18 ms·

TLDR: > With modern engineering standards, there is no doubt that hydrogen could be made a safe lifting gas. Disadvantages of hydrogen: * burns (but only wit

by FabHK 5y ago

TLDR: > With modern engineering standards, there is no doubt that hydrogen could be made a safe lifting gas. Disadvantages of hydrogen: * burns (but only with sufficient oxygen, eg a mixture of air and 4% up to 75% hydrogen) Advantages of hydrogen: * lifts 8% more than helium (per volume). Not a huge difference, but not trivial for an airship * costs 98.5% less than helium (!) (Airships have crashed because helium was too expensive to vent: safety valves on the USS Shenandoah were capped, 14 crew members lost their lives.) > Airships are too slow for human travel Too slow for transportation, maybe. But leisure travel? Imagine a one week air safari from Kilimandjaro and the Serengeti to Kruger Park. It could be awesome. Edit to add: (Leisure air travel/Safari is my own pipe dream. The article suggests cargo): > If airships were to make a major comeback, it would be in cargo service. > Cargo airships would need to be big—bigger than the Hindenburg. [...] ”’the lift-to-drag ratio, a critical parameter in aircraft performance, gets better as the airship gets bigger) > Ginormous airships require a lot of lifting gas—perhaps a million cubic meters > FAA has discouraged the return of the airship in the use case that makes the most sense

