14 ms·
Largest airship built in United States since 1930s to take shape soon
- xcambar 4y agoFinally, after almost 100 years, we are overcoming the trauma caused by the incident of the Hindenburg[1]. I am really looking forward to what opportunities it may open. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg
- wardedVibe 4y agoWhile they are extremely cool, what tangible benefit do they have over airplanes?
- doctor_eval 4y agoI’m gonna guess that they can loiter for a long time? Also if I read it right their cargo capacity is about double that of a 747-400F. Edit: nope, it’s 1/5th the cargo weight of a 747.
- tgv 4y agoYeah, you can maximally lift the weight of the air you're displacing, right? That plane can carry 124000kg. Air is about 1kg/m3 at sea level, so that requires a balloon of 124000m3 (assuming the balloon and gas weigh nothing). That's a cube of 50x50x50 meters under optimal assumptions.
- doctor_eval 4y ago“Hi, we heard you needed help, so we sent the Borg”
- kakwa_ 4y agoIs the comparison with a 747 the most relevant? The niche use case I see for large airships (aside from pleasure rides) is deliveries in remote area with no infrastructure. For example delivering a big generator in Alaska. In such use case, the comparison should maybe be against large transport helicopters.
- serial_dev 4y agoFrom the article: > LTA's goal is to build huge airships to provide humanitarian aid in places where conventional transportation can't reach, such as in the aftermath of a disaster. (...) "We believe that lighter-than-air technology has the potential to revolutionize humanitarian relief efforts with its ability to reach remote locations that have little or no infrastructure," Weston said.
- SenHeng 4y agoSounds like they could re-use whatever they had from Google Balloons or whatever it was called.
- Jabbles 4y agoMaybe he influenced the decision to open source all the data? https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/alphabet-gives-some-loon-patents-to-softbank-open-sources-flight-data-and-makes-patent-non-assertion-pledge/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/alphabet-gives-some-loon-p...
- Jabbles 4y agoI don't really understand how these are meant to help - they are extremely slow and can't carry very much weight. Surely airdrops from conventional planes would be more effective even if there is no infrastructure for them to land? I'm trying to think of a scenario where this would actually be more beneficial than other means of transport.
- xcambar 4y agoAgreed. In the humanitarian scenario in a war zone, an airship just looks like a very big, very visible target. I don't understand this use case, except if you consider that humanitarian corridors are always respected in warfare but then it's just being naive.
- serial_dev 4y agoI was thinking more along the lines of earth quakes, hurricanes, mud slide in the mountains, tsunamis. Again from article > Pathfinder 3 (...) is designed to carry about 20 tons and be able to traverse as many as 10,000 miles using electric-only, zero-emission propulsion. A quick search tells me that an Mi-26, the largest cargo helicopter can carry approximately the same weight.
- hetspookjee 4y agoIf we’d account correctly for airplanes and boats for the enormous emissions they have, than I think a full electric slow floating airship like this would be tremendously beneficial. However, for it to be economically feasible it also oughtta have similar subsidies like planes and ships have with their zero emission taxes.
- eutectic 4y agoContainer ships are hard to beat for efficiency.
- xcambar 4y agoAnd new sail-assisted container ships will improve things further in terms of environmental efficiency... if they ever become an actual thing.
- yreg 4y agoOr nuclear cargo ships.
- antupis 4y agobut you cannot use container ships in Nevada.
- wardedVibe 4y agoTrains are the land equivalent of container ships. If they work for Switzerland, they can work anywhere
- Apocryphon 4y agoI wonder if there are still any military applications for airships in modern warfare.
- hutzlibu 4y agoThere are ideas for drone carriers and communication hubs.
- heavenlyblue 4y agoHow is that better than a truck? Moreover, is there a design of an airship that doesn’t create a radar blimp the size of medium-sized asteroid?
- hutzlibu 4y agoTrucks cannot move over hard terrain for instance and communication works way better with direct line of sight. But yes, they are not easy to hide, are vulnerable and cannot be not deployed on the frontlines because of this, but rather in the back. But they can stay up for eternity.
