6 ms·

World's largest aircraft looking for investors to give it liftoff

55 points by ghosh 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
briandear 12y ago
I would love to see how this aircraft would function at high altitude such as in Nepal. This could have a huge positive impact around Everest, especially with white knuckle Lukla airport.
anigbrowl 12y ago
This looks much more civilized than regular air travel. To the pleasure barge!
azinman2 12y ago
Umm the world is running out of helium and there's no good way to make more. Not sure how this will be viable.
- monort 12y ago
  Natural gas has up to 7% of helium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Modern_extraction_and_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Modern_extraction_and_d...
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    Yeah but it's eventually going to run out, is the point. Helium doesn't like to stay on Earth.
    - monort 12y ago
      World reserves are 40 billion cubic meters, yearly production is 175 million cubic meters. It seems we have 200 years supply. And it's a renewable resource (produced during radioactive decay), and universe has a lot of helium, 23% of its baryonic mass.
      - fit2rule 12y ago
        Yeah, we can all quote from Wikipedia. Here's another interesting quote about Helium: *Moses Chan, Evan Pugh Professor of Physics at Penn State, explains that the world's supply of helium is a byproduct of natural gas production, with the Texas Panhandle arguably being the helium capital of the world. However, says Chan, "Very few natural gas wells in the world have enough helium in the well to make it economical to separate helium from natural gas. The gas wells with the most helium have only about 0.3 percent, so it is in short supply." In response to the element's scarcity, the United States has been stockpiling helium since the 1960s in a National Helium Reserve called the Bush Dome, a deep underground reservoir outside of Amarillo, Texas. By the mid 1970s 1.2 billion cubic meters of the gas was stored there. The current reserve is approximately 0.6 billion cubic meters, or roughly 4 times the current world market. But, Chan notes, in 1996 the Helium Privatization Act mandated that the Department of the Interior sell off all the stockpiled helium by 2015. "As a consequence," he says, "the United States government is selling the equivalent of 40 percent of the world market of helium at a below-market price." This action discourages the active exploration of helium," Chan explains, "since companies can buy it from the United States at a cheap price and sell it at a premium." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-probing-helium.html#jCp http://phys.org/news/2013-04-probing-helium.html#jCp
        TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
        So? Currently helium is being sold off at a below-market price. When the reserve gets low, people will look at it and go "huh. We could make some money off of helium when the reserve runs out", and look for other sources. We already did the same sort of thing for oil. We didn't panic when the initial wells and types of wells started to go dry - we found other sources.
        jsprogrammer 12y ago
        Infinite Earth.
        TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
    - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
      Helium won't run out. It's constantly being produced by radioactive decay. Now, as to whether the price will remain sane, that's another matter.
jnye131 12y ago
http://www.hybridairvehicles.com http://www.hybridairvehicles.com
sschueller 12y ago
What is the practicality of that aircraft? It can't lift near as much as a Antonov 225 (545,000lb (247,000kg) vs 22,050lb (10,000kg)) Size comparison: https://golong16.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/pic10808-1.jpg https://golong16.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/pic10808-1.jpg
- danbruc 12y ago
  Avoiding complex oversize load transports on roads and ships, avoiding the need for nearby airstrips. Just hover above the manufacturing site, lift up the payload, fly to the destination and drop it of. At least this was the main motivation behind CargoLifter [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter
- msandford 12y ago
  The 225 burns 16 tons of fuel per hour while flying. This airship has 4x 325 HP V8 engines. Roughly speaking they each use about 150lbs of fuel per hour to generate 325 HP. That's 0.3 tons per hour between the four of them. Now of course the 225 will do 5x the speed of the Airlander 10, so where the 225 would use 16 tons to go 500 miles, the 10 would use 1.5 tons. Here's where things get interesting, though. The frontal surface area tends to dominate drag, where as the volume is what gives you lift capacity. You can scale volume much faster than frontal area and that means 10x (or 100x) the lift capacity might only be 2x (or 10x) the fuel consumption. Big-Oh(airship) is potentially interesting.
danbruc 12y ago
Failed German attempt CargoLifter [1] with up to 160 tonne payload that finally gave us a swimming pool in a ridiculous large hangar [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort
- AlexMuir 12y ago
  :) I used to go to Tropical Islands every weekend when I was sleeping in a van in Berlin. It's an amazing place from an engineering point of view. And the spa is the best I've ever been to.
  - darklajid 12y ago
    Celebrated one of our wedding anniversaries (or whatever you'd call that) there. Crap if you want to swim, but quite amazing to relax and fun to stay over night.
AlexMuir 12y ago
The insurmountable problem so far on these cargo airships is ballast. It's what killed off the Cargolifter Project (as I read while sitting naked under a palm tree in its former hangar. [0]) Their killer use case is moving heavy stuff to inaccessible areas. Wind turbines being the flavour of the moment. They combine the long distance capability of a plane, the hovering of a helicopter and the lift capacity of a crane... However, once the 160 tonne payload has been dropped, the ship either needs to take on 160 tonnes of ballast or jettison helium (not an option since it's so expensive). The Cargolifter idea was to just pump up water if I remember correctly, but for land-based tasks that meant being met by ten tanker lorries at the drop site, thus negating all the benefits and meaning you might as well stick the cargo straight on those trucks. I'd love to see it work out, but so far these projects have been nothing but a wipeout for investors. Coincidentally back in 2006 I worked a couple of desks over from people managing the liquidation of Skycat, which was basically the same thing, also built at Cardington. It may even have been the same team. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  An interesting, though probably semi-insane, alternative. What about having a tank on-board, that normally is filled with air, that, when you drop off the payload, gets filled with liquid air instead? It'd be power-hungry, but meh. I mean: liquid air has a density of ~0.87g/cm^3 - it's not so far off that of water. Tank mass would kill you, but as you say, the actual lifting capacity is relatively cheap.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rpenm 12y ago
  Compress the helium into tanks and use atmosphere as ballast. Ballast can be dropped by directly purging with helium. Alternatively, contain the ballast in bladders that vent as helium pressure rises. Designing flexible bladders that don't leak too badly would be an engineering problem. A terribly inefficient option would be to allow the gasses to mix and just use fractionation to separate the heavy elements when dropping ballast.
leroy_masochist 12y ago
Wow. Bruce Dickinson is nearly unrecognizable in the photo that accompanies this article.
codewithcheese 12y ago
Here's the link if you want to 'invest' https://www.crowdcube.com/investment/hybrid-air-vehicles-limited-18450 https://www.crowdcube.com/investment/hybrid-air-vehicles-lim...
digerata 12y ago
That's funny. I immediately thought that this guy had a FEVER. And the only prescription was more AIRSHIP. But apparently there are two Bruce Dickinson's in music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson
blakeyrat 12y ago
World's largest aircraft? The Hindenburg was 245m long. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Giant_Aircraft_Comparison.svg/2000px-Giant_Aircraft_Comparison.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Gia...

