27 ms·

A quick note on airships (2020)

99 points by GDC7 5y ago

throwaway10122 5y ago
I am actually surprised none of the large cruise ship companies have yet thought of bringing back blimps but with safer helium or something. 1. Put a few hundred well off people in luxury and slow air ship them to locations hard to reach by ships. Maybe with both top and bottom decks 2. ??? 3. Profit Everyone thinks of Hindenburg disaster when they think of blimps, yet infamous Titanic and Costa Concordia didnt sink the cruise industry.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > Put a few hundred well off people in luxury and slow air ship them to locations hard to reach by ships The problem is that the infrastructure required for a blimp to land and takeoff might be significantly less expensive than a port but it's still many times larger than what an helicopter would need. VIP services are banking on the new AW609 Leonardo[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW609 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW609
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Is much known about the safety of this aircraft? As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds.
    - nradov 5y ago
      The V-22 Osprey can make a dead stick landing in an emergency just like a regular airplane. This will destroy the rotors. https://verticalmag.com/features/20112-flying-the-v-22-html/ https://verticalmag.com/features/20112-flying-the-v-22-html/
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds. Tradeoffs. It's worth it to them to plop a bunch of marines down with helicopter speed faster/farther than you normally can with a helicopter. The military generally doesn't uncritically accept "but muh safety and liability" arguments like private industry does because the cost of doing things less efficiently (trying to refuel helicopters in hostile airspace, airborne operations, etc) comes with a statistical body count as well and they have some degree of sovereign immunity. In a non-military context the pros and cons would weigh differently.
      - rich_sasha 5y ago
        Yeah, I see that the calculus is very different for the military. I was specifically curious about civilian case. I’m already conscious of how fragile helicopters can be, hence my curiosity re this. But from other responses it seems that these aircraft can in fact auto rotate and glide in an emergency.
    - ihattendorf 5y ago
      Seems like it's able to perform relatively safe autorotation landings: https://newatlas.com/agustawestland-aw609-autorotation-trials/31813/ https://newatlas.com/agustawestland-aw609-autorotation-trial...
    - outworlder 5y ago
      > As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds. "The V-22 is a tiltrotor and does not rely on autorotation for a survivable power-out landing. The wide separation of the engines and the ability to drive both rotors with one engine make a power-out landing extremely unlikely. However, if required, the V-22 can glide for a predictable run-on landing in airplane mode, much like a turboprop" https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22491/can-the-v-22-autorotate https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22491/can-the-v...
  - chiph 5y ago
    Put a flat section on top of the airship, and land helicopters (or tilt-rotors) on it. Take the passengers (and fuel + supplies) to the airship, don't take the airship to the passengers.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Unimaginative. Make the airship really big. Put an airstrip on top. Turn it into the wind. Have commuter planes doing STOL on top of it :-)
- falcolas 5y ago
  Helium is quite expensive right now. The US has stopped giving away the helium in its strategic reserves, and so the cost is now based in the reality of the cost to produce it. The cost of helium is the reason you don't see the Goodyear blimps just floating around anymore. As for the Hindenburg vs. Titanic: The titanic wasn't filmed going down. And the footage of a huge ball of fire with "Oh the humanity!" is a bit more dramatic than even the film representation of the Titanic sinking.
  - yed 5y ago
    Also ships already had a multi millennia history so one event wasn’t going to be as impactful on the industry as a whole.
    - GDC7 5y ago
      This right here. Back when the first ships failed causing the death of all the occupants , human lives were just not worth much , so humans kept building ships. And also mass media wasn't there yet, so there could be no way to massively distribute content of a ship sinking and all the bodies floating around. Same thing with planes, had we discovered flight in the Middle Ages we would have loaded 100+ people in wooden planes as fast as humanely possible because of the enthusiasm for the new technology would have vastly surpassed the fear of being harmed by it.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    > The cost of helium is the reason you don't see the Goodyear blimps just floating around anymore. What are you talking about? The Goodyear blimps are still out and about providing video for major live TV broadcasts. It's not like they drain the helium and fill it back up each time it goes out.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      > It's not like they drain the helium For what it's worth, I see six scheduled appearances in two cities, all in January and February of next year. That's not a lot, especially when I used to see them about 3-4 times a year out in Montana (AKA, the boonies). > It's not like they drain the helium No, but they naturally lose helium at a fairly regular rate, since there's no blimp envelope systems that can prevent all helium loss. RC blimps, as an example, lose about .5% to 1% of their helium daily. Commercial blimps appear to have a couple of months until they've lost their bouyancy. EDIT: A single Goodyear blimp requires approximately 300 mcf (1mcf = 1,000 cubic feet) of helium, and helium prices are around $700 per mcf when sold in bulk. That puts a blimp's helium costs alone in the $200,000 range for a blimp that can carry 14 people. Back in 2000, the price per mcf was in the $40 to $50 range.
- bruce511 5y ago