- MrFantastic 4y agoI
- miniwark 4y agoThey have many disadvantages compared to planes, like they are slower, can't take a lot of passengers and need special infrastructures. But there is a niche for advertisement, aerial photography, observation platforms, heavy weight transportation and of course tourism. See for example the seven Zeppelin NT, witch seem to have find some usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
- antupis 4y agoactually when now I start to think self flying zeppelin moving cargo containers slowly using electricity would be pretty cool. First you could start with windmill blade transportation and then move to other stuff.
- vintermann 4y agoDeutsche Zeppelin-Reederei has been going for 21 years now. It's the one bright light in the sea of airship projects. They're not exactly aiming to take over the world of aviation, though.
- Stratoscope 4y agoI got to ride on a Zeppelin NT when Airship Ventures was operating flights on the SF Peninsula. It was pretty great. Here's a previous comment with some links and photos of my flight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21662645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21662645
- masklinn 4y ago> heavy weight transportation Airships are absolute garbage at heavy lifting. The lifting power of hydrogen or helium is about 1kg/m^3. This means as you scale weight up the size of your envelope grows quickly which greatly hinders manoeuvrability. And obviously the increase in envelope size means you need more structure and systems (propulsion & al) which are heavier and reduce your useful payload.
- ericmay 4y ago> But there is a niche for advertisement … great more pollution
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoEfficiency, cost and low carbon seem the obvious ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28278515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28278515 That links to a YC company building small cargo blimps introducing themselves and providing some good detail: > We build small unmanned cargo airships and use them to move air freight at half the cost per mile of a small plane.
- martin_a 4y ago> We build small unmanned cargo airships and use them to move air freight at half the cost per mile of a small plane. What a marketing BS. It's also probably like 1/10th of the speed (in the best case) and whatnot else. If you hang fruit low enough, anybody can pick them.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThey go into reasonable detail about where this trade-off makes sense (e.g. deliveries to intermediate warehouses in Alaska), they're not suggesting to replace all other transport with blimps.
- jandrese 4y ago> half the cost per mile of a small plane. Half the cost of the most expensive mode of transportation.
- hutzlibu 4y agoEfficency, especially when covered with solar panels. You could basically fly without fuel. Planes on the other hand are indeed much faster etc. but they only are because they burn lots of kerosine. But all in all, as long as kerosine remains so cheap, airships cannot compete, except in niches.
- konschubert 4y agoTropical islands? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter
- ahoka 4y agoOr any other airship that crashed within years after making...
- Noughmad 4y agoWhich is to say, almost all of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
- mytailorisrich 4y agoIt's not really the Hindenburg disaster that caused their demise. Aeroplanes became superior by all useful metrics and there hasn't been a practical reason to use airships since. Depending on cost, there might be a niche market for some types of freight but that's all I can think of, along with tourism.
- xcambar 4y agoA reasonable argument seems to account for the cargo capacity per unit of pollutive emission. I don't have the numbers but my wishful-thinking-o-metre is high. And since that metric was off the radars in 1930s, that is definitively new compared to the last era of airships.
- CaptArmchair 4y agoThose opportunities would be limited. Given that commercial airlines operating airplanes were in it's infancy before WWII, there was a potential market for rigid airships. World War II changed all that. The Hindenburg wasn't just a commercial airship, it was very much used as a propaganda prop by the German regime in the 1930s. By the time of the Hindenburg disaster, the market for commercial flight was about to be stymied by the War. The disaster didn't just create trauma, above all it marked the end of an era of relative infancy in human flight. And even at the time, competing airlines already were building long range aircraft such as Pan Am / Boeing's famous "Yankee Clipper". Technological advances and massive investments during the War favored airplanes such as we know them today. In the late 1940-1960's, airplanes allowed for cheap and fast international travel which could easily be scaled upwards. By that time, few if anyone wanted to spend 9 days crossing the Atlantic in luxury if traveling from London to NY could be done in mere hours. I don't see airships ever taking back a significant chunk of that market. If anything, they might appeal to certain niches. Maybe in the same vain as one could - even today - still ride parts of the Orient Express in style.
- Apocryphon 4y agoModern air travel outside of business class and select airlines like Lufthansa is a far cry from the luxury and glamour of the Pan Am days. Maybe people will pay to take a cruise among the clouds.
