The Age of the Airship Returns?

Popular in Victorian and Steampunk fantasies, airships and zeppelins evoke a certain elegance that most modern travelers don't associate with the airplane. Some companies are capitalizing on that idea, and a need to move cargo by air in an era of ever-increasing fuel costs, to re-re-introduce commercial zeppelins. Popular Mechanics notes four notable airship designs, all with specific design purposes. One craft in particular, the Aeroscraft ML866, is being funded by the US government's DARPA group. It looks to combine the best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin. "The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings, Aeros says. It hopes to end the program with a test flight demonstrating the system. "

Anti-gravity tech

So does this mean that the DoD isn't developing anti-gravity technology in Area 51? Or does it just mean that DARPA isn't privy to that knowledge?

Re:Anti-gravity tech

No, the Stargate program has control of that. Go talk to Captain Carter and see if she can give you a few pointers.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

you are thinking of hydrogen.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

you are thinking of hydrogen.

thinking?
 

Re:Anti-gravity tech

But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships?

Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the American public-school education.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

But seriously, wasn't it almost exactly 100 years ago that humanity learned an important lesson about mixing helium and airships?

Doesn't helium have the unfortunate property of being, oh I don't know... extremely flammable?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the American public-school education.

I noticed his handle is "MisterLawyer", which ought to explain the ignorance. He's probably been hitting his head on the ass end of too many ambulances.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

And according to this [scientificblogging.com] link (no myminicity, I swear!), Helium is in danger of being in short supply due to among other things that it's not captured and recycled after use and while being available in big supply in the universe, the Earth supply is actually a bit limited.
According to the article it is an issue the next generations of scientist are going to have to struggle with. So maybe a Helium-based airship is not that good an idea, although I don't have to background to propose a different scheme.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

You can make it from hydrogen. It's a bit tricky, though.

Re:Anti-gravity tech

I hear the sun's been doing it for years. Maybe we should ask it for advice.

The discouraging prior art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter_AG [wikipedia.org]

Re:The discouraging prior art

Funny I was thinking the same thing. Cargo zeppelins was actually a very promising area. My brother's company that makes custom machinery wanted to use Cargo zeppelins to move their heavy machinery. Right now their machines are assembled, taken apart, and then driven piece by piece via road. The zeppelins were supposed to make this moot by being able to ship the entire machine.

From the article it looks like they want to use those machines to survey... Hmmm... Big brother?

Re:The discouraging prior art

Only to people who don't bother to read enough of it to realize that a major reason for the disaster was that the paint on the Hindenburg was more or less rocket fuel. Bringing up the Hindenburg is like using a disaster involving one of the earliest planes to discourage commercial flights with modern jets.

Re:Clarification on Helium Ban

I'm the "this guy" mentioned above. I guess I should clarify what I wrote in my blog post. The ban on selling helium to the Nazis WAS based on military priorities. The presence of the swastika had nothing to do with the ban (other than making sure there wouldn't be an exception made). Eckner admired the Americans and was less-than-thrilled by the Nazis (although he accepted their funding). The economic realities of the day meant he had to place the swastika on his airships, thereby "dissing" those he admired. Sorry for any confusion.

Sky Captain calling

he wants his world of tomorrow back.

Idea full of hot air

(sorry, had to be said)

Oh great

We are now falling int love with airships, and our cheap helium is about to end?????

Re:Oh great

But since love is irrational, then only a float is going to be at all useful.

Hydrogen

I've heard arguments that the Hindenburg blew up because of the paint and not the hydrogen, so maybe we should re-evaluate whether or not hydrogen is actually safe for this application? On Earth, it's certainly much easier to get hydrogen than helium.

Re:Hydrogen

And you saying its not credible makes it un-credible because you are credible? Please back up your claim.

Over half of the people survived the crash. How many survive 747 crashes? Perhaps the 100+ tons of JET fuel in the wings and under the floor is not safer than hydrogen after all?

Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum

it's certainly much easier to get hydrogen than helium.

And it lifts better too!

Of course vacuum would provide the best lift of all in the atmosphere. So why is it that my beautiful 21" crt monitor, which is little more than a big cube of vacuum, is so damn heavy?

Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum

Think how crushingly heavy it would be if you broke the vacuum!

Re:Hydrogen--Big Cube of Vacuum

***So why is it that my beautiful 21" crt monitor, which is little more than a big cube of vacuum, is so damn heavy?***

Because it is too small to have much lift. Depending on how it was built, you might need weights to keep a 21 meter monitor from drifting off.

Re:Hydrogen

If I remember correctly, they used aluminized layers alternating with iron oxide layers. aluminum can react with iron oxide in a thermite reaction. Iron oxide is the oxidizer and aluminum is the reducing agent, because of the violence of the reaction it is used in some cases to dispose of computer hardware to reduce/eliminate the risk of data recovery by unintended parties. That being true, it is certainly possible that the paint increased the risk of fire but the fact that the gas inside the balloon was very flammable didn't help anything. would the ship have caught fire if the outer coating wasn't flammable? probably eventually, all it takes is a tear in the skin of that ship to expose hydrogen to air and really at that point, it is only a matter of time before something causes ignition of the gas. OTOH, had the gas been helium, the only fire hazard would be the paint which if comprimised would be bad but likely a lot better than the whole ship catching fire.

Re:Hydrogen

There are around 43,000 traffic fatalities per year in the US. If we posit that a mere 60,000,000 people (only 1/5th of the US population) get in a car or cross the street on foot every year, that's a total death rate of about 0.00072%.

There have been 439 astronauts. 19 of them have died in flight. That's 4.5%, meaning you are, given the above incredibly pessimistic estimate, more than 6000 times as likely to die in a spaceship than in the rolling deathtrap called a car. And by the way, 14 of those 19 deaths have happened in the Space Shuttle, the most advanced manned spacecraft to currently fly on a regular basis.

You'll therefore excuse me if I find your risk assessment lacking.

Re:Hydrogen

People also seem to forget that 2/3s of the passengers of the Hindenburg survived, and it was the only notable airship disaster, whereas most airplane crashes that involve fatalities seem to kill a good majority (if not all) of the passengers, and seem to happen at least once or twice a year lately.

Helium please :)

As long as it isn't using fucking HYDROGEN, Sign Me Up!!! R101, Hindengerg -> http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=309 [damninteresting.com]

Re:Helium please :)

Hydrogen is much cheaper, and is pretty safe if done properly. Hydrogen zeppelins of the first half of last century had an excellent safety record.

The Hindenburg disaster wasn't that bad. It only killed a few dozen people. And it involved other shortcuts that shouldn't have been done. The only reason that the Hindenburg seems so bad in retrospect is because there were a buttload of reporters at the right place at the right time (they planned to report a successful zeppelin trip), and because zeppelins don't die quietly, but rather in a huge exploding fireball.

Re:Helium please :)

Oh, please stop the FUD. From wikipedia:

"Despite the violent fire, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. The two dogs on board the ship also died. Most deaths were not caused directly by the fire but were from jumping from the burning ship. Those passengers who rode the ship on its descent to the ground survived. Some deaths of crew members occurred because they wanted to save people on board the ship. In comparison, almost twice as many perished when the helium-filled USS Akron crashed."

best elements of the helicopter and the zeppelin

So, whirling rotary blades combined with When The Levee Breaks?

Cool.

A new mode of transport in general?

Airships have their issues, but I recall reading somewhere that a blimp large enough to carry massive amounts of cargo can do so for the fraction of the fuel spent on ship-based transportation. Ships have to keep expending energy to push through water, but an airship needs far less power to keep a course through the air.

I see a couple hurdles though.

The first is designable around -- damage to the hot air or helium part due to lightning, or tears due to other factors. Having multiple "balloons" might help this situation, so if one is ruptured, the airship still can stay up, or descend in a fairly graceful fashion.

The second is a bit harder, but sort of related to #1. There are people out there (in most areas of the globe) who wouldn't mind taking potshots at an airship. It could be a drunk hillbilly who is playing with his new 30/06, or someone who has a RPG and is hoping to knock the thing out of the air completely. Oddly enough (and I have little or no aerospace expertise), I wonder if, even with major damage from a missile hit, a well engineered airship still can land gracefully (assuming the gondola isn't what is damaged.) Could an airship fly high enough so the chance of getting hit by ground fire be minimized?

