun! You'd need to include externally-facing loud speakers so that you can choose to play Vader's imperial theme song upon approaching people/places.
- xwdv 7y agoInstead of building a star destroy you could build a full scale Zerg Overlord for much cheaper, may only require a multi millionaire.
- 7y ago
- stupidcar 7y agoAccording to the article, these new zeppelins would be 1) huge, 2) hydrogen-filled, and 3) uncrewed and automatically piloted. If there are any Hollywood producers reading this, I suddenly have a great idea for an action film involving maleovelent hackers and a slow moving fleet of explosive destruction.
- solstice 7y agoI'm picturing extremely slow moving cinematography like in DBZ in the battle against Cell (which was stretched over weeks' worth of episodes)
- FrozenVoid 7y agoThere alternatives to zeppelins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_airship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_airship
- raxxorrax 7y agoI wonder if it is feasible as a miniature version for cargo drones. Probably would add quite a bit of range for the cost of speed.
- jhallenworld 7y agoHere is a BBC dramatization of Lady Grace Drummond's 1929 sensationalized first-person account (sponsored by Hearst) of an around the world trip on the Graf Zeppelin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4jq7oRxw-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4jq7oRxw-g
- dredmorbius 7y agoNB, Hearst, William Randolph. Grandfather of Patty. Creater of the eponymous Castle (and a northern cousin). And inspiration of Citizen Kane.
- JSeymourATL 7y agoRelated: Blimp Boom or Bust? Assessing Airship Business Opportunities for Helicopter Operators > https://www.rotorandwing.com/2018/11/02/assessing-airship-business-opportunities-helicopter-operators/ https://www.rotorandwing.com/2018/11/02/assessing-airship-bu...