8 ms·

I love airships, but we really seem to be hitting peak something when billionaires can not just live in their floating city (124 meters long), forever. I can’t

I love airships, but we really seem to be hitting peak something when billionaires can not just live in their floating city (124 meters long), forever. I can’t wait for the jet packing up and down for parties and whatnot. This seems like it’s out of Altered Carbon.

whalesalad 3y ago
The notion of using these for disaster relief is really a great benefit to society. Imagine islands in the Caribbean or south east Asia impacted by a hurricane, typhoon, tsunami etc and cannot receive supplies. There is a very real need there.
- pixiemaster 3y ago
  no need to wait, helicopter tech is good enough for nearly all situations, some billions would help enough, rather than investing those into some kind of pipedream. Cargolifter already tried.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    Helicopter tech is absolutely not even close to being able to do what an airship can do as far as longevity and carrying capacity.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      … if ambient wind speeds a well below the cruising speed of the airship.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      Helicopters (and planes) flying off a ship just offshore are able to do far more than an airship could, as has already been remarked elsewhere in this discussion.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    >Cargolifter already tried. Sort of? It was a startup that went bankrupt before building its first product. The light bulb was also "tried" 50 years before Edison. There's something to be said for trying again.
    - usrusr 3y ago
      Sometimes all that needs to change is market demand. Cargolifter was a solution looking for a problem. "It might be useful for disaster relief?" even more so, but given Brin-grade money, solutions looking for a problem are certainly better than yet another yacht. But I wonder if Cargolifter would still be such a dud in today's market? Just look at the crazy lengths companies go through to put the largest possible wind turbines in remote locations. Seriously, if you've never done so (or if it's been a few years), enter "turbine blade transportation" in the image search of your choice and be awed. I can't imagine Cargolifter not having a waiting list measured in decades given the pains ground based blade transportation goes through, and those things aren't even that heavy. Currently, inland wind turbine size is clearly limited by transportation, not by materials or engineering. (and larger turbines are actually less annoying than smaller ones, because rpm go down with size due to blade tips approaching transonic speeds at any non-trivial size)
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        > Sometimes all that needs to change is market demand. Right, but sometimes the only way for it to change is for someone to burn through enough money to drag the market kicking and screaming into embracing a new/better type of products. Recent example: Tesla and electric cars. Whether or not something would be a useful/successful product, and whether the market can, on its own, get to that point from where it is now, are two distinct considerations.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  That's something a Navy is traditionally good for, especially the US Navy with our ridiculously huge carriers. They're great at sitting off the coast and acting as a logistics hub for transferring between planes and helicopters that can get into more devastated areas. The big issue with a blimp for that for me seems to be that they're very slow and can only operate in moderate conditions both of which aren't really guaranteed in a disaster situation.
  - whoisthemachine 3y ago
    Agreed, the only disaster situations I can think of where an airship might have use are earthquake and war zones, which are often hard to reach by vehicle or plane, and may have calm enough weather to support an airship.
    - rtkwe 3y ago
      They'd be great at secondary recovery once they get into place but they're so slow you can't use them for the immediate recovery and life saving efforts unless they're immediately in the area.
      - whoisthemachine 3y ago
        Yeah basically only useful as cargo lift and maybe as mobile medical facilities.
        rtkwe 3y ago
        They could maybe act like mini versions of the hospital ships run by the US and others for inland areas beyond the reach of ship based care. Still kind of runs into the response speed issue. In the time it takes a blimp to trundle over from wherever it's stored helicopters can deploy a lot of materiel.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        A Zeppelin NT can reach up to 125 km/h, that's way faster than any truck can possibly reach in a disaster zone. The only thing faster and as versatile is a select breed of cargo choppers like the Mi-26 (Russia) and the CH-53K (US), but flying choppers comes with risks on its own from rotor downwash. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
- DelaneyM 3y ago
  Having lived through a Caribbean hurricane (https://www.caymancompass.com/2021/09/12/remembering-hurricane-ivan-17-years-later/ https://www.caymancompass.com/2021/09/12/remembering-hurrica...), I can assure you that an airship is much less potentially useful than cargo ships and ferries. The ports were fine; what we had trouble sourcing was labourers, water, food, and building supplies. He’d do a lot more good by repurposing a super-yacht as a passenger ferry, tbh.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    The goal of relief efforts is to get food and especially water in as quickly as possible. Three days without fresh water and you’re already dealing with pathogens. We take for granted that cargo planes and ships can skirt a tropical storm and sneak in while the trees are still dripping. A dirigible is a fair weather friend. It cannot arrive until relief efforts are well underway. That doesn’t make them useless, but it also doesn’t make them useful.