pitaj 5y ago
Airships are being investigated as a method of shipping to remote locations without ship, train, or truck access.
R0b0t1 5y ago
Airships would be good for freight. Far less carbon footprint than airplanes.
- newsclues 5y ago
  I’ve been thinking they are a good idea to help with overloaded ports, as they can pick up cargo cans and move them without any of the current bottlenecks.
  - lb1lf 5y ago
    -The airship would likely be the bottleneck; a 40ft shipping container may weigh anything up to approx. 30 metric tons. You wouldn't be able to put many of those under an airship, hence you'd need a lot of rather space-hogging airships.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      But there are ships moored waiting for their turn for the cranes to unload. If you have swarms of these unloading, a few cans, it helps right? I’m sure it would be very handy for edge cases where only a few cans need to be offloaded at a specific port. You can also setup secondary drop off zones that avoid bottlenecks, like straight transfers from ship to train.
      - manigandham 5y ago
        Unlikely to help given how big and slow they are. These cargo ships carry thousands of containers.
        xphos 5y ago
        Airships would probably be much fast than cargo ships though. Ships cut through the water at like maybe 30 mph in good conditions. Airships could easily keep as they are dealing with so much less drag. In the 1930 they moved at like 70 mph aka 2x the speed of container ships. I mean there cargo space would be like 1/40 but with the difference in speed thats only 1/20 in the rate of moving cargo not to mention that you aren't bound by water which is the major issue with ports. They are just very congested and ships are stuck in ship lanes. The air is much more limitless in terms of shipping paths.
        jsjohnst 5y ago
        > Ships cut through the water at like maybe 30 mph in good conditions. Container ships rarely if ever go that fast. Usually it’s in the 15-18 knots range (aka <20mph) from what I’ve seen.
      - 5y ago
  - dmckeon 5y ago
    The relevant question is not: “Could airships move full shipping containers?” but rather: “Could airships find an economic niche and turn a profit in that niche?” Perhaps they move cargo in lighter containers (fiberglass, aluminum, etc.), or in moving high-volume low-mass cargoes like prefabricated cylindrical tanks, or wind turbine blades. Perhaps they specialize by replacing “ice road” transport to tundra or arctic locations. Or to jungle locations - mining or drilling operations. Maybe they replace sky-crane helicopters rather than replacing barges, container ships, trains, or trucks. We have mostly replaced sailing ships, canal narrow boats, stagecoaches, and the pony express. Nothing is forever. We’ll know that H2 airships have really arrived when they are mentioned in country music.
- lb1lf 5y ago
  -Also, much slower and lower cargo capacity. That being said, I can see them being used where roads are sparse, inland (so shipping is not an option) and far away from the nearest railroad. We definitely need more green-tinged options; I root for airships!
  - pharke 5y ago
    They could conceivably be very cheap if the gas pockets were mass produced. Everything else on board for propulsion and housing the pilot would be on the scale of a small prop aircraft. As long as the cargo can be easily managed, perhaps in a shipping container, then these would be easy to deploy en masse. They can land in any suitable field that has a crew on hand to guide them in with ropes. You might not even need pilots since these would be perfect targets for automation. As for speed, you can optimize the shape of the aircraft and the position of the propeller for this. I've seen a number of videos that show surprisingly good performance for pointier fuselage with a pusher prop on the tail.
    - scarby2 5y ago
      > Everything else on board for propulsion and housing the pilot would be on the scale of a small prop aircraft It's likely that any cargo airship would fly for days/weeks at a time and would require at least 4 crew-members and everything they would need for the length of the voyage. So less a small prop and more something akin to facilities available on a yacht/Large RV. > You might not even need pilots since these would be perfect targets for automation. This would perhaps be the best solution
      - midasuni 5y ago
        Why would it need crew? What would they do? A cargo airship drone remotely controlled would get rid of most of the non-cargo mass requirements.
  - elcritch 5y ago
    Not necessarily slower than cargo ships, and possibly significantly faster. This paper claims that by using the jet streams a hydrogen blimp could circumnavigate the globe in about 14-16 days [1]. Google gives about 77 days to do the same on cargo ship. Of course there would be lots of details to consider on the exact route taken, but from first principles it seems plausible. 1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590174519300145 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259017451... 2: https://arimotravels.com/how-long-does-it-take-a-cargo-ship-to-cross-the-atlantic/ https://arimotravels.com/how-long-does-it-take-a-cargo-ship-...
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Especially for oversize or awkwardly shaped items.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  ... as long as you don't need that freight while the weather is even slightly bad.
  - jvanderbot 5y ago
    Well certainly that's an edge case. I don't know anything, honestly, but seems to me TFA is talking about wholesale distributor type cargo, not pizza deliveries. I guess waiting a day for a storm to pass doesn't kill anything, and airships can actually loiter in that time. I'm trying to think of a (non aquatic) case where rail is worse than airships though. If we were to invest in thousands of vehicles for distributing machinery, I'm guessing the average joe like me would vote rail. Unless we're talking going to a place where the infrastructure isn't good enough to support traditional delivery. For setting up a base in Greenland or the antarctic, I bet airships are really attractive. Or delivering bulk cargo to hawaii, perhaps.