- valzam 4y agoThe question is price. Air travel 'sucks' but has also become a lot more accessible, even long haul. If an airship takes 4 days and costs the same as business class on a regular plane I think many people will just business class.
- panick21_ 4y agoIt wasn't actually the Hindenburg that was the problem. It was that they were simply lost the competition in the market. They are just not really viable for 99% of applications.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoAdditionally, the USS Shenandoah crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shenandoah_(ZR-1)#Crash_of_Shenandoah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shenandoah_(ZR-1)#Crash_of... The USS Akron loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron#Loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron#Loss The USS Macon loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5)#Loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5)#Loss Only the USS Los Angeles was decommissioned (not crashed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Los_Angeles_(ZR-3)#Operational_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Los_Angeles_(ZR-3)#Operati...
- redwall_hp 4y agoIronically, this vessel is being built in Akron, and the loss of the USS Akron was a dirigible incident that resulted in many more deaths than the Hindenburg.
- imgabe 4y agoThis is what being a billionaire is all about.
- boeingUH60 4y agoOr having your private fleet of fighter jets... https://sharpmagazine.com/2018/02/15/inside-draken-international-how-a-silicon-valley-billionaire-assembled-the-worlds-largest-private-tactical-air-fleet/ https://sharpmagazine.com/2018/02/15/inside-draken-internati...
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y agoOr getting into stupid fights on Twitter. On a more serious note: we never knew how good we had it with the likes of Gates of Buffet. Or even Rockefeller.
- serial_dev 4y agoBillionaires getting into stupid Twitter fights is very far from the worst things they do (or can do).
- hollander 4y agoMusk may be an incredible prick on Twitter and be a terrible boss to get orders from, his vision gave us Tesla and Space X, both ground breaking and needed developments. He is a man of vision, not a manager or people person. And his vision is limited to technology, not economics or politics. But if you're that rich, you can come to think that you know it all.
- eterm 4y agoBit odd to shorten the future tense "to be built" in the article to the past tense "built" in the headline. Also, "largest built in the US since the 1930s" really isn't saying too much, how much manufacturing of airships does the US do?
- rsynnott 4y agoThe US built a couple of very large rigid military airships in the 30s (intended to carry small airplanes!) and then never built any large airships of significance again. So, yeah, kind of a meaningless claim. The proposed airship is 180m long; USS Akron was 239m.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoDoing a little googling, we might have built three (Shenandoah, Akron, and the Macon), a fourth one (the Los Angeles) was built by Germans.
- WalterBright 4y agoI thought their construction was done by the Zeppelin factory.
- johnnymorgan 4y agoI'm only aware of the one company in the UK. Pretty cool tech tbh and it feels like pairing up with self-flying drones is the next step. Seems like the economics for 100ton lift is looking better now. Trucks were cheaper but I'm not sure if that still holds today
- billbrown 4y agoHybrid Air Vehicles is the British company - https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/ https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/
- johnnymorgan 4y agoThat's the one!
- Apocryphon 4y agoFinally, tech billions being put to good and original aerospace use, not yet more Mars rockets. Next bring that airship to Venus. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8760732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8760732
- trhway 4y ago>tech billions being put to good and original aerospace use i wish they would put some of those money to adjust FAA rules for the modern development - drones, human carrying multicopters, and whatever others things may come if the rules become friendly for innovation
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoAll this red tape keeping us alive! How dare they not let me put tons of material into the sky, let it move around as fast as I like and expect me to be liable if it lands on some toddler’s head. Aviation is fucking dangerous. I know, I knew many private pilots of experimental aircraft growing up, some of which died in accidents. One guy died when his seat slid backwards while climbing out from takeoff causing him to pull back on the yoke and cause a stall. This is a stupidly common way to go. Another died when his twin lost engine power on one side, again during takeoff, and he spun into the ground. The list, unfortunately goes on. Neither of those particular two on the list died in experimental aircraft, although the pilot of the twin did survive an earlier crash in an experimental during landing, where he misjudged the time it takes to spool up a jet engine. Do not take private companies putting things I to the sky lightly.