Lastly there is a third problem. There is a ton of air traffic already. I wonder how hard it would be to factor in large, slow vehicles into the aviation corridors without impacting takeoffs and landings of jets and prop based traffic.

Re:A new mode of transport in general?OLD CARTRIDG

The 30-06 is still one of the best general purpose rifles around. In hunting, it easily handles powder and bullet combinations from a 150 grain deer round to a 220 grain round suitable for moose and large bears. There are now sabot bullets in the 95 grain region that make the 30-06 a good varmint rifle. It is a favored hunting rifle for reloaders because the cartridges can be fire-formed to custom fit the rifle's chamber, the brass is thick enough that they can be re-used multiple times, and the wide selection of powders and bullets allows custom tailoring of rounds.

In my experience, rural rednecks who know enough to acquire a 30-06 rifle are very unlikely to have it in hand when they are drinking. The redneck rule in southern Oregon is: no beer or other alcohol until the day's hunting is over; no handling of any of the guns after the drinking has begun. Break the rule and you find that none of the good old boys will hunt with you any more. My impression is that this is universal throughout rural USA and Canada, and probably world-wide. There would be fewer rednecks around if it wasn't for centuries-old customs like this one.

City-bred rednecks are another story: they do drink and shoot simultaneously. But they generally aren't savvy enough to buy a 30-06. They want something more macho like a .300 magnum to go with their huge fourwheeler that they don't know how to drive.

Re:A new mode of transport in general?

The second is a bit harder, but sort of related to #1. There are people out there (in most areas of the globe) who wouldn't mind taking potshots at an airship. It could be a drunk hillbilly who is playing with his new 30/06, or someone who has a RPG and is hoping to knock the thing out of the air completely. Oddly enough (and I have little or no aerospace expertise), I wonder if, even with major damage from a missile hit, a well engineered airship still can land gracefully (assuming the gondola isn't what is damaged.) Could an airship fly high enough so the chance of getting hit by ground fire be minimized?

For the .30/06 its like shooting a parachute with a pistol. Enough holes would be dangerous but the helium bags aren't under enough pressure to pop like a balloon and a hole roughly 1/3 in. in diameter isn't going to be enough to bring it down before a patch can be made. Also, with the exception of some serious firepower like the .50 and .75 caliber rifles, bullets don't actually travel too far before dropping. Your chances of hitting a blimp with a hunting rifle or an AK when its in the air are practically nonexistent outside of takeoff or landing. The maximum effective range of an AK-47 (the area at which you could expect to hit a large target firing horizontally, though I think a blimp is a bit above the large target in this standard) is generally estimated around 250m. add the distance you are away from it and account for the upward angle you're firing at and I believe it'd be quite impressive to to hit a blimp with small-arms fire.

As far as the RPG goes, I'm not sure what we could hope for there... military aircraft don't stand up so well to direct RPG hits. Commercial aircraft simply can't be designed for that particular level of abuse.

This again?

About every 10 years or so, someone proclaims the return of the airship. The problems with airships are the same they have always been - high susceptibility to winds and difficult ground handling. Those problems are essentially insoluble - it's *lighter than air*. The combination helicopter/blimp had been tried at least half a dozen times, all unsuccessfully.

      The hydrogen/helium thing not an issue. It's not going to use hydrogen. Whether that's what got the Hindenberg, or not, flying around with tens of thousands of cubic feet of exceptionally flammable gas, with a HUGE range of fuel/air ratios at which it can sustain ignition, isn't going to happen. It's a *bad idea* and wouldn't pass the laugh test for FAA certification.

            Brett

Not an airship....

That's [popularmechanics.com] no airship, it's Thunderbird 2 [bbc.co.uk]!

An Airship?

Oh, the humanity!

Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

The trouble with blimps is that they don't compete with aircraft, since they are too slow. They compete with trains and trucks, but don't have the carrying capacity to do that, while they do have the maintenance cost of aircraft. So altogether they don't make economic sense and they likely never will.