  >> with safer helium or something. There's a common misconception that the Hindenburg failed because of hydrogen. That's not the case (he said confidently.) The Hindenburg burned - it didn't explode. Hydrogen doesn't burn, it explodes. What burned on the Hindenburg was the skin, a mixture of all kinds of inflamable things including silver, dope and cotton. The same materials that made WW1 airplanes somewhat risky. When you watch footage of the Hindenburg you see the skin burning, the hydrogen escaping, and it falls to the ground, because, well, gravity. Even then it happens really slowly - some people on the airship escaped by just waiting till it reached the ground then running away. These days we regularly use flamable materials in transport - think Avgas, petrol, and to a lesser extent diesel and jet fuel (kerosene). The "hydrogen vs helium" issue is overrated in my opinion.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >The Hindenburg burned - it didn't explode. Hydrogen doesn't burn, it explodes If it doesn't contain its own oxygen it can't realistically "explode". (edge cases involving novelty chemical reactions that go solid/liquid -> gas by some other means notwithstanding) You need precise fuel and oxygen ratios to burn things. Burning is basically just runaway oxidation. Burn enough stuff fast enough and you get an explosion. Contain a fairly rapid burn and you can fudge the same pressures as an explosion (this is what happens in a spark ignited combustion engine). Both these require the fuel any oxygen to be in sufficient proximity and mixture to each other. Airships, propane tanks and other sources of fairly pure gasses can't explode until after you break them and let the contents mix them with the atmosphere. Now, a trashbag full of pre-mixed oxygen and acetylene. That will go bang real good. >When you watch footage of the Hindenburg you see the skin burning, the hydrogen escaping, You see the hydrogen burning as it mixed with the atmosphere in the presence of an ignition source. The airship casing on its own doesn't have enough fuel to burn that energetically. > The "hydrogen vs helium" issue is overrated in my opinion. I agree but for totally different reasons that boil down to "people overrate risks they don't understand".
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Something had to bring the skin up to ignition point. That may very well have been hydrogen, either above or below explosive mixes. Static electricity (from a potential difference with the ground, St. Elmo's fire, or other sources) likely also contributed. Forensic analysis strongly supports leaking hydrogen from the aft part of the airship, given the nose-high, tail-low attitude and handling difficulties.
- detritus 5y ago
  I've for years fantasised about being able to go on an airship cruise in my twilight years. I'm genuinely surprised it's not been seriously mooted by any companies.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  The Zeppelins were not squalid or horrible, but they were incredibly spartan and not at all Luxury compared to what a cruise ship can do with a lot of mass. Here's a reproduction Hindenburg passenger cabin[1], compare with a cabin on a luxury cruise ship[2]. They're optimised for low mass more than comfort. Then a reproduction lounge on the Hindenburg[3], compare with any of these on a cruise ship[4]. Ships are roughly as luxurious as you want to spend money to get, rivalling any hotel. (Water is ~750x denser than air, does that mean it can buoy up 750x more luxury per passenger for the same displacement vessel?) [1] https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/switzerlandmiscellaneous/reproduction-of-passenger-cabin-on-the-hindenburg_9280133.jpg?sfvrsn=13bfb4c8_0 https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/swi... [2] https://i.redd.it/abf8ipo9noj41.jpg https://i.redd.it/abf8ipo9noj41.jpg [3] https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/switzerlandmiscellaneous/reproduction-of-lounge-on-the-hindenburg_9280130.jpg?sfvrsn=7bfb4c8_0 https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/swi... [4] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=luxury+cruise+ship+lounge&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=luxury+cruise+ship+lounge&t=ffab&i...
  - riffic 5y ago
    [2] is not typical at all.
- dirkt 5y ago
  CargoLifter tried (though for cargo, not people): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter The German wikipedia article has a lot of more details (use Google Translate etc.) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG And they planned to use helium: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_CL160 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_CL160
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  For a cracked up society valueing sociopathic players above all else, there is only the need for speed. Hence boomsupersonic and the like. Or some hyped loops for tunnel rats. Or rattling rockets by whomever.
drcongo 5y ago
I recently moved to Bedford in the UK, where the R100 / R101 were built and the hangars are still standing and in use for the Airlander: https://www.hybridairvehicles.com https://www.hybridairvehicles.com I can't wait to see this thing in the air, even just the hangars are quite an awe inspiring sight.
- jonititan 5y ago
  Unfortunately the Shortstown sheds are not in use for Airlander. HAV no longer have a presence there. They couldn't afford the rents while they recover from the crash and work towards building their next test vehicle. Mostly movie studios and similar rent them now. A developer is hoping to build on the airfield which would stop any future airship use if they can't be stopped.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    Oh thanks, I hadn't realised. I hope the developers are stopped.
- dcminter 5y ago
  You might enjoy this then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_Rule:_Autobiography_of_an_Engineer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_Rule:_Autobiography_of...
dbatten 5y ago
Noteworthy comment: > It is unfortunate that in the public mind, hydrogen as a lifting gas is associated with the Hindenburg disaster. Actually, hydrogen filled airships were extremely difficult to set alight. Just ask the Brits in WWI. > The RAF could easily hit the German airships with gun fire, but couldn’t get them to ignite until they developed special phosphorus filled ammunition. They used sustained machine gun fire to rip a section of the gas bags to get the hydrogen to mix with air at their surfaces. Then, the small number of phosphorus burning bullets could ignite this hydrogen air mix. Even then, the RAF brought down very few of them. > Because of this knowledge of how difficult it is to get a hydrogen filled airship to burn, there has been much speculation that the Hindenburg was sabotaged, set to burn deliberately, in a very public act of terrorism / economic / public relations warfare against the NAZI regime (and who could blame them?). I had no idea that there were controversies regarding the cause of the disaster, nor that hydrogen was (arguably, at least) dangerous more in the public eye than in reality. I'd be interested to hear other modern engineering perspectives on the hydrogen issue...
- notatoad 5y ago
  if you go down this rabbit hole on google, just be wary that while the hindenburg sabotoge conspiracy theory actually seems fairly plausible, most of the people you'll find talking about it are right at the top of this chart: https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4532919!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4532919!/image/imag...
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    I wonder where "Stevie Wonder Can Actually See" lies on that chart.
    - shiftpgdn 5y ago
      I thought Stevie Wonder could see? He's just blind by the legal definition (shapes only, etc)
warrenm 5y ago
Best quote of the whole article: > It’s not called a Zeppelin unless it comes from the Zeppelin region of Germany, otherwise it’s just a sparkling airship.
- joecool1029 5y ago
  I'm guessing the author and most of HN missed the memo that Zeppelin is back and producing a modern semi-rigid design called the Zeppelin NT, which has been in use notably for the newest Goodyear fleet starting in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