    - DelaneyM 3y ago
      Don’t underestimate the importance of building supplies and labor. Food and water are good, though we have a lot stockpiled already, but it’s easy to underestimate how tough things can get in the summer when there’s no A/C or refrigeration in the supermarkets. Heck, it took us a week to get a gas station back online in ‘04, cars and trucks were abandoned on the roads.
  - strangattractor 3y ago
    Maybe a good use for all those Russian Super Yachts:)
  - sethhochberg 3y ago
    Often ports are fine, but in the Maui fire aftermath for example a lack of significant port infrastructure was frequently cited as a barrier to fast recovery. I’m not saying airships are better than water ships all the time, but there are certainly real use cases for being able to drop tons of cargo in a lightly improved landing field.
- FabHK 3y ago
  How much cargo, do you think, can this thing carry? A hint: The 1914 M-class Zeppelin (158 metre) had about 9 metric tons of useful load. A small "Handysize" (around 150 metre) cargo ship can carry around 40,000 metric tons. A 747 cargo plane (76 metre) has about 100 tons of useful load, and will be there faster.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    Pathfinder 1 airship is supposed to carry 28 tons. That is a single fully loaded 40 ft container. Also, there are a lot of even smaller cargo ships making deliveries to islands. Many of those have cranes for offloading containers to ports without infrastructure.
    - usrusr 3y ago
      Sounds just about right sized to get off-shore grade wind turbine blades to remote inland hills. The benefit of larger turbines is even bigger inland than off-shore, but inland is severely limited by transport, because (unlike the tower) those blades can't realistically be built from subassemblies on-site.
paxys 3y ago
Why would billionaires want to live on a cramped airship when they can buy literal cities or islands on the ground?
- lpapez 3y ago
  And a private army to guard it against intruders.
  - nicup12345689 3y ago
    Mercenaries are a liability in that scenario
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  Why do billionaires have cramped yachts? Living on a giant airship would be like having the highest penthouse apartment in the world, and the most amazing views. And you can move it when you get bored.
  - echelon 3y ago
    > Why do billionaires have cramped yachts? Because there is no law at sea. Haven't you heard what happens on these yachts? Crazy sex, kink, drugs. Even tales of slavery and murder. > Living on a giant airship Even a mild gust would cause trouble. You have to be incredibly mindful of the weather.
    - takinola 3y ago
      IANAL but I would suggest checking on your assumption that there are no laws at sea if you ever plan on taking any actions based on that assertion.
      - echelon 3y ago
        Stories seem to indicate there is a lot of sexual trafficking and rape in the industry: https://www.businessinsider.com/superyacht-sex-crew-sexual-harassment-boat-sailing-ship-prostitutes-drugs-2022-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/superyacht-sex-crew-sexual-h... https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/yachting-hollywood-trafficking/627259 https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/yachting-hollywood-traf... https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a38053431/yacht-girl-dark-side/ https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a38053431/yacht-girl... I've read multiple articles (but can't seem to find links to them) that threats of throwing unwilling parties overboard are used to silence and coerce. Seems pretty lawless to me.
bertil 3y ago
The most meaningful application for airships is to carry blades, nacelles, and towers for wind turbines off-shore. Direct transport from the factory to the farm would greatly simplify installation. Luxury in an airship is quite relative: weight gets you, and something as simple as water or people to handle service, for instance, is heavy. Not a billionaire's dream — not when Page already has a shower in his 747. Source: my brother started a business for airships and asked me to add numbers to different options. Accidentally, I was also working for Paradox when City Skylines came out, and I suggested adding airships to the game when they asked for new transport methods. No idea if that’s how they ended up there, but happy they are.
- simpaticoder 3y ago
  >The most meaningful application for airships is to carry blades, nacelles, and towers for wind turbines off-shore It seems like a boat would be better to bring cargo to offshore applications. Especially factoring in weather.
  - orzig 3y ago
    Not an expert, but I suspect that getting them from the factory to the dock (and finding a dock that would not be a nightmare to maneuver through) is a pretty significant part of the challenge
    - camdenreslink 3y ago
      I guess this is why factories used to be on waterways and waterfronts.
      - Aerroon 3y ago
        I think that had more to do with weight. As far as I can tell, there weren't any good options to transport heavy goods over land before trains. A barge on a canal will transport a lot more weight than carts and wagons pulled by animals will.
    - 3y ago
notatoad 3y ago
i'm with you on how distasteful it is for billionaires to spend absurd amounts of money on quirky projects with questionable benefit. but calling it a "floating city" is silly. the blimp might be 124m long, but the cabin is basically a sprinter van. https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/21ZD_FALL2023_AirshipsShenandoah100-LTAResearch_1287_LIVE.jpg https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/21ZD_...