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      > I'm trying to think of a case where rail is worse than airships though You can ship non-standard cargo via air easier than rail if its wide. Eg. Moving a wide machinery, or parts to large construction project.
    - fanf2 5y ago
      Airships are better than trains at crossing the sea
      - jvanderbot 5y ago
        Sure, I was thinking any nation that wants to move cargo over the sea would use ships. So what conditions other than unestablished areas make airships better than sea ships?
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Speed
- drivers99 5y ago
  That's what the article actually said. I think the parent post switched from summarizing to contributing their own thought instead.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    (you're right, I clarified)
- throw37388 5y ago
  Source needed! Airships are quite inefficient, have high air drag and are slow. They are more comparable to ships, trains or cars. And here their inefficiency is very bad.
- kemiller 5y ago
  With a huge balloon and flexible solar panels + fuel cell (they've already got to carry H2) they could be nearly zero.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Except they don’t compete with planes, but with water ships.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Except not really, as it's quite difficult to float a barge across a continent.
    - elihu 5y ago
      In that case, they're competing with trains.
      - dsr_ 5y ago
        Trains need tracks, barges need rivers, trucks need roads. A cargo airship needs a clear field, and probably some really good tie-downs -- dropping off one or five thousand kilograms of cargo will produce a major lift imbalance.
        m4rtink 5y ago
        Yeah, ballasting is often forgotten when people talks about huge cargo airships. Yes, it can drop a huge generator into the middle of nowhere for your construction project, but unless you do something it will then shoot up to the stratosphere due to all the extra lift. Still, its solvable with either some rudimentary infrastructure (pump water aboard as you unload cargo) or by removing some of the lifting gas (much less of an issue with hydrogen).
        FullyFunctional 5y ago
        There is (was?) an effort to restart Airships for cargo traffic. They solved the ballast issue with onboard compressors. If understood it correctly that solved this problem complete with [effectively?] no loss of lift gas.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Depends on the airplane. An electric touring motorglider would be extremely efficient and could give zeppelins a run for the money.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  There's more to compete with though: train and ship. Both have severely lower carbon footprint than airplane as well. Ship might seem terrible at first glance, but the amount of tonnes being transported is so huge that it outweighs the fuel.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Competition is always a problem. Trains cannot compete with trucks in most cases because logistics are dirt cheap and trucks are more flexible.
    - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      Oh, but they can - and they do. It is really common for freight to go the distance it can by rail and then the last miles by truck - they load the entire semi trailer onto the train and only have to load the trailer once. Trains aren't as flexible as trucks, true. But a train can go hundreds of miles with only two dedicated people - the engineer and the conductor - and they pull hundreds of trucks (and more). A lot of trains in the US are more efficient: They have a diesel generator that runs the electric motors on the wheels. Even better: In the US, the tracks prioritize freight trains. Amtrak usually rents the space, and you get stuck waiting for freight to pass (at least in Indiana). I have relatives that work as engineers and conductors for a freight train company, by the way.
dragontamer 5y ago
> Too slow for transportation, maybe. But leisure travel? Imagine a one week air safari over the Serengeti, Ngoro Ngoro crater, and Kruger Park. It could be awesome. Well, if we're talking about weird Sci-Fi ideas (that might be possible), lets just go all in on it. Rocket launches are extremely expensive, and most of it is in the lifting costs. Would it be cheaper to "lift" a rocket with hydrogen slowly? Yeah, we also need to get enough kinetic energy to enter orbit. But surely getting rid of a huge chunk of "Gravity" costs could lead to substantial rocket-fuel savings?
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > Rocket launches are extremely expensive, and most of it is in the lifting costs. Would it be cheaper to "lift" a rocket with hydrogen slowly? No: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    The idea is that this gets you above the densest atmosphere and that could save you fuel. I used to think this, but if you run the numbers it doesn't work out.
  - soperj 5y ago
    >Getting to space[1] is easy. It's not, like, something you could do in your car, but it's not a huge challenge. You could get a person to space with a small sounding rocket the size of a telephone pole. The X-15 aircraft reached space[2] just by going fast and then steering up.[3] Loved that line. Puts the Branson/Bezos thing into perspective.
    - toomanybeersies 5y ago
      These days there are even amateur rocket clubs that have managed (unmanned) suborbital space launches [1]. [1] http://www.uscrpl.com/traveler-iv http://www.uscrpl.com/traveler-iv
  - aww_dang 5y ago
postalrat 5y ago
Imagine an open deck on an airship. Or at least being able to open your window. Propellers far away from passengers to minimize any noise.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
