6 ms·

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 hundr

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.

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.