Re:Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

The Skycat 220 is supposed to have a payload capacity of 220 tons. (No, I dunno if those are metric, long or short tons) That handily beats any on-the-road wheeled vehicle I know of. They can go to remote places where roads and rails don't run. Thus beating the trains. They can carry more weight and go further than a helocopter for less money. They are also much quieter and cheaper to operate than a jumbo jet. And unlike those trucks and trains, LTACs are pretty good at crossing oceans. These things aren't intended to compete with trucks and trains, not directly in thier narrow fields anyway. They compete with trains on flexibility of destination, with trucks and helocopters on total payload, with conventional aircraft on cost and with ships on speed.
I agree with your basic point that a blimp is not nearly as good at other transport systems are best at, but for some particular uses it still has some advantages. Here are some cases where I can see a major economic advantage to using some sort of LTAC over more conventional transportation:
1) carrying heavy gear to remote locations. (Mining, military, telecom etc)
2) anything that involves hanging around in the sky for long hours. (police patrol, weather research, space launch monitoring, customs patrol.)
3) many things that involve getting a better view than you can get down here. (air traffic control, high altitude research, some types of cosmic ray research, military reconnaissance )
4) the Skycat in particular, with it's self landing systems, would make a damn fine traveling medical clinic and disaster response vehicle for Canada, Russia, Australia and pretty much most of Africa.
5) I'm not sure how such a large and light vehicle can handle itself in the turbulence of a forest fire, but if they can be made to handle that environment they'd have a LOT more capacity than any chopper for water or fire retardants and a lot more flexibility in where to refill.
6)Avalanche control. You could get right up close to a potential avalanche site without making as much noise as a chopper, giving you more flexibility and control in triggering it.
7)wild life monitoring. you can quietly drift over a herd or flock without disturbing it as much as a helicopter would. (come to think of it, it wouldn't be as vulnerable to bird strike would it?)

Bottom line, no one, not even the optimistic writer of TFA is claiming that these craft will render trains, trucks, heavier than air aircraft and ships obsolete. We're just in the process of bringing back a very unique tool into our logistics chains.

P.S. The Skycat company also promotes their design as a possible executive aircraft, something I am dubious on. But imagine what a wonderful RV it would make for the ultra rich! With a payload of 20 tons for even the smallest, you could pack out an entire cabin and camp site, preloaded and provisioned for any remote fishing or hunting spot you can imagine.

Re:Blimps compete with trucks and trains - badly

Blimps don't need to make economic sense because they are fun. Also, if we don't have zeppelins, then how am I supposed to fulfill my dream of throwing somebody off of one and then saying "No ticket"?

Only 40 Years Ago...

"The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings,"

It was only about 40 years or so I read about this system. Of course, this was the Mad Scientists Club in Boy's Life magazine that competed in a balloon race and handled the buoyancy problem in this advanced manner. Maybe some of those Boy Scouts grew up to fly like Eagles and design airships.

(P.S. I also read Arthur Clarke's original short story Sunjammer in BL, before he had to go and change the title to the far less elegant The Wind From The Sun title, after some other author also used the same original title in another story that same year.)

People have been saying this for 40 years!!!

I have been reading about the return of the Zeppelin (mostly for cargo carrying) in the science magazines ever since I was a small child. Popular Science or Popular Mechanics have seemed to have an article on the subject just about every year... for many, many years. So pardon me if I am skeptical! I will pay attention when I actually see a commercial version fly overhead.

obligatory python reference

The golden age of balooning returns!

Airships seem to be more common than most think

I've driven past Moffet Field, in California, which NASA uses part of, and seen several airship hangers. The ships I saw were not advertising or such, but appeared to be actual "workhorse" ships, whether for cargo or research, I don't know, but it seems airships have been around and doing useful work with almost no attention, so it is hardly surprising to me that more uses are being considered.

A very interesting use is being worked on by a company called JP Aerospace (http://jpaerospace.com/). Their idea is to build an airship-to-orbit system. Not in one go. It would involve transferring from a ground capable airship to an extreme high altitude airship.

Two questions

After reading this and brushing past the initial skeptical views expressed above through historical references (ie: The Hindenburg), I have two questions: 1) Will it run Linux? 2) How expensive will it be to ride in one from location X to location Y? I mean, if it's going at 222kph, and a person is not in a hurry and/or not willing to spend too much money on airplane flights (especially international ones), would it be a cheaper and stable alternative to riding a Boeing or an Airbus? If it isn't, it's going to be a tiny market to cater to.