I completely agree with the leisure air travel scenario for airships. It would be incredible anywhere. Massive windows, tons of interior space, and quiet. Here is a deck I prepared luxury airships and opportunities for hydrogen airships: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6IyCS1dyiqFz_HsjH-evYiHg/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6...
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Airships would make a fantastic, greener alternative to a cruise ship. I suspect winds to be its biggest sticking point.
  - ecpottinger 5y ago
    I have gone on a of number cruises, especially on the Alaskan cruise and Panama cruise the one thing I never heard from anyone was "I wish they traveled faster.". There is a number of trips that a slow and quiet trip would make for great fun.
    - ThePadawan 5y ago
      During the uncertainty of when/if ports would reopen across Europe, some UK cruise companies went so far as to simply offer "cruises to nowhere". I.e. they would set off the usual ports, but not head for continental Europe, just sail out to a calm spot with agreeable climate and hang out there for a while.
      - thefounder 5y ago
        Why did they leave the port at all?
        gambiting 5y ago
        Because I can't imagine people are happy to pay to sit for a week in an industrial dock in Portsmouth. Also sailing to warmer waters means you can sit on the outside deck/balcony and enjoy the sun. Again, not exactly the things UK ports are well known for.
DelightOne 5y ago
That and a Starlink not bound to a location - would be awesome. Would it be possible to live on such a ship?
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Would it be possible to live on such a ship? People live on house boats smaller than early Zeppelins. The challenge will be supplies and human excretions - if you live on such a thing and it's anchored over land you can't just drop your feces on a whim.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  People live in RVs. The real question is: is it practical to have an airship with the top covered in photovoltaic cells sufficient to run all your normal electrical needs? A residential-class airship would probably be limited to visual flight rules conditions and have to land or at least be docked every night. You'll want to do that for a variety of comfort reasons, too -- water is heavy, so finding a campground with electrical and water hookups would be preferred.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    Storms could be an issue - storm won't usually sink a houseboat or destroy a RV trailer. But it might very well smash a residential airship into the ground even if securely moored just due to the sheer size of its gas envelope being effectively a giant sail.
robbedpeter 5y ago
Imagine: Trash airships that can deposit loads at flying solar furnace platforms (equipped with co2 capture technology) to burn everything. Use various stages of processing to chemically or physically extract commercially valuable material, like phosphorous, then turn the rest into slag - not perfect, but one helluva lot better than burying and wasting the raw trash. Use the captured co2 and solar power alongside the artificial leaf tech to produce synthgas and other fuel. Solar and wind platforms could anchored to cables on the ground, with municipal battery storage on the ground, then use airships to swap charged battery packs from centralized power stations. A cellular/modular approach to ship design could prevent hindenburg disasters. Individual carbon fiber balloons could be made to link together, and they'd be during enough that even if you detonate a cell, its neighbors remain intact. Cells as small as a cubic meter would still provide lift while limiting the explosive potential - make the cells "smart" and you could design resilient airships that failed gracefully, even under fire, for military and security sensitive applications. Platforms could be made huge, big enough to build houses, factories, hospitals, or resorts. Airships don't have to be blimps. It's more practical than seasteading and probably multiple orders of magnitude cheaper in combined maintenance and development.
- tintor 5y ago
  Would cubic meter cells work? You'd have a lot of material for small cells, compared to one large cell blimp.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  What possible advantage is there to lofting furnaces and trash transport rather than accomplishing both on the ground?
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  You know hol little CO2 you capture with solar power right? And whats the incentive to buils these fantastical structures?
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It can be solar concentrator style generation and furnaces if you think big enough. Mobility and new frontiers could be enough incentive, but cargo transport, power infrastructure, hydrogen generation, and waste recovery would be advantageous. Large fixed platforms could solve a big part of the offloading problems. If the cells use standardized fittings, then cargo stations could swap hydrogen for co2 as ballast during offloading. Aerial platforms would be great for telescopes and helicopters, too.
dheera 5y ago
What about autonomous cargo airships filled with hydrogen? That way if they blow up, they don't injure anyone.
- post-it 5y ago
  They'll still fall to the ground.
matttproud 5y ago
If I recall correctly, you can do some leisure travel around the Bodensee (Lake Constance) on one that is moored out of the historical harbor in Friedrichshafen. A friend who’s a pilot even logged training hours on one of them — just to check that off the bucket list. They can be seen circling the lake nearly every day in summer. https://zeppelin-nt.de/de/zeppelin-fluege/uebersicht.html https://zeppelin-nt.de/de/zeppelin-fluege/uebersicht.html
h0l0cube 5y ago
> Edit to add: > (Leisure air travel/Safari is my own pipe dream. The article suggests cargo) Please, people who write tl;drs, read the whole article so you don't miss the punch line. The last 6 paragraphs (25%) of the article is devoted to cargo being the best value proposition
darkerside 5y ago
Once internet comes from satellites as a matter of course, I have little doubt we'll all be living in airships.