  - warrenm 5y ago
    I think you missed the joke
    - joecool1029 5y ago
      Guess so
      - jamiek88 5y ago
        It’s a play on champagne.
  - Animats 5y ago
    The author definitely missed the Zeppelin NT. One flew over Silicon Valley for several years, from 2008 to 2012. They had the misfortune of launching a luxury experience during a recession. The ship worked great. It had three steerable propellors, two steerable. This made it far more manuverable than classic airships. No more needing an army on the ground to tie the thing down. DARPA and Lockheed's Skunk Works built a airship in 2017 or so with even more steerable fans. That thing could fly itself out of a hanger, take off, return to base, land on a short runway, and taxi to the hangar. High winds on the ground remain a problem. Just too much sail area.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I read about the early history of the Hindenburg, Graf Zeppelin. Fascinated that as passenger aircraft, they stayed relatively close to the ground during their flights. I don't know why I assumed they flew at 25K feet like modern jets — I guess I had not thought it through. But the idea of air travel where you watch the trees, rivers, pass as though you were on some "elevated train" is fascinating to me.
- btbuildem 5y ago
  It seems like such a relaxing and beautiful way to travel. They could not have flown as high as modern jets, the air is too thin to breathe at that altitude.
  - noneeeed 5y ago
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has a section set on a Zepplin, it looks like a really nice way to travel. Like a cruise liner of the air.
- nradov 5y ago
  Lifting capacity of rigid airships is proportional to air density. In order to fly at higher altitudes they would have to drastically reduce passenger load. And above about 10K feet the cabin would have to be pressurized, which further increases weight. The big disadvantage of flying at low altitude is more exposure to storms and air turbulence.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  In WW1, once Britain developed effective means for shooting down airships, the Zeppelin company built lightweight airships that could climb as high as 20,000 feet, at the cost of being too fragile to handle rough air. Outside of the exegencies of war, these were not viable designs. Being limited to low altitudes means that practical airships cannot fly over the weather, and their low speed limits alternative destinations. Three of the four helium-filled rigid airships operated by the US were brought down by bad weather. These days, we have much better materials and weather forecasting, but I think operations would still be quite frequently constrained by the weather in most parts of the world. On the other hand, if the stream of powered sightseeing aircraft over the Grand Canyon could be replaced by a few electric airships... Well, we can dream.
rpmisms 5y ago
This is exactly the kind of engineering fever dream that I love. I'd love to see it happen.
dgllghr 5y ago
LANA shoots a gun ARCHER: Lana, no! You'll kill us all! LAMMERS: For the last time, you idiot! It's not hydrogen! It's helium! LANA: And what about that are you still not getting, exactly? ARCHER: Well, obviously the core concept, Lana. Sorry I didn't go to space camp.
NoGravitas 5y ago
Climate change and the need to end the use of fossil fuels may force the return of the airship. People are working on making electric airplanes feasible, but the weight of batteries makes it a tough problem. Airships are much more doable, although for any kind of frequent route, ground/sea travel is probably better. Heavier than air flight would probably need to use fuels synthesized from waste biomass, and be relegated to high-priority use. I'd also love to see more long-distance shipping move to advanced clipper ships using modern materials, computer-controlled rigging, highly optimized sail and hull designs, etc.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  It seems far more likely that jet flights would migrate to a synthetic fuel, taking yesterday’s CO2, making jet fuel today, and emitting that CO2 back tomorrow. It’s technically feasible but economically infeasible right now, the headline below notwithstanding. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sustainable-aviation-fuels-technically-possible-economically-viable https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sustainable-aviation-fuels-...
  - ant6n 5y ago
    Absorbing co2 at ground level and emitting it high in the atmosphere is equivalent to emitting fossil co2 at ground level -- at higher altitudes the green house effect is stronger, see radiative Forcing. Also, the overall energy efficiency is very poor. A plant creating synthetic cerosene just opened in Germany, and the reporting said the electricity->h2->cerosene->aircraft movement efficiency is 10-15%. Ouch.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      > at higher altitudes the green house effect is stronger Good thing the CO2 doesn't stay there forever. > Also, the overall energy efficiency is very poor. And energy efficiency is a good proxy for economic viability when you are comparing similar things, but completely useless when you comparing it with something. Why does the 10% efficiency matters? (By the way, expect that to increase. It always does.)
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komposit 5y ago
I am absolutely fascinated with airships. Im imagining a future where most building construction is moved into large factories (preferably near harbors) and lifted on site in house size chunks by a fleet of airships. Imagine the environmental and cost gains.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
I made a small deck with ideas for airship architecture. Just for fun: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6IyCS1dyiqFz_HsjH-evYiHg/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6...
- ant6n 5y ago
  I have never tried to raise money from VCs. Is something like the above good enough these days? How many Mio will this raise?
- carapace 5y ago
  That's awesome. I mentioned Bucky's "Cloud Nine" on a comment of yours ten days ago, it seems you're all over it, eh? Have you seen Alexander G. Bell's cellular geodesic kites? I feel like a cellular system makes sense because it would be easier to manufacture and assemble large systems out of collections of smaller systems.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Yes! The cellular approach, with a combination of kite power and hydrogen… seems like a lot of force. I’ve wondered about a sea anchor turbine, where the lifting power changes from day to night would spin the turbine, and provide enough power to keep the airship or platform in place (eg, to do cloud seeding duties)
    - carapace 5y ago
      > The cellular approach, with a combination of kite power and hydrogen… seems like a lot of force. Riiiight? :) The (defunct) Magenn co. had the idea of making Magnus effect pontoons that would stay aloft and generate electricity. https://newatlas.com/magenn-mars-floating-wind-generator/11109/ https://newatlas.com/magenn-mars-floating-wind-generator/111... http://energykitesystems.net/0/Magenn/ http://energykitesystems.net/0/Magenn/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect I like to say that the Magnus effect is to the wing as the wheel is to the sled runner. (BTW, the link on your HN profile has some sort of problem. "connection has timed out")
