7 ms·

... 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
      - giantrobot 5y ago
        A cargo airship is slower than a freight jet and only a few times faster than a cargo ship. Even the relatively "small" PANAMAX container ships can carry 5000TEU. If you had an airship that could carry 50TEU (I'm being extremely generous there) you'd need 100 trips (200 total ocean crossings crossings) to equal a single smaller sized container ship. If your airships are only four times faster than container ships you'll need 50 of them to carry the same amount of freight as that single ship. If 20 days is too long a wait air freight (heavier than air) already exists. It also deals with weather by simply flying over it. So you'd need some sort of cargo that was too time sensitive for sea freight but not so sensitive or valuable enough for traditional air freight. But it couldn't be too sensitive or valuable because airships are very sensitive to weather, wind especially, so can only really operate in very clear weather with low winds at departure and arrival.
- jcims 5y ago
  One downside of rail is that new routes seem to always be decade long, multi-billion dollar projects.
romwell 5y ago
Just like shipping things doesn't work because of storms, right?
- himinlomax 5y ago
  Airships just don't work in strong winds, no need for a storm. And a plane can quickly move out of a hazardous location. An airship cannot move quickly.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Is that true even if it has a large mass from cargo?
    - lazide 5y ago
      Yes. It always has to have a much larger surface area in proportion to the weight it is carrying than any heavier than air craft, by definition. That means it has to have more volume to lift more weight. More volume means more surface area (though not linearly!). More surface area means more impact from strong winds, updrafts, downdrafts. And we haven’t figured out any plausible sort of propulsion that can even momentarily provide enough force to counteract something like a strong sudden downdraft without being too bulky to be practical.
      - hansvm 5y ago
        I think they still have a point though: Let X be any linear measurement of the airship (like length). The forces on the airship are proportional to X^2, and the max mass is proportional to X^3. Consequently, acceleration from wind and whatnot tends to 0 as the airship size increases (when fully loaded). Moreover, the necessary propulsion similarly scales with X^2 (which is convenient, because that's the amount of space you have to place the propulsion), while requiring increasingly negligible fractions of the ship's carrying capacity as the ship size increases.
        5y ago
outworlder 5y ago
If only we had a way to monitor the weather patterns in the entire globe and maybe even predict them...

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
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      A cargo airship is slower than a freight jet and only a few times faster than a cargo ship. Even the relatively "small" PANAMAX container ships can carry 5000TEU. If you had an airship that could carry 50TEU (I'm being extremely generous there) you'd need 100 trips (200 total ocean crossings crossings) to equal a single smaller sized container ship. If your airships are only four times faster than container ships you'll need 50 of them to carry the same amount of freight as that single ship. If 20 days is too long a wait air freight (heavier than air) already exists. It also deals with weather by simply flying over it. So you'd need some sort of cargo that was too time sensitive for sea freight but not so sensitive or valuable enough for traditional air freight. But it couldn't be too sensitive or valuable because airships are very sensitive to weather, wind especially, so can only really operate in very clear weather with low winds at departure and arrival.
jcims 5y ago
One downside of rail is that new routes seem to always be decade long, multi-billion dollar projects.

romwell 5y ago

Just like shipping things doesn't work because of storms, right?

himinlomax 5y ago
Airships just don't work in strong winds, no need for a storm. And a plane can quickly move out of a hazardous location. An airship cannot move quickly.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Is that true even if it has a large mass from cargo?
  - lazide 5y ago
    Yes. It always has to have a much larger surface area in proportion to the weight it is carrying than any heavier than air craft, by definition. That means it has to have more volume to lift more weight. More volume means more surface area (though not linearly!). More surface area means more impact from strong winds, updrafts, downdrafts. And we haven’t figured out any plausible sort of propulsion that can even momentarily provide enough force to counteract something like a strong sudden downdraft without being too bulky to be practical.
    - hansvm 5y ago
      I think they still have a point though: Let X be any linear measurement of the airship (like length). The forces on the airship are proportional to X^2, and the max mass is proportional to X^3. Consequently, acceleration from wind and whatnot tends to 0 as the airship size increases (when fully loaded). Moreover, the necessary propulsion similarly scales with X^2 (which is convenient, because that's the amount of space you have to place the propulsion), while requiring increasingly negligible fractions of the ship's carrying capacity as the ship size increases.
      - 5y ago

outworlder 5y ago

If only we had a way to monitor the weather patterns in the entire globe and maybe even predict them...