55 points by ghosh 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

I would love to see how this aircraft would function at high altitude such as in Nepal. This could have a huge positive impact around Everest, especially with white knuckle Lukla airport.

anigbrowl 12y ago

This looks much more civilized than regular air travel. To the pleasure barge!

azinman2 12y ago

Umm the world is running out of helium and there's no good way to make more. Not sure how this will be viable.

monort 12y ago
Natural gas has up to 7% of helium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Modern_extraction_and_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Modern_extraction_and_d...
- fit2rule 12y ago
  Yeah but it's eventually going to run out, is the point. Helium doesn't like to stay on Earth.
  - monort 12y ago
    World reserves are 40 billion cubic meters, yearly production is 175 million cubic meters. It seems we have 200 years supply. And it's a renewable resource (produced during radioactive decay), and universe has a lot of helium, 23% of its baryonic mass.
    - fit2rule 12y ago
      Yeah, we can all quote from Wikipedia. Here's another interesting quote about Helium: *Moses Chan, Evan Pugh Professor of Physics at Penn State, explains that the world's supply of helium is a byproduct of natural gas production, with the Texas Panhandle arguably being the helium capital of the world. However, says Chan, "Very few natural gas wells in the world have enough helium in the well to make it economical to separate helium from natural gas. The gas wells with the most helium have only about 0.3 percent, so it is in short supply." In response to the element's scarcity, the United States has been stockpiling helium since the 1960s in a National Helium Reserve called the Bush Dome, a deep underground reservoir outside of Amarillo, Texas. By the mid 1970s 1.2 billion cubic meters of the gas was stored there. The current reserve is approximately 0.6 billion cubic meters, or roughly 4 times the current world market. But, Chan notes, in 1996 the Helium Privatization Act mandated that the Department of the Interior sell off all the stockpiled helium by 2015. "As a consequence," he says, "the United States government is selling the equivalent of 40 percent of the world market of helium at a below-market price." This action discourages the active exploration of helium," Chan explains, "since companies can buy it from the United States at a cheap price and sell it at a premium." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-probing-helium.html#jCp http://phys.org/news/2013-04-probing-helium.html#jCp
      - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
        So? Currently helium is being sold off at a below-market price. When the reserve gets low, people will look at it and go "huh. We could make some money off of helium when the reserve runs out", and look for other sources. We already did the same sort of thing for oil. We didn't panic when the initial wells and types of wells started to go dry - we found other sources.
        jsprogrammer 12y ago
        Infinite Earth.
        TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
    Helium won't run out. It's constantly being produced by radioactive decay. Now, as to whether the price will remain sane, that's another matter.