gumby 5y ago
Freight seems like the ideal application, for landlocked regions of the planet that lack adequate rail links (e.g. central Africa and Central Asia)
dredmorbius 5y ago
Airships would have greatest utility on long trans-oceanic travel. Virtually all continental travel would be far better suited to rail. But could trains tackle the oceans? Maybe. I'm increasingly thinking that an intercontinental rail network would be more viable than trying to resurrect airships. It's possible to build a continuous rail link from the south of Africa to the British Isles, Siberia, and Malaysia. Tunelling across the Bering Strait would be within reason for an Asian-American link. Crossing the Atlantic is appealing as population centres are closer to both coast, though sea distances are greater. One possible answer might be a "floating tunnel", of the type envisioned for use in crossing Norway's fjords. Suspended from buouys and anchored to the seafloor, at a depth of about 30m, muliple bores could carry passenger and freight rail traffic. One possible route might extend from Scotland via Iceland and Greenland to the Labrador coastline. For the floating tunnel concept, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel Transit times might range from 15 hours (at about 240 kph / 150 mph) to as little as 2.5 hours in a hyperloop-like evacuated tube at 1600 kph / 1,000 mph. The former is about a quarter the speed of present-day jet airliners, making short day excursions between continents infeasible but allowing for an overnight "hotel train" or working daytime trips. At higher speeds, service is comparable to present aircraft, and at the (admittedly unlikely) extremes, several times faster. Similar crossings could be reasonably be made to Indonesia and on to Australia, crossing from Singapore, then to West Java and Timor Leste, and across the Timor sea to Darwin. A southern Atlantic crossing between Recife and Monrovia might also be possible. There are of course formidible costs and risks. But the technology and routes are at least within the realm of possibility. A north-Atlantic rail crossing was amongst the concepts mooted in a BBC piece some years back: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23969607 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23969607 A more complete proposal is in this 2004 PopSci article: https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic-maglev/ https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlanti...
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  I like your thinking. Let me explain mine. From a purely logical point of view, maybe something like playing Sim City, Civilization, or other infratructure building Sims this would make sense. In peace time, and if all players were like Spock, or of the same hive mind. Because like the BBC and Popular Science articles you linked this could be much more by co-bundling pipelines of all sorts (DATA!) with it, maybe even part of a global HVDC smart grid. The costs shouldn't really matter, compared to the money the military (No matter which) burns. It could also be the enabler of (environmentally responsible?) aquafarming, seasteading, nodes of wave- and offshore wind energy farming which would branch off from it. You'd need many platforms for security, emergency and maintenance reasons along the way anyways. But it would be very vulnerable and probably protested for all sorts of business and political reasons. Just look at what happens with proposed pipelines, high-speed rails, the bitching about where to put stations, the NIMBYism about where not, and so on. In this case there could be less NIMBYism, because open-seas, but think of the ship builders, and the giant complex of companies operating the built ships. Wouldn't you think they object to that? Just look at what ferry operators did when some tunnel or bridge opened, making them obsolete. So we have them, and their interests, against a potential network of submerged floating tunnels enabling all sorts of nice things, making them almost obsolete, too. Similar for Aerospace. 500kph seems doable without vacuum. Half the speed of air-traffic. 350 to 400 kph even more so, and already IS in operation at 350. Now imagine freight trains running at 250 to 300kph on separate tracks. Which you would want to have anyways, if only as reserve/backup for maintenance reasons. And now imagine a grid of these. Criss-crossing the seven seas, and having transport-hubs/nodes, switching yards, resort cities, free towns, permanent in-situ sensors, whatever, out there. Can't have pirates though, or war. What do you think about that? edit: I'd opt for smelting all the container giants, bulk carriers, and similarly obsolete stuff to build this. With nuclear power, if need be. I don't care. The same for most airplanes, because less noise. Seawards, Ho!
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inetsee 5y ago
Despite having worked on aircraft software for most of my career, my knowledge of aeronautics is weak. I have often wondered why no one has tried to design and build an airship with an envelope in the shape of a lifting body. The structure might have additional weight to hold the desired shape, and it would have to take off like an aircraft, but wouldn't the added lift provide significant advantages? I know I must be missing something fundamental. Can someone more knowledgeable tell me what it is?
- cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
  I think it's been proposed, and a book on one such proposal is John McPhee's _The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed_.
- wombatpm 5y ago
  There was a company that tried that in the late 90s early 00s. I think there name was cargolifter
sandworm101 5y ago
>> when you could promenade the deck while watching the world pass silently from 500 feet or so? I don't know where this assumption comes from. Airships were not silent, nor would you ever want to promenade the deck. These things moved very quickly. The wind/engine noise was considerable. If you opened a window you would be hit with a 50+mph blast of wind. Only during takeoff (liftoff?) and landing would there be any sense that you were floating as opposed to flying. >> I think a modern Zeppelin could be built for less than ten million dollars. No. Just no way. There is no possible scenario whereby one could develop a new over-ocean passenger-carrying aircraft for 10mil. Talk to Boeing/Airbus. You probably need to double that number and add at least one zero.
amarant 5y ago
There's actually a company building modern airships right now! I, for one, am excited about the prospect! https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/our-aircraft/airlander-10/ https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/our-aircraft/airlander-10/
dirkt 5y ago
> It’s not called a Zeppelin unless it comes from the Zeppelin region of Germany, otherwise it’s just a sparkling airship. Now I really want to know where the "Zeppelin region" is located in Germany...