- Quindecillion 4y agoOne of my dreams is to own an airship like this that acts as a second home, or an extension to a land-bound home. I wonder how feasible that would be...
- silentOpen 4y agoSeems like a waste of scarce He.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoAs opposed to, say, balloon animals?
- silentOpen 4y agoSeems like a waste of scarce He.
- doctor_eval 4y agoYeah I totally do not get that. Also hydrogen might be more fun. POP
- Apocryphon 4y agoThese are but necessary early-generational craft, the descendants of which will be used to explore the upper atmosphere of the Jovian planets. And to mine them for helium and other gases, with which will then be used as fuel for airships on Earth, I guess.
- lixtra 4y agoThere will be plenty of He from fusion reactors - in about 20 years ;)
- noja 4y agoDo we have enough helium for this? What is the leak rate?
- piker 4y agoI believe Helium is a fission byproduct and thus not especially limited in theory.
- black_13 4y ago
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoWish we could encapsulate vacuum stable without much material, that would have the best of lifts.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoOr some super electrically charged exotic condensator material which would keep away from one another by nature of charge while the charge also makes it keep away from the wall and keep the relative vaccum enclosing diamond tent aflaot.. a man can dream.. a man can dream.. Vacum with powder
- kozak 4y agoAs far as I understand, helium is a non-renewable fossil resource. So a sustainable airship design should be using hydrogen instead. The challenge is to make it safe.
- shreyshnaccount 4y agoYou just need a sun
- chrisseaton 4y ago> As far as I understand, helium is a non-renewable fossil resource. No it's a by-product of decay of heavier radioactive elements. It's often found dissolved into fossil gas deposits, but it's not a fossil resource.
- sampo 4y ago> As far as I understand, helium is a non-renewable fossil resource. Helium deposits don't originate form organic matter, so they're not fossil.
- marksbrown 4y agoVacuum is the ideal. Taking the molar mass of air at 28.8g/mol at STP we can see a density of air at about 1.225 kg per metre cubed. Combined with the volume of the bag we have the uplift. We quickly find that empty flexible bags collapse with nothing to provide an atmosphere of pressure back out thus the compromise of low mass gasses. These still add weight to our vessel diminishing our carrying capacity. Therefore the best solution is hot hydrogen.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoThis is a cool project, but there's been lots of abandoned airship projects (commercial and military) since the 1930s. Have things really changed since then? No new technology really solves the main issue that they're fairly slow, don't tend to work well in bad weather and can take a lot of infrastructure to land safely. I'm not an expert but for disaster relief a few military cargo planes could be refuelled midair and drop 20 tons of aid on parachutes to most of the world fairly quickly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Postwar_period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Postwar_period
- sudhirj 4y agoThe cargo planes can't lift people out, though. You could evacuate over a 100 people at a time on one of these ships, which seems incredibly useful.
- flohofwoe 4y agoThe Americans famously evacuated >800 people out of Afghanistan in a single C-17 flight. Airships could be useful though if they can land "anywhere" (on the other hand, a single Mi-26 helicopter can also carry 90 people, and probably many more if crowded in the same way as that C-17 flight). https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/20/politics/military-cargo-plane-record/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/20/politics/military-cargo-p... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26#Specifications_(Mi-26) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26#Specifications_(Mi-2...
- alistairSH 4y agoThe Boeing C-17 can absolutely carry people. It’s designed for paratrooper operations as well as cargo. As noted, you can cram hundreds of people into one of the goal is fast evac not comfort.
- julian37 4y agoReminds me of Cargolifter, they tried something less ambitious and failed... but that was 20 years ago, at the very height of the dot com boom. Better luck to the Pathfinder 3 team! It would be amazing to see airships revived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter
- danbruc 4y ago[...] Cargolifter [...] tried something less ambitious [...] Cargolifter aimed for twice the size in all dimensions resulting in eight times the capacity, 160 tonnes as compared to 20 tonnes.
- iostream24 4y agoThat’s so cool… cruising in style silently… It’s so different than either land traffic over road or rail or “must move forward or falls down” rapid air transport. Some have already called such airships the yachts of the future. There will obviously be problems involved as numbers increase, maybe we can control them in ways we failed to consider on other transport lifestyle adoptions we’ve done.