jnye131 12y ago

http://www.hybridairvehicles.com http://www.hybridairvehicles.com

sschueller 12y ago

What is the practicality of that aircraft? It can't lift near as much as a Antonov 225 (545,000lb (247,000kg) vs 22,050lb (10,000kg)) Size comparison: https://golong16.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/pic10808-1.jpg https://golong16.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/pic10808-1.jpg

danbruc 12y ago
Avoiding complex oversize load transports on roads and ships, avoiding the need for nearby airstrips. Just hover above the manufacturing site, lift up the payload, fly to the destination and drop it of. At least this was the main motivation behind CargoLifter [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter
msandford 12y ago
The 225 burns 16 tons of fuel per hour while flying. This airship has 4x 325 HP V8 engines. Roughly speaking they each use about 150lbs of fuel per hour to generate 325 HP. That's 0.3 tons per hour between the four of them. Now of course the 225 will do 5x the speed of the Airlander 10, so where the 225 would use 16 tons to go 500 miles, the 10 would use 1.5 tons. Here's where things get interesting, though. The frontal surface area tends to dominate drag, where as the volume is what gives you lift capacity. You can scale volume much faster than frontal area and that means 10x (or 100x) the lift capacity might only be 2x (or 10x) the fuel consumption. Big-Oh(airship) is potentially interesting.

danbruc 12y ago

Failed German attempt CargoLifter [1] with up to 160 tonne payload that finally gave us a swimming pool in a ridiculous large hangar [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort

AlexMuir 12y ago
:) I used to go to Tropical Islands every weekend when I was sleeping in a van in Berlin. It's an amazing place from an engineering point of view. And the spa is the best I've ever been to.
- darklajid 12y ago
  Celebrated one of our wedding anniversaries (or whatever you'd call that) there. Crap if you want to swim, but quite amazing to relax and fun to stay over night.

AlexMuir 12y ago

The insurmountable problem so far on these cargo airships is ballast. It's what killed off the Cargolifter Project (as I read while sitting naked under a palm tree in its former hangar. [0]) Their killer use case is moving heavy stuff to inaccessible areas. Wind turbines being the flavour of the moment. They combine the long distance capability of a plane, the hovering of a helicopter and the lift capacity of a crane... However, once the 160 tonne payload has been dropped, the ship either needs to take on 160 tonnes of ballast or jettison helium (not an option since it's so expensive). The Cargolifter idea was to just pump up water if I remember correctly, but for land-based tasks that meant being met by ten tanker lorries at the drop site, thus negating all the benefits and meaning you might as well stick the cargo straight on those trucks. I'd love to see it work out, but so far these projects have been nothing but a wipeout for investors. Coincidentally back in 2006 I worked a couple of desks over from people managing the liquidation of Skycat, which was basically the same thing, also built at Cardington. It may even have been the same team. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
An interesting, though probably semi-insane, alternative. What about having a tank on-board, that normally is filled with air, that, when you drop off the payload, gets filled with liquid air instead? It'd be power-hungry, but meh. I mean: liquid air has a density of ~0.87g/cm^3 - it's not so far off that of water. Tank mass would kill you, but as you say, the actual lifting capacity is relatively cheap.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rpenm 12y ago
Compress the helium into tanks and use atmosphere as ballast. Ballast can be dropped by directly purging with helium. Alternatively, contain the ballast in bladders that vent as helium pressure rises. Designing flexible bladders that don't leak too badly would be an engineering problem. A terribly inefficient option would be to allow the gasses to mix and just use fractionation to separate the heavy elements when dropping ballast.

leroy_masochist 12y ago

Wow. Bruce Dickinson is nearly unrecognizable in the photo that accompanies this article.

codewithcheese 12y ago

Here's the link if you want to 'invest' https://www.crowdcube.com/investment/hybrid-air-vehicles-limited-18450 https://www.crowdcube.com/investment/hybrid-air-vehicles-lim...

digerata 12y ago

That's funny. I immediately thought that this guy had a FEVER. And the only prescription was more AIRSHIP. But apparently there are two Bruce Dickinson's in music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson

blakeyrat 12y ago

World's largest aircraft? The Hindenburg was 245m long. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Giant_Aircraft_Comparison.svg/2000px-Giant_Aircraft_Comparison.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Gia...