99 points by GDC7 5y ago

I am actually surprised none of the large cruise ship companies have yet thought of bringing back blimps but with safer helium or something. 1. Put a few hundred well off people in luxury and slow air ship them to locations hard to reach by ships. Maybe with both top and bottom decks 2. ??? 3. Profit Everyone thinks of Hindenburg disaster when they think of blimps, yet infamous Titanic and Costa Concordia didnt sink the cruise industry.

GDC7 5y ago
> Put a few hundred well off people in luxury and slow air ship them to locations hard to reach by ships The problem is that the infrastructure required for a blimp to land and takeoff might be significantly less expensive than a port but it's still many times larger than what an helicopter would need. VIP services are banking on the new AW609 Leonardo[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW609 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW609
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Is much known about the safety of this aircraft? As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The V-22 Osprey can make a dead stick landing in an emergency just like a regular airplane. This will destroy the rotors. https://verticalmag.com/features/20112-flying-the-v-22-html/ https://verticalmag.com/features/20112-flying-the-v-22-html/
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds. Tradeoffs. It's worth it to them to plop a bunch of marines down with helicopter speed faster/farther than you normally can with a helicopter. The military generally doesn't uncritically accept "but muh safety and liability" arguments like private industry does because the cost of doing things less efficiently (trying to refuel helicopters in hostile airspace, airborne operations, etc) comes with a statistical body count as well and they have some degree of sovereign immunity. In a non-military context the pros and cons would weigh differently.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      Yeah, I see that the calculus is very different for the military. I was specifically curious about civilian case. I’m already conscious of how fragile helicopters can be, hence my curiosity re this. But from other responses it seems that these aircraft can in fact auto rotate and glide in an emergency.
  - ihattendorf 5y ago
    Seems like it's able to perform relatively safe autorotation landings: https://newatlas.com/agustawestland-aw609-autorotation-trials/31813/ https://newatlas.com/agustawestland-aw609-autorotation-trial...
  - outworlder 5y ago
    > As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds. "The V-22 is a tiltrotor and does not rely on autorotation for a survivable power-out landing. The wide separation of the engines and the ability to drive both rotors with one engine make a power-out landing extremely unlikely. However, if required, the V-22 can glide for a predictable run-on landing in airplane mode, much like a turboprop" https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22491/can-the-v-22-autorotate https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22491/can-the-v...
- chiph 5y ago
  Put a flat section on top of the airship, and land helicopters (or tilt-rotors) on it. Take the passengers (and fuel + supplies) to the airship, don't take the airship to the passengers.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Unimaginative. Make the airship really big. Put an airstrip on top. Turn it into the wind. Have commuter planes doing STOL on top of it :-)
falcolas 5y ago
Helium is quite expensive right now. The US has stopped giving away the helium in its strategic reserves, and so the cost is now based in the reality of the cost to produce it. The cost of helium is the reason you don't see the Goodyear blimps just floating around anymore. As for the Hindenburg vs. Titanic: The titanic wasn't filmed going down. And the footage of a huge ball of fire with "Oh the humanity!" is a bit more dramatic than even the film representation of the Titanic sinking.
- yed 5y ago
  Also ships already had a multi millennia history so one event wasn’t going to be as impactful on the industry as a whole.
  - GDC7 5y ago
    This right here. Back when the first ships failed causing the death of all the occupants , human lives were just not worth much , so humans kept building ships. And also mass media wasn't there yet, so there could be no way to massively distribute content of a ship sinking and all the bodies floating around. Same thing with planes, had we discovered flight in the Middle Ages we would have loaded 100+ people in wooden planes as fast as humanely possible because of the enthusiasm for the new technology would have vastly surpassed the fear of being harmed by it.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > The cost of helium is the reason you don't see the Goodyear blimps just floating around anymore. What are you talking about? The Goodyear blimps are still out and about providing video for major live TV broadcasts. It's not like they drain the helium and fill it back up each time it goes out.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    > It's not like they drain the helium For what it's worth, I see six scheduled appearances in two cities, all in January and February of next year. That's not a lot, especially when I used to see them about 3-4 times a year out in Montana (AKA, the boonies). > It's not like they drain the helium No, but they naturally lose helium at a fairly regular rate, since there's no blimp envelope systems that can prevent all helium loss. RC blimps, as an example, lose about .5% to 1% of their helium daily. Commercial blimps appear to have a couple of months until they've lost their bouyancy. EDIT: A single Goodyear blimp requires approximately 300 mcf (1mcf = 1,000 cubic feet) of helium, and helium prices are around $700 per mcf when sold in bulk. That puts a blimp's helium costs alone in the $200,000 range for a blimp that can carry 14 people. Back in 2000, the price per mcf was in the $40 to $50 range.
bruce511 5y ago
>> with safer helium or something. There's a common misconception that the Hindenburg failed because of hydrogen. That's not the case (he said confidently.) The Hindenburg burned - it didn't explode. Hydrogen doesn't burn, it explodes. What burned on the Hindenburg was the skin, a mixture of all kinds of inflamable things including silver, dope and cotton. The same materials that made WW1 airplanes somewhat risky. When you watch footage of the Hindenburg you see the skin burning, the hydrogen escaping, and it falls to the ground, because, well, gravity. Even then it happens really slowly - some people on the airship escaped by just waiting till it reached the ground then running away. These days we regularly use flamable materials in transport - think Avgas, petrol, and to a lesser extent diesel and jet fuel (kerosene). The "hydrogen vs helium" issue is overrated in my opinion.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >The Hindenburg burned - it didn't explode. Hydrogen doesn't burn, it explodes If it doesn't contain its own oxygen it can't realistically "explode". (edge cases involving novelty chemical reactions that go solid/liquid -> gas by some other means notwithstanding) You need precise fuel and oxygen ratios to burn things. Burning is basically just runaway oxidation. Burn enough stuff fast enough and you get an explosion. Contain a fairly rapid burn and you can fudge the same pressures as an explosion (this is what happens in a spark ignited combustion engine). Both these require the fuel any oxygen to be in sufficient proximity and mixture to each other. Airships, propane tanks and other sources of fairly pure gasses can't explode until after you break them and let the contents mix them with the atmosphere. Now, a trashbag full of pre-mixed oxygen and acetylene. That will go bang real good. >When you watch footage of the Hindenburg you see the skin burning, the hydrogen escaping, You see the hydrogen burning as it mixed with the atmosphere in the presence of an ignition source. The airship casing on its own doesn't have enough fuel to burn that energetically. > The "hydrogen vs helium" issue is overrated in my opinion. I agree but for totally different reasons that boil down to "people overrate risks they don't understand".
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Something had to bring the skin up to ignition point. That may very well have been hydrogen, either above or below explosive mixes. Static electricity (from a potential difference with the ground, St. Elmo's fire, or other sources) likely also contributed. Forensic analysis strongly supports leaking hydrogen from the aft part of the airship, given the nose-high, tail-low attitude and handling difficulties.
detritus 5y ago
I've for years fantasised about being able to go on an airship cruise in my twilight years. I'm genuinely surprised it's not been seriously mooted by any companies.
jodrellblank 5y ago
The Zeppelins were not squalid or horrible, but they were incredibly spartan and not at all Luxury compared to what a cruise ship can do with a lot of mass. Here's a reproduction Hindenburg passenger cabin[1], compare with a cabin on a luxury cruise ship[2]. They're optimised for low mass more than comfort. Then a reproduction lounge on the Hindenburg[3], compare with any of these on a cruise ship[4]. Ships are roughly as luxurious as you want to spend money to get, rivalling any hotel. (Water is ~750x denser than air, does that mean it can buoy up 750x more luxury per passenger for the same displacement vessel?) [1] https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/switzerlandmiscellaneous/reproduction-of-passenger-cabin-on-the-hindenburg_9280133.jpg?sfvrsn=13bfb4c8_0 https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/swi... [2] https://i.redd.it/abf8ipo9noj41.jpg https://i.redd.it/abf8ipo9noj41.jpg [3] https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/switzerlandmiscellaneous/reproduction-of-lounge-on-the-hindenburg_9280130.jpg?sfvrsn=7bfb4c8_0 https://www.myswissalps.com/docs/SystemLibrariesProvider/swi... [4] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=luxury+cruise+ship+lounge&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=luxury+cruise+ship+lounge&t=ffab&i...
- riffic 5y ago
  [2] is not typical at all.
dirkt 5y ago
CargoLifter tried (though for cargo, not people): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter The German wikipedia article has a lot of more details (use Google Translate etc.) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG And they planned to use helium: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_CL160 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_CL160
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
For a cracked up society valueing sociopathic players above all else, there is only the need for speed. Hence boomsupersonic and the like. Or some hyped loops for tunnel rats. Or rattling rockets by whomever.