by FabHK 5y ago

pitaj 5y ago

Airships are being investigated as a method of shipping to remote locations without ship, train, or truck access.

R0b0t1 5y ago

Airships would be good for freight. Far less carbon footprint than airplanes.

newsclues 5y ago
I’ve been thinking they are a good idea to help with overloaded ports, as they can pick up cargo cans and move them without any of the current bottlenecks.
- lb1lf 5y ago
  -The airship would likely be the bottleneck; a 40ft shipping container may weigh anything up to approx. 30 metric tons. You wouldn't be able to put many of those under an airship, hence you'd need a lot of rather space-hogging airships.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    But there are ships moored waiting for their turn for the cranes to unload. If you have swarms of these unloading, a few cans, it helps right? I’m sure it would be very handy for edge cases where only a few cans need to be offloaded at a specific port. You can also setup secondary drop off zones that avoid bottlenecks, like straight transfers from ship to train.
    - manigandham 5y ago
      Unlikely to help given how big and slow they are. These cargo ships carry thousands of containers.
      - xphos 5y ago
        Airships would probably be much fast than cargo ships though. Ships cut through the water at like maybe 30 mph in good conditions. Airships could easily keep as they are dealing with so much less drag. In the 1930 they moved at like 70 mph aka 2x the speed of container ships. I mean there cargo space would be like 1/40 but with the difference in speed thats only 1/20 in the rate of moving cargo not to mention that you aren't bound by water which is the major issue with ports. They are just very congested and ships are stuck in ship lanes. The air is much more limitless in terms of shipping paths.
        jsjohnst 5y ago
        > Ships cut through the water at like maybe 30 mph in good conditions. Container ships rarely if ever go that fast. Usually it’s in the 15-18 knots range (aka <20mph) from what I’ve seen.
    - 5y ago
- dmckeon 5y ago
  The relevant question is not: “Could airships move full shipping containers?” but rather: “Could airships find an economic niche and turn a profit in that niche?” Perhaps they move cargo in lighter containers (fiberglass, aluminum, etc.), or in moving high-volume low-mass cargoes like prefabricated cylindrical tanks, or wind turbine blades. Perhaps they specialize by replacing “ice road” transport to tundra or arctic locations. Or to jungle locations - mining or drilling operations. Maybe they replace sky-crane helicopters rather than replacing barges, container ships, trains, or trucks. We have mostly replaced sailing ships, canal narrow boats, stagecoaches, and the pony express. Nothing is forever. We’ll know that H2 airships have really arrived when they are mentioned in country music.
lb1lf 5y ago
-Also, much slower and lower cargo capacity. That being said, I can see them being used where roads are sparse, inland (so shipping is not an option) and far away from the nearest railroad. We definitely need more green-tinged options; I root for airships!
- pharke 5y ago
  They could conceivably be very cheap if the gas pockets were mass produced. Everything else on board for propulsion and housing the pilot would be on the scale of a small prop aircraft. As long as the cargo can be easily managed, perhaps in a shipping container, then these would be easy to deploy en masse. They can land in any suitable field that has a crew on hand to guide them in with ropes. You might not even need pilots since these would be perfect targets for automation. As for speed, you can optimize the shape of the aircraft and the position of the propeller for this. I've seen a number of videos that show surprisingly good performance for pointier fuselage with a pusher prop on the tail.
  - scarby2 5y ago
    > Everything else on board for propulsion and housing the pilot would be on the scale of a small prop aircraft It's likely that any cargo airship would fly for days/weeks at a time and would require at least 4 crew-members and everything they would need for the length of the voyage. So less a small prop and more something akin to facilities available on a yacht/Large RV. > You might not even need pilots since these would be perfect targets for automation. This would perhaps be the best solution
    - midasuni 5y ago
      Why would it need crew? What would they do? A cargo airship drone remotely controlled would get rid of most of the non-cargo mass requirements.
- elcritch 5y ago
  Not necessarily slower than cargo ships, and possibly significantly faster. This paper claims that by using the jet streams a hydrogen blimp could circumnavigate the globe in about 14-16 days [1]. Google gives about 77 days to do the same on cargo ship. Of course there would be lots of details to consider on the exact route taken, but from first principles it seems plausible. 1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590174519300145 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259017451... 2: https://arimotravels.com/how-long-does-it-take-a-cargo-ship-to-cross-the-atlantic/ https://arimotravels.com/how-long-does-it-take-a-cargo-ship-...
