12 ms·

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

by R0b0t1 5y ago

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.
    - lb1lf 5y ago
      -It would help; the question is more whether it would be worth it in the grand scheme of things; seeing as the weight differential between air and hydrogen is approximately 1.15kg/cubic meter at sea level, ignoring any weight in the airship itself, you're going to have to displace on the order of 25,000 cubic meters of air to lift one 20/40ft container (the max gross weight is only a couple of tons larger in a 40ft than in a 20ft unit). This volume of hydrogen is a cube with 30m sides. For one container. Neglecting the weight of the ship itself. The big container ships can carry upwards of 20,000 20ft units - so you're going to need a lot of airships (which will require a lot of airspace) to make an appreciable dent in the cargo unloading time. (The main issue really being that container ships are absurdly large!)
      - vineyardmike 5y ago
        > This volume of hydrogen is a cube with 30m sides. For one container This is actually smaller than i was imagining.
      - FabHK 5y ago
        FWIW, the article contemplates cargo airships with a million m^3, which would carry around 40 containers. That would be a cube with 100m sides, and you'd need 500 of those to replace one big container ship. Seems not a realistic option to replace container ships, but might be realistic for specific use cases.
        xphos 5y ago
        So like to move a shipping container weighing 40 tons requires what 32x32x32 cubic meter space to be supported that's pretty tiny considering the other advantages. They could travel fast and in basically all weather. Lightening is a worry but if you isolate your hydrogen well it shouldn't be a problem. Not to mention they would be much more fuel efficient. Heck you could probably slap solar on them and get net zero energy discharge for low container ship speeds. The only issue being is I don't know if they would alleviate unloading issues if there was high winds. I don't really know the method for securing an airship but if they just let down a big rope and tie themselves done you can do that anywhere.
- 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.

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

by R0b0t1 5y ago

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

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.
  - lb1lf 5y ago
    -It would help; the question is more whether it would be worth it in the grand scheme of things; seeing as the weight differential between air and hydrogen is approximately 1.15kg/cubic meter at sea level, ignoring any weight in the airship itself, you're going to have to displace on the order of 25,000 cubic meters of air to lift one 20/40ft container (the max gross weight is only a couple of tons larger in a 40ft than in a 20ft unit). This volume of hydrogen is a cube with 30m sides. For one container. Neglecting the weight of the ship itself. The big container ships can carry upwards of 20,000 20ft units - so you're going to need a lot of airships (which will require a lot of airspace) to make an appreciable dent in the cargo unloading time. (The main issue really being that container ships are absurdly large!)
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      > This volume of hydrogen is a cube with 30m sides. For one container This is actually smaller than i was imagining.
    - FabHK 5y ago
      FWIW, the article contemplates cargo airships with a million m^3, which would carry around 40 containers. That would be a cube with 100m sides, and you'd need 500 of those to replace one big container ship. Seems not a realistic option to replace container ships, but might be realistic for specific use cases.
      - xphos 5y ago
        So like to move a shipping container weighing 40 tons requires what 32x32x32 cubic meter space to be supported that's pretty tiny considering the other advantages. They could travel fast and in basically all weather. Lightening is a worry but if you isolate your hydrogen well it shouldn't be a problem. Not to mention they would be much more fuel efficient. Heck you could probably slap solar on them and get net zero energy discharge for low container ship speeds. The only issue being is I don't know if they would alleviate unloading issues if there was high winds. I don't really know the method for securing an airship but if they just let down a big rope and tie themselves done you can do that anywhere.
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.