drcongo 5y ago

I recently moved to Bedford in the UK, where the R100 / R101 were built and the hangars are still standing and in use for the Airlander: https://www.hybridairvehicles.com https://www.hybridairvehicles.com I can't wait to see this thing in the air, even just the hangars are quite an awe inspiring sight.

jonititan 5y ago
Unfortunately the Shortstown sheds are not in use for Airlander. HAV no longer have a presence there. They couldn't afford the rents while they recover from the crash and work towards building their next test vehicle. Mostly movie studios and similar rent them now. A developer is hoping to build on the airfield which would stop any future airship use if they can't be stopped.
- drcongo 5y ago
  Oh thanks, I hadn't realised. I hope the developers are stopped.
dcminter 5y ago
You might enjoy this then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_Rule:_Autobiography_of_an_Engineer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_Rule:_Autobiography_of...

dbatten 5y ago

Noteworthy comment: > It is unfortunate that in the public mind, hydrogen as a lifting gas is associated with the Hindenburg disaster. Actually, hydrogen filled airships were extremely difficult to set alight. Just ask the Brits in WWI. > The RAF could easily hit the German airships with gun fire, but couldn’t get them to ignite until they developed special phosphorus filled ammunition. They used sustained machine gun fire to rip a section of the gas bags to get the hydrogen to mix with air at their surfaces. Then, the small number of phosphorus burning bullets could ignite this hydrogen air mix. Even then, the RAF brought down very few of them. > Because of this knowledge of how difficult it is to get a hydrogen filled airship to burn, there has been much speculation that the Hindenburg was sabotaged, set to burn deliberately, in a very public act of terrorism / economic / public relations warfare against the NAZI regime (and who could blame them?). I had no idea that there were controversies regarding the cause of the disaster, nor that hydrogen was (arguably, at least) dangerous more in the public eye than in reality. I'd be interested to hear other modern engineering perspectives on the hydrogen issue...

notatoad 5y ago
if you go down this rabbit hole on google, just be wary that while the hindenburg sabotoge conspiracy theory actually seems fairly plausible, most of the people you'll find talking about it are right at the top of this chart: https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4532919!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4532919!/image/imag...
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I wonder where "Stevie Wonder Can Actually See" lies on that chart.
  - shiftpgdn 5y ago
    I thought Stevie Wonder could see? He's just blind by the legal definition (shapes only, etc)

warrenm 5y ago

Best quote of the whole article: > It’s not called a Zeppelin unless it comes from the Zeppelin region of Germany, otherwise it’s just a sparkling airship.