- puranjay 4y agoI'm a little curious how someone becomes an airship pilot. I understand that the core skills from airplanes would carry over, but how do you create the protocols and best practices for piloting a completely new vehicle that hasn't been flown in nearly 90 years? Do the practices from 90 years ago still apply?
- jpgvm 4y agoZeppelin and Good Year have been flying blimps and semi-rigid airships continually, there are quite a number of qualified airship pilots as a result. As for transfer from airplanes, only somewhat. Airships have a lot in common with boats/sailing but really they are very much their own thing with their own set of constraints and difficulties.
- saalweachter 4y agoI'm going to admit it. I'm a little disappointed this is another "billionaire tried to solve humanitarian problems with novel tech" stories and not an "eccentric billionaire plans to never set foot on the ground again" story.
- Aeolun 4y agoI think either is fine as long as they build amazing 600ft+ airships.
- cto_of_antifa 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- khendron 4y ago> [Pathfinder 3] will be the largest airship built in the United States since the Macon was built [by Goodyear] in 1932 They conveniently do not mention the Macon's sister ship, the Akron, which crashed in 1933 killing 73 people.
- martinclayton 4y agoTwo died when the Macon itself was lost in 1935.
- gboone 4y agoNeat side fact about the Akron Airdock[0]: at some point in the past each 600-ton door on the end needed a drive replacement. My grandfather's company was called in to fix it, but the cost to replace it to spec was too costly. I don't recall the exact specifics but the engineer on the job told me the original opened the door in under 8 minutes. To lower the cost of the replacement they put in a smaller drive but it takes something like 20-30 minutes to open the door. I suppose this video could be used to estimate the total time[1]. [0] https://www.nps.gov/articles/goodyear-airdock.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/goodyear-airdock.htm [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YS1maXSR30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YS1maXSR30
- greggsy 4y ago20 minutes seems reasonable tbh. It’s not like they’re going to rush them out the door in preparation for an enemy attack.
- bluedays 4y agoWow this belongs on /r/titlegore
- poulpy123 4y agoI'm absolutely fascinated by airships and would love to see them roam the skies again, but last time I looked at it they had too many drawbacks: - they are very sensitive to the weather condition, especially winds - they are more economical in fuel compared to airplanes but maybe not enough to compensate for their slowness - they use either hydrogen which is very dangerous or helium which is available in limited amount (and afaik already in tension)
- tonetheman 4y agoWonder how they will deal with the current helium shortage? The article did not mention it. :(
- leoc 4y agoIsn't there anything else Sergey Brin should be spending his time and attention on? Google's free rein in its early years surely had a lot to do with the fact that Page and Brin were successfully marketed as nice guys who could be trusted to be responsible stewards of Google. However stupid the rest of the world may have been to ever take this on faith, it is still on Page and Brin to keep their end of the bargain now. Together they still control the company outright, so (IANAL) they can do whatever they want. Let's be clear: everything that is wrong with Google's products and services—or at least, everything that is reasonably obvious, fixable in a reasonably obvious way and can be fixed without really enraging the other shareholders, at the very least—is on Page and Brin personally, as individuals. And there are many such things. The fact that in-document search (search!) performs atrociously on large Google Docs, causing real difficulty for literally millions of people and organisations, is something that Larry and Sergey could fix but choose not to. The lads have clearly, some time ago, decided that the hard, unglamorous work of stewarding Google—Google!—is work beneath their dignity and below their abilities: that instead their talents are needed for other, more high-impact things, like playing with airships. That really isn't so, and the rest of us need to stop going along with the pretense.
- nextstep 4y agoGoogle should stop building a massive surveillance apparatus for the entire world, but this would hurt their ad business, plus any other monetizeable ways they can shape public opinion. And those changes would certainly enrage their shareholders.
- leoc 4y agoSure, there's a lot more which they should or should arguably do. But I wanted to focus on the clearest examples, and people will jump on the excuses of fiduciary duty and shareholder lawsuits if you give them the chance.