aww_dang 5y ago
Especially for oversize or awkwardly shaped items.
himinlomax 5y ago
... as long as you don't need that freight while the weather is even slightly bad.
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  Well certainly that's an edge case. I don't know anything, honestly, but seems to me TFA is talking about wholesale distributor type cargo, not pizza deliveries. I guess waiting a day for a storm to pass doesn't kill anything, and airships can actually loiter in that time. I'm trying to think of a (non aquatic) case where rail is worse than airships though. If we were to invest in thousands of vehicles for distributing machinery, I'm guessing the average joe like me would vote rail. Unless we're talking going to a place where the infrastructure isn't good enough to support traditional delivery. For setting up a base in Greenland or the antarctic, I bet airships are really attractive. Or delivering bulk cargo to hawaii, perhaps.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > I'm trying to think of a case where rail is worse than airships though You can ship non-standard cargo via air easier than rail if its wide. Eg. Moving a wide machinery, or parts to large construction project.
  - fanf2 5y ago
    Airships are better than trains at crossing the sea
    - jvanderbot 5y ago
      Sure, I was thinking any nation that wants to move cargo over the sea would use ships. So what conditions other than unestablished areas make airships better than sea ships?
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Speed
drivers99 5y ago
That's what the article actually said. I think the parent post switched from summarizing to contributing their own thought instead.
- FabHK 5y ago
  (you're right, I clarified)
throw37388 5y ago
Source needed! Airships are quite inefficient, have high air drag and are slow. They are more comparable to ships, trains or cars. And here their inefficiency is very bad.
kemiller 5y ago
With a huge balloon and flexible solar panels + fuel cell (they've already got to carry H2) they could be nearly zero.
solarkraft 5y ago
Except they don’t compete with planes, but with water ships.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Except not really, as it's quite difficult to float a barge across a continent.
  - elihu 5y ago
    In that case, they're competing with trains.
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      Trains need tracks, barges need rivers, trucks need roads. A cargo airship needs a clear field, and probably some really good tie-downs -- dropping off one or five thousand kilograms of cargo will produce a major lift imbalance.
      - m4rtink 5y ago
        Yeah, ballasting is often forgotten when people talks about huge cargo airships. Yes, it can drop a huge generator into the middle of nowhere for your construction project, but unless you do something it will then shoot up to the stratosphere due to all the extra lift. Still, its solvable with either some rudimentary infrastructure (pump water aboard as you unload cargo) or by removing some of the lifting gas (much less of an issue with hydrogen).
        FullyFunctional 5y ago
        There is (was?) an effort to restart Airships for cargo traffic. They solved the ballast issue with onboard compressors. If understood it correctly that solved this problem complete with [effectively?] no loss of lift gas.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Depends on the airplane. An electric touring motorglider would be extremely efficient and could give zeppelins a run for the money.
Fnoord 5y ago
There's more to compete with though: train and ship. Both have severely lower carbon footprint than airplane as well. Ship might seem terrible at first glance, but the amount of tonnes being transported is so huge that it outweighs the fuel.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Competition is always a problem. Trains cannot compete with trucks in most cases because logistics are dirt cheap and trucks are more flexible.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    Oh, but they can - and they do. It is really common for freight to go the distance it can by rail and then the last miles by truck - they load the entire semi trailer onto the train and only have to load the trailer once. Trains aren't as flexible as trucks, true. But a train can go hundreds of miles with only two dedicated people - the engineer and the conductor - and they pull hundreds of trucks (and more). A lot of trains in the US are more efficient: They have a diesel generator that runs the electric motors on the wheels. Even better: In the US, the tracks prioritize freight trains. Amtrak usually rents the space, and you get stuck waiting for freight to pass (at least in Indiana). I have relatives that work as engineers and conductors for a freight train company, by the way.