whalesalad 3y ago

The notion of using these for disaster relief is really a great benefit to society. Imagine islands in the Caribbean or south east Asia impacted by a hurricane, typhoon, tsunami etc and cannot receive supplies. There is a very real need there.

pixiemaster 3y ago
no need to wait, helicopter tech is good enough for nearly all situations, some billions would help enough, rather than investing those into some kind of pipedream. Cargolifter already tried.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  Helicopter tech is absolutely not even close to being able to do what an airship can do as far as longevity and carrying capacity.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    … if ambient wind speeds a well below the cruising speed of the airship.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    Helicopters (and planes) flying off a ship just offshore are able to do far more than an airship could, as has already been remarked elsewhere in this discussion.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  >Cargolifter already tried. Sort of? It was a startup that went bankrupt before building its first product. The light bulb was also "tried" 50 years before Edison. There's something to be said for trying again.
  - usrusr 3y ago
    Sometimes all that needs to change is market demand. Cargolifter was a solution looking for a problem. "It might be useful for disaster relief?" even more so, but given Brin-grade money, solutions looking for a problem are certainly better than yet another yacht. But I wonder if Cargolifter would still be such a dud in today's market? Just look at the crazy lengths companies go through to put the largest possible wind turbines in remote locations. Seriously, if you've never done so (or if it's been a few years), enter "turbine blade transportation" in the image search of your choice and be awed. I can't imagine Cargolifter not having a waiting list measured in decades given the pains ground based blade transportation goes through, and those things aren't even that heavy. Currently, inland wind turbine size is clearly limited by transportation, not by materials or engineering. (and larger turbines are actually less annoying than smaller ones, because rpm go down with size due to blade tips approaching transonic speeds at any non-trivial size)
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > Sometimes all that needs to change is market demand. Right, but sometimes the only way for it to change is for someone to burn through enough money to drag the market kicking and screaming into embracing a new/better type of products. Recent example: Tesla and electric cars. Whether or not something would be a useful/successful product, and whether the market can, on its own, get to that point from where it is now, are two distinct considerations.
rtkwe 3y ago
That's something a Navy is traditionally good for, especially the US Navy with our ridiculously huge carriers. They're great at sitting off the coast and acting as a logistics hub for transferring between planes and helicopters that can get into more devastated areas. The big issue with a blimp for that for me seems to be that they're very slow and can only operate in moderate conditions both of which aren't really guaranteed in a disaster situation.
- whoisthemachine 3y ago
  Agreed, the only disaster situations I can think of where an airship might have use are earthquake and war zones, which are often hard to reach by vehicle or plane, and may have calm enough weather to support an airship.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    They'd be great at secondary recovery once they get into place but they're so slow you can't use them for the immediate recovery and life saving efforts unless they're immediately in the area.
    - whoisthemachine 3y ago
      Yeah basically only useful as cargo lift and maybe as mobile medical facilities.
      - rtkwe 3y ago
        They could maybe act like mini versions of the hospital ships run by the US and others for inland areas beyond the reach of ship based care. Still kind of runs into the response speed issue. In the time it takes a blimp to trundle over from wherever it's stored helicopters can deploy a lot of materiel.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      A Zeppelin NT can reach up to 125 km/h, that's way faster than any truck can possibly reach in a disaster zone. The only thing faster and as versatile is a select breed of cargo choppers like the Mi-26 (Russia) and the CH-53K (US), but flying choppers comes with risks on its own from rotor downwash. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
DelaneyM 3y ago
Having lived through a Caribbean hurricane (https://www.caymancompass.com/2021/09/12/remembering-hurricane-ivan-17-years-later/ https://www.caymancompass.com/2021/09/12/remembering-hurrica...), I can assure you that an airship is much less potentially useful than cargo ships and ferries. The ports were fine; what we had trouble sourcing was labourers, water, food, and building supplies. He’d do a lot more good by repurposing a super-yacht as a passenger ferry, tbh.
- hinkley 3y ago
  The goal of relief efforts is to get food and especially water in as quickly as possible. Three days without fresh water and you’re already dealing with pathogens. We take for granted that cargo planes and ships can skirt a tropical storm and sneak in while the trees are still dripping. A dirigible is a fair weather friend. It cannot arrive until relief efforts are well underway. That doesn’t make them useless, but it also doesn’t make them useful.
  - DelaneyM 3y ago
    Don’t underestimate the importance of building supplies and labor. Food and water are good, though we have a lot stockpiled already, but it’s easy to underestimate how tough things can get in the summer when there’s no A/C or refrigeration in the supermarkets. Heck, it took us a week to get a gas station back online in ‘04, cars and trucks were abandoned on the roads.
- strangattractor 3y ago
  Maybe a good use for all those Russian Super Yachts:)
- sethhochberg 3y ago
  Often ports are fine, but in the Maui fire aftermath for example a lack of significant port infrastructure was frequently cited as a barrier to fast recovery. I’m not saying airships are better than water ships all the time, but there are certainly real use cases for being able to drop tons of cargo in a lightly improved landing field.
FabHK 3y ago
How much cargo, do you think, can this thing carry? A hint: The 1914 M-class Zeppelin (158 metre) had about 9 metric tons of useful load. A small "Handysize" (around 150 metre) cargo ship can carry around 40,000 metric tons. A 747 cargo plane (76 metre) has about 100 tons of useful load, and will be there faster.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Pathfinder 1 airship is supposed to carry 28 tons. That is a single fully loaded 40 ft container. Also, there are a lot of even smaller cargo ships making deliveries to islands. Many of those have cranes for offloading containers to ports without infrastructure.
  - usrusr 3y ago
    Sounds just about right sized to get off-shore grade wind turbine blades to remote inland hills. The benefit of larger turbines is even bigger inland than off-shore, but inland is severely limited by transport, because (unlike the tower) those blades can't realistically be built from subassemblies on-site.