Giant pokemon

The picture on the website looks like a giant pokemon. But besides that I used to prescribe to popular science 7 years ago and I recalled an issue stating the same vision.

Propper modding technique

Shouldn't all comments referring to the Hindenburg be modded "Flaimbait"?

dugg

dugg for the 'noticket' tag.

Thunderbirds are go!!

One of them looks like Thunderbird 2.

Cruiseship of the sky?

I think one of the best marketing directions for this ship(if it works) would be a kind of "Sky Cruise Ship." Lots of people would probably pay to be able to take slow cruises over land and sea. think of the great views as you cruise over the Caribbean and then later over South American jungles and then on to Hawaii or Alaska. Nice trip, I think.

Sounds good to me!

I'd gladly spend 12-24 hours on a zeppelin if it was more like a train. Lots of leg room, a sleeper car, a dining area, etc.

Plus, they'd probably have much larger windows. You'd really feel like you were travelling - not jammed in a metal tube being uncomfortably jetted across the sky for hours.

I think we've all gotten used to getting somewhere in a few hours - but I have yet to find anyone who actually likes the experience, unless they can afford to go first class. And even that's monotonous.

That idea just needs a bit of proper marketing

If this highly educational infomercial doesn't win over investors en masse I don't know what would... [weebls-stuff.com] ^_^

np: The Orb - A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld: Peel Session (Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld Deluxe Edition (Disc 3))

Helium is sooo last decade.

Wait a minute, I've got the best idea ever - a hydrogen filled airship with fuel cell driven propellers. They'd float really high when they started, and descend to their destination as they used the fuel. No excess weight, no tricky landings, and totally environmentally friendly. All we need to do is calculate exactly how much fuel we need - that's totally predictable, right?

As soon as I finish my feed-mayonnaise-to-tuna-fish project, I'm working on this.

hasn't this been done before, long ago?

I recall reading something about what amounted to a flying aircraft carrier. A zeppeline-like airship that launched biplanes.

The USS Akron (ZRS-4) based in Lakehurst, NJ and the USS Macon (ZRS-5) based in Sunnyvale, CA were helium filled rigid airships developed by the Goodyear-Zepplin Company (a joint venture of the Zepplin Company of Germany and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company) for the United States Navy. The airships were designed for coastal patrol and had the ability to carry and launch five small biplanes.

More info here [pacificaerial.com]

Flies in the ointment.

A few gotchas:

• Blimps are unlikely to get very high, so they have to fly through the weather, or land and hide in a hangar. So they're no good for any kind of dependable, scheduled service.
• Even if good weather, blimps have a terrible safety record.
• 220 tons sounds like a lot of lifting, but it's only two rail cars. It's never going to be economical to replace two super-reliable, all-weather $100K rail cars with a million dollar blimp that can only fly in good weather.
• Consider how much real-estate it takes to moor just one blimp.

Helium Supply

I recently toured the Naval Air Station Tillamook [nastillamook.org] and learned two surprising things related to this discussion:

• The US is far and away the largest, if not the only, producer of helium; and
• we'll probably be out of Helium within 10 years.

As Helium is used, it must be recovered. If it simply left to evaporate, being lighter than air it will rise to the highest level of our atmosphere and there be stripped of by the solar wind. So once it's gone, it's gone--and there appears to be a finite supply, as we have only been able to extract it from natural gas deposits that have had the further advantage of being proximate to a radiation source.

There are different estimates [chicagotribune.com] about how much more of it we have, and the Moon is a possible supply. But I sure wouldn't want to attempt to build an airship industry around it. By the time airships became feasible again, we may well be out of Helium by then (or in enough cheap abundance to make it the lift medium infeasible).

Sky Cruise

In addition to cargo and other utilitarian applications, airships could also provide pretty fine luxury leisure travel. Air cruises would be cool, because rather than endless vistas of just water you can travel over land at altitudes low enough to have a view. I'd take one over a sea cruise any day.