dragontamer 5y ago

> Too slow for transportation, maybe. But leisure travel? Imagine a one week air safari over the Serengeti, Ngoro Ngoro crater, and Kruger Park. It could be awesome. Well, if we're talking about weird Sci-Fi ideas (that might be possible), lets just go all in on it. Rocket launches are extremely expensive, and most of it is in the lifting costs. Would it be cheaper to "lift" a rocket with hydrogen slowly? Yeah, we also need to get enough kinetic energy to enter orbit. But surely getting rid of a huge chunk of "Gravity" costs could lead to substantial rocket-fuel savings?

josephcsible 5y ago
> Rocket launches are extremely expensive, and most of it is in the lifting costs. Would it be cheaper to "lift" a rocket with hydrogen slowly? No: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  The idea is that this gets you above the densest atmosphere and that could save you fuel. I used to think this, but if you run the numbers it doesn't work out.
- soperj 5y ago
  >Getting to space[1] is easy. It's not, like, something you could do in your car, but it's not a huge challenge. You could get a person to space with a small sounding rocket the size of a telephone pole. The X-15 aircraft reached space[2] just by going fast and then steering up.[3] Loved that line. Puts the Branson/Bezos thing into perspective.
  - toomanybeersies 5y ago
    These days there are even amateur rocket clubs that have managed (unmanned) suborbital space launches [1]. [1] http://www.uscrpl.com/traveler-iv http://www.uscrpl.com/traveler-iv
- aww_dang 5y ago

postalrat 5y ago

Imagine an open deck on an airship. Or at least being able to open your window. Propellers far away from passengers to minimize any noise.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

I completely agree with the leisure air travel scenario for airships. It would be incredible anywhere. Massive windows, tons of interior space, and quiet. Here is a deck I prepared luxury airships and opportunities for hydrogen airships: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6IyCS1dyiqFz_HsjH-evYiHg/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6...

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Airships would make a fantastic, greener alternative to a cruise ship. I suspect winds to be its biggest sticking point.
- ecpottinger 5y ago
  I have gone on a of number cruises, especially on the Alaskan cruise and Panama cruise the one thing I never heard from anyone was "I wish they traveled faster.". There is a number of trips that a slow and quiet trip would make for great fun.
  - ThePadawan 5y ago
    During the uncertainty of when/if ports would reopen across Europe, some UK cruise companies went so far as to simply offer "cruises to nowhere". I.e. they would set off the usual ports, but not head for continental Europe, just sail out to a calm spot with agreeable climate and hang out there for a while.
    - thefounder 5y ago
      Why did they leave the port at all?
      - gambiting 5y ago
        Because I can't imagine people are happy to pay to sit for a week in an industrial dock in Portsmouth. Also sailing to warmer waters means you can sit on the outside deck/balcony and enjoy the sun. Again, not exactly the things UK ports are well known for.