paxys 3y ago

Why would billionaires want to live on a cramped airship when they can buy literal cities or islands on the ground?

lpapez 3y ago
And a private army to guard it against intruders.
- nicup12345689 3y ago
  Mercenaries are a liability in that scenario
kagakuninja 3y ago
Why do billionaires have cramped yachts? Living on a giant airship would be like having the highest penthouse apartment in the world, and the most amazing views. And you can move it when you get bored.
- echelon 3y ago
  > Why do billionaires have cramped yachts? Because there is no law at sea. Haven't you heard what happens on these yachts? Crazy sex, kink, drugs. Even tales of slavery and murder. > Living on a giant airship Even a mild gust would cause trouble. You have to be incredibly mindful of the weather.
  - takinola 3y ago
    IANAL but I would suggest checking on your assumption that there are no laws at sea if you ever plan on taking any actions based on that assertion.
    - echelon 3y ago
      Stories seem to indicate there is a lot of sexual trafficking and rape in the industry: https://www.businessinsider.com/superyacht-sex-crew-sexual-harassment-boat-sailing-ship-prostitutes-drugs-2022-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/superyacht-sex-crew-sexual-h... https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/yachting-hollywood-trafficking/627259 https://www.stylist.co.uk/long-reads/yachting-hollywood-traf... https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a38053431/yacht-girl-dark-side/ https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a38053431/yacht-girl... I've read multiple articles (but can't seem to find links to them) that threats of throwing unwilling parties overboard are used to silence and coerce. Seems pretty lawless to me.

bertil 3y ago

The most meaningful application for airships is to carry blades, nacelles, and towers for wind turbines off-shore. Direct transport from the factory to the farm would greatly simplify installation. Luxury in an airship is quite relative: weight gets you, and something as simple as water or people to handle service, for instance, is heavy. Not a billionaire's dream — not when Page already has a shower in his 747. Source: my brother started a business for airships and asked me to add numbers to different options. Accidentally, I was also working for Paradox when City Skylines came out, and I suggested adding airships to the game when they asked for new transport methods. No idea if that’s how they ended up there, but happy they are.

simpaticoder 3y ago
>The most meaningful application for airships is to carry blades, nacelles, and towers for wind turbines off-shore It seems like a boat would be better to bring cargo to offshore applications. Especially factoring in weather.
- orzig 3y ago
  Not an expert, but I suspect that getting them from the factory to the dock (and finding a dock that would not be a nightmare to maneuver through) is a pretty significant part of the challenge
  - camdenreslink 3y ago
    I guess this is why factories used to be on waterways and waterfronts.
    - Aerroon 3y ago
      I think that had more to do with weight. As far as I can tell, there weren't any good options to transport heavy goods over land before trains. A barge on a canal will transport a lot more weight than carts and wagons pulled by animals will.
  - 3y ago

notatoad 3y ago

i'm with you on how distasteful it is for billionaires to spend absurd amounts of money on quirky projects with questionable benefit. but calling it a "floating city" is silly. the blimp might be 124m long, but the cabin is basically a sprinter van. https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/21ZD_FALL2023_AirshipsShenandoah100-LTAResearch_1287_LIVE.jpg https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/21ZD_...