joecool1029 5y ago
I'm guessing the author and most of HN missed the memo that Zeppelin is back and producing a modern semi-rigid design called the Zeppelin NT, which has been in use notably for the newest Goodyear fleet starting in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
- warrenm 5y ago
  I think you missed the joke
  - joecool1029 5y ago
    Guess so
    - jamiek88 5y ago
      It’s a play on champagne.
- Animats 5y ago
  The author definitely missed the Zeppelin NT. One flew over Silicon Valley for several years, from 2008 to 2012. They had the misfortune of launching a luxury experience during a recession. The ship worked great. It had three steerable propellors, two steerable. This made it far more manuverable than classic airships. No more needing an army on the ground to tie the thing down. DARPA and Lockheed's Skunk Works built a airship in 2017 or so with even more steerable fans. That thing could fly itself out of a hanger, take off, return to base, land on a short runway, and taxi to the hangar. High winds on the ground remain a problem. Just too much sail area.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

I read about the early history of the Hindenburg, Graf Zeppelin. Fascinated that as passenger aircraft, they stayed relatively close to the ground during their flights. I don't know why I assumed they flew at 25K feet like modern jets — I guess I had not thought it through. But the idea of air travel where you watch the trees, rivers, pass as though you were on some "elevated train" is fascinating to me.

btbuildem 5y ago
It seems like such a relaxing and beautiful way to travel. They could not have flown as high as modern jets, the air is too thin to breathe at that altitude.
- noneeeed 5y ago
  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has a section set on a Zepplin, it looks like a really nice way to travel. Like a cruise liner of the air.
nradov 5y ago
Lifting capacity of rigid airships is proportional to air density. In order to fly at higher altitudes they would have to drastically reduce passenger load. And above about 10K feet the cabin would have to be pressurized, which further increases weight. The big disadvantage of flying at low altitude is more exposure to storms and air turbulence.
mannykannot 5y ago
In WW1, once Britain developed effective means for shooting down airships, the Zeppelin company built lightweight airships that could climb as high as 20,000 feet, at the cost of being too fragile to handle rough air. Outside of the exegencies of war, these were not viable designs. Being limited to low altitudes means that practical airships cannot fly over the weather, and their low speed limits alternative destinations. Three of the four helium-filled rigid airships operated by the US were brought down by bad weather. These days, we have much better materials and weather forecasting, but I think operations would still be quite frequently constrained by the weather in most parts of the world. On the other hand, if the stream of powered sightseeing aircraft over the Grand Canyon could be replaced by a few electric airships... Well, we can dream.

rpmisms 5y ago

This is exactly the kind of engineering fever dream that I love. I'd love to see it happen.

dgllghr 5y ago

LANA shoots a gun ARCHER: Lana, no! You'll kill us all! LAMMERS: For the last time, you idiot! It's not hydrogen! It's helium! LANA: And what about that are you still not getting, exactly? ARCHER: Well, obviously the core concept, Lana. Sorry I didn't go to space camp.

NoGravitas 5y ago

Climate change and the need to end the use of fossil fuels may force the return of the airship. People are working on making electric airplanes feasible, but the weight of batteries makes it a tough problem. Airships are much more doable, although for any kind of frequent route, ground/sea travel is probably better. Heavier than air flight would probably need to use fuels synthesized from waste biomass, and be relegated to high-priority use. I'd also love to see more long-distance shipping move to advanced clipper ships using modern materials, computer-controlled rigging, highly optimized sail and hull designs, etc.

sokoloff 5y ago
It seems far more likely that jet flights would migrate to a synthetic fuel, taking yesterday’s CO2, making jet fuel today, and emitting that CO2 back tomorrow. It’s technically feasible but economically infeasible right now, the headline below notwithstanding. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sustainable-aviation-fuels-technically-possible-economically-viable https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sustainable-aviation-fuels-...
- ant6n 5y ago
  Absorbing co2 at ground level and emitting it high in the atmosphere is equivalent to emitting fossil co2 at ground level -- at higher altitudes the green house effect is stronger, see radiative Forcing. Also, the overall energy efficiency is very poor. A plant creating synthetic cerosene just opened in Germany, and the reporting said the electricity->h2->cerosene->aircraft movement efficiency is 10-15%. Ouch.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    > at higher altitudes the green house effect is stronger Good thing the CO2 doesn't stay there forever. > Also, the overall energy efficiency is very poor. And energy efficiency is a good proxy for economic viability when you are comparing similar things, but completely useless when you comparing it with something. Why does the 10% efficiency matters? (By the way, expect that to increase. It always does.)

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komposit 5y ago

I am absolutely fascinated with airships. Im imagining a future where most building construction is moved into large factories (preferably near harbors) and lifted on site in house size chunks by a fleet of airships. Imagine the environmental and cost gains.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

I made a small deck with ideas for airship architecture. Just for fun: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6IyCS1dyiqFz_HsjH-evYiHg/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6...

ant6n 5y ago
I have never tried to raise money from VCs. Is something like the above good enough these days? How many Mio will this raise?
carapace 5y ago
That's awesome. I mentioned Bucky's "Cloud Nine" on a comment of yours ten days ago, it seems you're all over it, eh? Have you seen Alexander G. Bell's cellular geodesic kites? I feel like a cellular system makes sense because it would be easier to manufacture and assemble large systems out of collections of smaller systems.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Yes! The cellular approach, with a combination of kite power and hydrogen… seems like a lot of force. I’ve wondered about a sea anchor turbine, where the lifting power changes from day to night would spin the turbine, and provide enough power to keep the airship or platform in place (eg, to do cloud seeding duties)
  - carapace 5y ago
    > The cellular approach, with a combination of kite power and hydrogen… seems like a lot of force. Riiiight? :) The (defunct) Magenn co. had the idea of making Magnus effect pontoons that would stay aloft and generate electricity. https://newatlas.com/magenn-mars-floating-wind-generator/11109/ https://newatlas.com/magenn-mars-floating-wind-generator/111... http://energykitesystems.net/0/Magenn/ http://energykitesystems.net/0/Magenn/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect I like to say that the Magnus effect is to the wing as the wheel is to the sled runner. (BTW, the link on your HN profile has some sort of problem. "connection has timed out")