- mr_beans 4y agoAh yes, everyone’s favorite pastime, telling billionaires how to spend their money.
- notafraudster 4y agoNaive but skeptical questions: - How much of the carrying capacity is eaten up by the batteries necessary to hit the range target? - Would anyone operationally want to fly a 10,000 mile flight? Is speed a huge barrier for trying to do this in a single round the world flight? - Is helium scarce enough that there'd be negative externalities for medical helium if they actually produce these in any numbers? - What's the status quo ex ante here? I would guess you airlift relief supplies to the nearest safe staging zone using a herc or similar and then use chinook or similar to get directly to the disaster zone? Is there actually a problem to be solved here? (I like dirigibles and electric tech, so I hope there are good answers to all of these that make me look foolish)
- lisper 4y agoHelium is a non-renewable [1] resource. Once it's gone, it's gone forever, and we are running out. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/helium-shortage-why-the-worlds-supply-is-drying-up.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/helium-shortage-why-the-worl... [1] Earth's helium supply comes from decaying uranium, so it is kinda-sorta renewable, but the renewal time scale is millions of years.
- eldenwrong 4y agoNo we are not running out. There's a lot, its just not profitable to mine. Just like there is almost infinite gold in the earth
- lisper 4y agoThere isn't infinite anything on earth. Earth is finite. And running out of resources that are economically viable to access is effectively the same as running out. (Also, helium is a by-product of crude oil production, and so its production has some rather dramatic externalities.)
- rfrey 4y agoYour parent obviously knows the definition of "infinite", pedantry isn't helpful. We ran out of $15 oil quite some time ago. That was not the same as running out of oil. "Economically viable" is not a static target.
- Barrera 4y ago> Pathfinder 3 will initially be powered by batteries, Weston said. But the goal is to have the helium-filled airship powered by hydrogen fuel cells, he said. This is worth expanding on. There is a worldwide shortage of helium [1]. It's being aggravated by ongoing natural gas supply disruptions: > The helium shutdown in Arzew is a result of high natural gas demand in Europe, due in large part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Helium is found alongside natural gas in conventional wells. Algeria normally compresses natural gas into liquid form at Arzew for global transport by ship. During that process, it’s economical to extract helium because it liquefies at much higher pressures and lower temperatures than natural gas, explains industrial gas consultant Jon Raquet. > But now, much of Algeria’s natural gas is being sent to Spain via pipeline, making separation impractical. The industrial and rare-gas advisory firm Edelgas Group estimates that liquefied natural gas production in key regions is down 30% from January, leading to a 10% drop in global helium supply. And it's not like we're talking about just a little helium, either: > ... Pathfinder 3, at 600 feet long and 100 feet in diameter, is designed to carry about 20 tons and be able to traverse as many as 10,000 miles using electric-only, zero-emission propulsion. Running some back-of-the-envelope math, we can think of this as a cylinder roughly 400 feet long (to take account for tapering on either end) and 100 feet in diameter. That's 3.14 x 50^2 x 400 = 3.1 million cubic feet of He just to fill. It doesn't even account for ongoing resupply, testing, etc. The US is the largest producer of helium at 77 million cubic meters [2]. With a conversion factor of 35:1, that puts the volume of the airship at ~ 886,000 cubic meters. So we're not talking about consuming all of the US production of helium, but it's not insignificant, either. > The United States is the largest helium producer worldwide. In 2021, the production of helium in the U.S. stood at approximately 77 million cubic meters, [1] https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/War-Ukraine-makes-helium-shortage-more-dire/100/i10 https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/War-Ukraine... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production...
- JasonFruit 4y agoIn a rigid airship, the lifting gas is usually contained in smaller balloon-like cells inside the frame, which do not fill anywhere near all the available space. Your estimate is probably considerably over, though your concern is still reasonable. (EDIT: they're not called ballonets; ballonets are used to maintain pressure in a non-rigid airship.)