DelightOne 5y ago

That and a Starlink not bound to a location - would be awesome. Would it be possible to live on such a ship?

mschuster91 5y ago
> Would it be possible to live on such a ship? People live on house boats smaller than early Zeppelins. The challenge will be supplies and human excretions - if you live on such a thing and it's anchored over land you can't just drop your feces on a whim.
dsr_ 5y ago
People live in RVs. The real question is: is it practical to have an airship with the top covered in photovoltaic cells sufficient to run all your normal electrical needs? A residential-class airship would probably be limited to visual flight rules conditions and have to land or at least be docked every night. You'll want to do that for a variety of comfort reasons, too -- water is heavy, so finding a campground with electrical and water hookups would be preferred.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  Storms could be an issue - storm won't usually sink a houseboat or destroy a RV trailer. But it might very well smash a residential airship into the ground even if securely moored just due to the sheer size of its gas envelope being effectively a giant sail.

robbedpeter 5y ago

Imagine: Trash airships that can deposit loads at flying solar furnace platforms (equipped with co2 capture technology) to burn everything. Use various stages of processing to chemically or physically extract commercially valuable material, like phosphorous, then turn the rest into slag - not perfect, but one helluva lot better than burying and wasting the raw trash. Use the captured co2 and solar power alongside the artificial leaf tech to produce synthgas and other fuel. Solar and wind platforms could anchored to cables on the ground, with municipal battery storage on the ground, then use airships to swap charged battery packs from centralized power stations. A cellular/modular approach to ship design could prevent hindenburg disasters. Individual carbon fiber balloons could be made to link together, and they'd be during enough that even if you detonate a cell, its neighbors remain intact. Cells as small as a cubic meter would still provide lift while limiting the explosive potential - make the cells "smart" and you could design resilient airships that failed gracefully, even under fire, for military and security sensitive applications. Platforms could be made huge, big enough to build houses, factories, hospitals, or resorts. Airships don't have to be blimps. It's more practical than seasteading and probably multiple orders of magnitude cheaper in combined maintenance and development.

tintor 5y ago
Would cubic meter cells work? You'd have a lot of material for small cells, compared to one large cell blimp.
dredmorbius 5y ago
What possible advantage is there to lofting furnaces and trash transport rather than accomplishing both on the ground?
Synaesthesia 5y ago
You know hol little CO2 you capture with solar power right? And whats the incentive to buils these fantastical structures?
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It can be solar concentrator style generation and furnaces if you think big enough. Mobility and new frontiers could be enough incentive, but cargo transport, power infrastructure, hydrogen generation, and waste recovery would be advantageous. Large fixed platforms could solve a big part of the offloading problems. If the cells use standardized fittings, then cargo stations could swap hydrogen for co2 as ballast during offloading. Aerial platforms would be great for telescopes and helicopters, too.

dheera 5y ago

What about autonomous cargo airships filled with hydrogen? That way if they blow up, they don't injure anyone.

post-it 5y ago
They'll still fall to the ground.

matttproud 5y ago

If I recall correctly, you can do some leisure travel around the Bodensee (Lake Constance) on one that is moored out of the historical harbor in Friedrichshafen. A friend who’s a pilot even logged training hours on one of them — just to check that off the bucket list. They can be seen circling the lake nearly every day in summer. https://zeppelin-nt.de/de/zeppelin-fluege/uebersicht.html https://zeppelin-nt.de/de/zeppelin-fluege/uebersicht.html

h0l0cube 5y ago

> Edit to add: > (Leisure air travel/Safari is my own pipe dream. The article suggests cargo) Please, people who write tl;drs, read the whole article so you don't miss the punch line. The last 6 paragraphs (25%) of the article is devoted to cargo being the best value proposition

darkerside 5y ago

Once internet comes from satellites as a matter of course, I have little doubt we'll all be living in airships.