Dunno, I've heard this before

In the 1980s, my dad worked on a project for the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation. It was called the PA-97 Helistat. There are some pictures and info about it on the Piasecki Aircraft website [piasecki.com]. It was designed to lift heavy objects using a derigible and a few helicopters. Unfortunately, the helicopters motor frequency became resonant with the flimsy frame structure and it fell apart, killing one pilot. One thing that has always intrigued me is that the German version of wikipedia has a lot more info about the Helistat than can be found anywhere else: link [wikipedia.org].

basic problem

what about wind ?
a lighter then air thing has lift aprox proportional to volume, and surface area is ~~ the cube or square root of volume
In any event, a lighter then air vehicle has a problem with wind - for instance, when landing or docking
there is also a speed of compensation problem: how fast can you change x cubic meters of He when you hit a pocket of air with diff density

there is also a flying above the weather problem: you lift is less, the higher you go; everyone who has any expeince flying knows height is your friend

icing on a large surface area

run way space if a serious percent of traffic ?

The problem with He...

is that it's getting incredibly expensive as well.

Vertical Airships

Don't forget vertical airships: http://www.airship.org/ [airship.org]

I for one would give it a shot...

I think it would be a fun and elegant way to travel. Smoother and much more quiet than traditional aircraft... I think it could be like luxury train trips where the transportation is part of the enjoyment of the vacation.
Maybe not for a business trip, but for pleasure I would LOVE it as an option. Especially if it were priced right.

Airships! Neato

I've always had a soft spot for these things. A few thoughts:

Classic airships were terribly difficult to operate given the technology of the day. Landings were particularly difficult thanks to the strange concept of the mooring tower. Perhaps classic-era zeppelins could have been safer if they used a winch-down technology similar to helicopters on modern destroyers. In heavy seas, the helicopter cannot land conventionally. A cable is dropped to the deck where it is secured in a winch drum. The chopper pilot applies full throttle as he is slowly winched out of the sky. If the deck rises, he rises, and likewise falls when it falls. This prevents him from getting smacked into splinters by an unpredictable wave. For a zeppelin, a few mooring lines dropped from the air could leave it secured against errant wind gusts while it is winched down. Of course, we now have computer-aired control systems and could use rotating thruster pods like modern ships for three-dimensional maneuvering.

While hydrogen is probably still our best modern fuel, I'm curious as to what kind of unobtanium would be required to create vacuum airships, ones that don't just use a lighter than air gas but completely evacuated containers to create buoyancy.

Final thought: I hope they put more thought into this than the Germans who came up with Zeppelin NT [wikipedia.org]. I'm still waiting for Titanic ME.

Airships and Fusion: RSN

Both have been featured in countless articles for decades. My money says if and when, they'll probably be announced in the same week, since they've been tied together in the waiting room for so long. I'll believe them when I see them. If I actually see fusion, it'll probably burn my face off, but then at last I'd be able to mumble through the scars "Finally!"

Two words: wind shear

If the atmosphere would just behave itself and lie there docilely, or at least move all in the same direction at the same time, airships would make sense from an engineering point of view. But since the wind is not this cooperative, it is essential to build an airshipstrong enough to withstand the atmospheric equivalent of a rogue wave, and strength is the enemy of lightness. Size magnifies the effect of shearing forces. Also, travelling through the air faster than a stately drift causes vortexes and standing waves on the surface of the structure, a poorly understood phenomenon that is counteracted in "heavy" aircraft by just making the surfaces strong. Again, strong is the enemy of light. To make matters worse, the vortex patterns are speed dependent. In simple terms, a fast moving airship will tear itself apart. That is why blimps have a top speed of not very much, and rigid airships (the rigid part is about keeping the envelope from collapsing as speed increases) have a top speed of not very much more.

Maybe one day when fluid dynamics is better understood and strength to weight ratios have improved enough to get the safety margins into the right zone, the age of the airship will truly return. We are nowhere close to either of those at the moment. The concept art shown here for the Aeroscraft in particular is just stupid. Look at the massive concentration of weight right at the stern. There are good reasons why the most successful airship designs place the engines below the craft, in the middle. This contributes to stability and reduces stress on the structure, which otherwise would have to be heavier. Also the lozenge shape may look good on a magazine cover, but it reduces volume of the lifting gas in relation to surface area. Less gas is the same as more weight.