- perilunar 4y agoI'm sceptical about the practicality and economics of large airships, but I'd love to see small airship 'yachts'. Santos-Dumont's Dirigible No.6 [1] could 40km/h with a 12hp engine in 1901. It had a 630 m³ balloon (33m long x 6m diameter, total mass ~600 kg). With modern engines, materials, and modelling you could make a very comfortable and quite speedy 2-3 person yacht in that size. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santos-Dumont_number_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santos-Dumont_number_6
- fukpaywalls2 4y agoStupid question. What's to prevent some no good kid or state from using a green laser to slice the blimp open?
- Melatonic 4y agoThe military is also going big time in on airships again. Gonna be interesting!
- Animats 4y agoIt's apparently just another rich guy toy. Silicon Valley had a nice zeppelin from 2008 to 2012.[1] The CEO, who was qualified to pilot the thing, used to show up at steampunk conventions. He said it was the best handling airship built up to that time, and he'd flown a few others. Steerable fans under computer control make those things far more manageable, and docking without an army of line handlers becomes possible. Unfortunately, they launched a luxury tourism project at the beginning of a recession. Then, around 2011, the pride of helium doubled. It was just too expensive to operate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Ventures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Ventures
- 0000011111 4y agoIf the ship can travel at 100mph the travel time for a 10,000 mile flight would be about 100 hours or 4 days.
- dredmorbius 4y agoSo, going blue-sky big-picture here, the long-term appeal of airships seems to be in transoceanic travel alternatives to heavier-than-air craft. I'm starting to think that transoceanic trains might actually be a more viable alternative. There's been some very preliminary exploration of this. It turns out that for several heavily-travelled routes, the water distances involved are actually reasonably short. Most notably the Bering Straight link from Alaska to Siberia, 82 km (51 mi) wide at its narrowest point. Traversing the Atlantic would be more formidable, possibly a multi-hop bridge from Newfundland to Greenland to Iceland to northern Scotland. Other links include the Timor Sea (between Australia and Indonesia), Gibraltar, and the southern Atlantic crossing from, say, Recife, Brazil, to Freetown, Sierra Leone, about 3,000 km (1,900 mi). Norway has proposed "floating tunnels" as a technological option to bridge fjords for vehicle traffic for its E39 coastal highway project. These might work for transoceanic rail links: tunnels would float deep enough beneath the surface to be spared wave action and collisions with shipping traffic, but shallow enough that pressures would be reasonable. Depending on speeds, even the longest crossings (3,000 km) might take from 15 to 3 hours (200 kph to 1,000 kph). Costs and risks are of course high. The project might be limited to, say, automated freight transport initially. But it's not obviously impossible, and could prove an alternative to either slow boat or high-emissions aircraft for future transport and travel.
- stickfigure 4y agoI'd like to see this concept revisited with modern technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroLift_CycloCrane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroLift_CycloCrane https://hackaday.com/2016/10/06/maybe-your-next-robot-should-be-a-cyclocrane/ https://hackaday.com/2016/10/06/maybe-your-next-robot-should... http://www.robcrimmins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1982-Nov-Discover-p2.jpg http://www.robcrimmins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1982-N... Basically an aerial crane which solves the buoyancy problem by spinning the whole thing like a helicopter. It's neutral by itself; if you want to pick something up, you increase rotational speed and generate lift with airfoils. I saw this thing as a kid on a trip through Tilamook OR. Seemed really neat, though I'll bet it was tough to control with early-80s electronics. It would be fun to build a hobby version out of drone parts.
- jimwalsh 4y agoThis is being built in my hometown. That hangar is amazing every time I have visited it. There are even stories of it raining inside and having it's own weather systems [1] . Really great to see them building more blimps again, and pushing what has been done before. 1. http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/07/20/the_goodyear_airdock_is_so_incredibly_large_that_it_often_rains_inside.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/07/20/the_good...
- harveywi 4y agoFinally, the US Government putting all that inflation to good use.
- wly_cdgr 4y agoI can't inspect element or right click on their homepage, it says these things are disabled? What the heck?
- SunPlower 4y agoScrew propellers need a large mast with bending torque drives heavy & expensive connection to the fuselage. Cables get twisted and have slow tilting mechanism issues. 360 degree Thrust: https://youtu.be/VoAwBKDTk40 https://youtu.be/VoAwBKDTk40 KBP @ NASA TRS: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19930090732 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19930090732