gumby 5y ago

Freight seems like the ideal application, for landlocked regions of the planet that lack adequate rail links (e.g. central Africa and Central Asia)

dredmorbius 5y ago

Airships would have greatest utility on long trans-oceanic travel. Virtually all continental travel would be far better suited to rail. But could trains tackle the oceans? Maybe. I'm increasingly thinking that an intercontinental rail network would be more viable than trying to resurrect airships. It's possible to build a continuous rail link from the south of Africa to the British Isles, Siberia, and Malaysia. Tunelling across the Bering Strait would be within reason for an Asian-American link. Crossing the Atlantic is appealing as population centres are closer to both coast, though sea distances are greater. One possible answer might be a "floating tunnel", of the type envisioned for use in crossing Norway's fjords. Suspended from buouys and anchored to the seafloor, at a depth of about 30m, muliple bores could carry passenger and freight rail traffic. One possible route might extend from Scotland via Iceland and Greenland to the Labrador coastline. For the floating tunnel concept, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel Transit times might range from 15 hours (at about 240 kph / 150 mph) to as little as 2.5 hours in a hyperloop-like evacuated tube at 1600 kph / 1,000 mph. The former is about a quarter the speed of present-day jet airliners, making short day excursions between continents infeasible but allowing for an overnight "hotel train" or working daytime trips. At higher speeds, service is comparable to present aircraft, and at the (admittedly unlikely) extremes, several times faster. Similar crossings could be reasonably be made to Indonesia and on to Australia, crossing from Singapore, then to West Java and Timor Leste, and across the Timor sea to Darwin. A southern Atlantic crossing between Recife and Monrovia might also be possible. There are of course formidible costs and risks. But the technology and routes are at least within the realm of possibility. A north-Atlantic rail crossing was amongst the concepts mooted in a BBC piece some years back: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23969607 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23969607 A more complete proposal is in this 2004 PopSci article: https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic-maglev/ https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlanti...

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
I like your thinking. Let me explain mine. From a purely logical point of view, maybe something like playing Sim City, Civilization, or other infratructure building Sims this would make sense. In peace time, and if all players were like Spock, or of the same hive mind. Because like the BBC and Popular Science articles you linked this could be much more by co-bundling pipelines of all sorts (DATA!) with it, maybe even part of a global HVDC smart grid. The costs shouldn't really matter, compared to the money the military (No matter which) burns. It could also be the enabler of (environmentally responsible?) aquafarming, seasteading, nodes of wave- and offshore wind energy farming which would branch off from it. You'd need many platforms for security, emergency and maintenance reasons along the way anyways. But it would be very vulnerable and probably protested for all sorts of business and political reasons. Just look at what happens with proposed pipelines, high-speed rails, the bitching about where to put stations, the NIMBYism about where not, and so on. In this case there could be less NIMBYism, because open-seas, but think of the ship builders, and the giant complex of companies operating the built ships. Wouldn't you think they object to that? Just look at what ferry operators did when some tunnel or bridge opened, making them obsolete. So we have them, and their interests, against a potential network of submerged floating tunnels enabling all sorts of nice things, making them almost obsolete, too. Similar for Aerospace. 500kph seems doable without vacuum. Half the speed of air-traffic. 350 to 400 kph even more so, and already IS in operation at 350. Now imagine freight trains running at 250 to 300kph on separate tracks. Which you would want to have anyways, if only as reserve/backup for maintenance reasons. And now imagine a grid of these. Criss-crossing the seven seas, and having transport-hubs/nodes, switching yards, resort cities, free towns, permanent in-situ sensors, whatever, out there. Can't have pirates though, or war. What do you think about that? edit: I'd opt for smelting all the container giants, bulk carriers, and similarly obsolete stuff to build this. With nuclear power, if need be. I don't care. The same for most airplanes, because less noise. Seawards, Ho!

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inetsee 5y ago

Despite having worked on aircraft software for most of my career, my knowledge of aeronautics is weak. I have often wondered why no one has tried to design and build an airship with an envelope in the shape of a lifting body. The structure might have additional weight to hold the desired shape, and it would have to take off like an aircraft, but wouldn't the added lift provide significant advantages? I know I must be missing something fundamental. Can someone more knowledgeable tell me what it is?

cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
I think it's been proposed, and a book on one such proposal is John McPhee's _The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed_.
wombatpm 5y ago
There was a company that tried that in the late 90s early 00s. I think there name was cargolifter

sandworm101 5y ago

>> when you could promenade the deck while watching the world pass silently from 500 feet or so? I don't know where this assumption comes from. Airships were not silent, nor would you ever want to promenade the deck. These things moved very quickly. The wind/engine noise was considerable. If you opened a window you would be hit with a 50+mph blast of wind. Only during takeoff (liftoff?) and landing would there be any sense that you were floating as opposed to flying. >> I think a modern Zeppelin could be built for less than ten million dollars. No. Just no way. There is no possible scenario whereby one could develop a new over-ocean passenger-carrying aircraft for 10mil. Talk to Boeing/Airbus. You probably need to double that number and add at least one zero.

amarant 5y ago

There's actually a company building modern airships right now! I, for one, am excited about the prospect! https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/our-aircraft/airlander-10/ https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/our-aircraft/airlander-10/

dirkt 5y ago

> It’s not called a Zeppelin unless it comes from the Zeppelin region of Germany, otherwise it’s just a sparkling airship. Now I really want to know where the "Zeppelin region" is located in Germany...