I have a lot of trouble believing that the designs shown have been subjected to any kind of serious engineering analysis. This is more about convincing gullible people to go take a flyer on a grand venture. See the pretty pictures and send your money here thanks.

To be sure, Zepellins really are back, at least a small number of them. They fly low and slow over Berlin. The design is very traditional, a stubby cigar shape with a nacelle underheath to which the engines are attached. These aircraft are not really good for much other than the spectacle, which in my opinion justifies the effort but this is a far cry from commercial viability as a mode of transportation.

solar power?

Seems like they might have enough space on the top for solar panels. Now I'm not saying store the energy in batteries just use it went light is available backed up with more conventional generators.

Residual, Inter-deme Transport Requirements

The ML866, in using dynamic lift, is taking one step toward the aeronautic transportation system that could displace all current transporation needs in the event that the evolution of virulence, driven by horizontal transmission in an age of mass migration, forces the collapse of civilization (city-based population structure).

See Residual, Inter-deme Transport Requirements [majorityrights.com]:

A primary function of cities is transport of food.

Once food production and consumption is localized, the need for energy is radically reduced to that required to fill temporary localized shortages due to food production short-falls.

The residual function of cities is to provide routing and consolidation of food transport for famine relief.

Cities provide 2 primary functions in transport:

1. Minimization of road construction by providing central hubs.

2. Load consolidation for optimal use of fixed-capacity vehicles.

Transport systems minimizing these two functions minimize the residual transportation need for cities.

Aerospace transport renders road construction moot, hence is quite desirable. Shipping via ocean has this benefit to a lesser extent. Land transport should be limited to intra-deme if at all possible.

Variable sized transport vehicles minimizes load consolidation. Vehicle technologies that are relatively insensitive to scale are therefore immensely valuable.

Since human labor is costly and one of the primary failures of civilizations is due to transport of pathogens along trade-routes and humans are the primary vectors of human pathogens, autonomous and/or remote control transport technologies are immensely valuable.

The ideal primary mode of inter-deme agricultural transport is therefore probably:

1. Aeronautic.

2. Scalable.

3. Autonomous.

A Possible Residual Transporter

There is at least one type of transporter than can fulfill the requirements for residual, inter-deme transportation based on autonomous balloon technology.

The large variations in wind direction and speed with altitude, coupled with high speed electronic communication, computation, global positioning and weather analysis creates an opportunity for autonomous hydrogen balloons that fulfill the requirements to empty the cities of transportation hub infrastructure.

The long duration balloon experiment is very similar in some ways to a system designed to fulfill the requirements of emptying the cities.

With vertical sections of the "pumpkin" alternating between aluminized and clear, the sections could act as a series of horizontally polarized high-gain antennae for mesh communication as well as a reflector for a strobe. The vertical axis would have a Dyneema draw string that could tighten down the "pumpkin" shape into a toroidal shape to decrease volume and thereby decrease buoyancy, reversibly. Another potential created by this is to have the rib strings extend together into a composite draw-string in the center with the component strings, going down the sides of the sections, differentially tightened to create an asymmetry in the toroid so that during descent or ascent the balloon could experience some horizontal thrust, somewhat like a parachute. This might be useful during the terminal phase of the flight to tether it precisely (these would be unlikely to land--merely be under control of a ground mooring).

The top of the envelope would most likely have solar cells coated inside of the Mylar. Polymer solar cells are ideal.

Reversible hydrogen fuel cells would provide electrical power as well as converting water and excess power into hydrogen when needed. This aspect of the design is the most problematic at first since the number of catalysts useful for reversible fuel cells are relatively rare and will require some fraction of the transporters to be used on an ongoing basis to

Related: Historical Autobiography

Nevil Shute's "SlideRule" is a good historical/engineering novel about the early days of airship research in England. Read it last year and recommend it.

people who buy in to this technology

Also buy into Norman Spinrad's balloon/bicycles [amazon.com]

Re:Saving on fuel?

Helium is far more important as a shielding gas for welding than for any transportation use, especially one that will waste millions of cubic feet by venting.