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Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

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Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#131

Post by brownbat »

b0rsuk wrote: post #108
szemet wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use hydrogen, its cheap and zeppelins can be smaller and fly higher. We will maybe better in avoiding accidents compared to 1937: - have better materials - can use it only for cargo with drones - no human should travel with them! - should/can use routes to avoid cities, and should/could build some separate safe landing space etc... finally: Hydrogen fires are less destructive to immediate surroundings than ga…

I would also rather use hydrogen. The Hindenburg disaster was spectacular, but not especially deadly! 36 fatalities, 62 survivors. Compare to modern passenger airplanes, where EVERYONE tends to die. If modern dislike for zeppelins is mostly due to Hindenburg, it's irrational.

Airline crashes have a surprisingly high survivability rate (because the typical crash is not the craft plummeting from 30k feet, but some kind of runway incident).

To your overall point though, hydrogen isn't that much worse. In fact, many leading airship disasters involved helium.

USS Shenandoah is typical of the most common enemy of airships--strong winds. The captain warned that the updrafts and storms in the Midwest would destroy the ship but was ordered to fly over several cities anyway, just for a promotional tour.

The deadliest airship disaster in history is not the Hindenburg, but the lesser known USS Akron, a helium ship that was simply destroyed in bad weather.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#132

Post by dr_dshiv »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #129
dr_dshiv wrote: post #128

There is huge potential for solar energy production on zeppelins. Back of the napkin: The Graf Zeppelin had a surface area of 27,299 square meters. If the top ⅓ was covered in solar, it could produce 10,800 kWh per day, assuming 1.2 kWh per day per square meter.

Also, they could harvest sea water or condensation to generate hydrogen. To produce one kilogram of hydrogen, 12 cubic meters, it takes 9 kg of water and 50 kWh of electricity. The solar Zeppelin described above could generate 2,589 cubic meters of hydrogen a day. At this rate, it would take 77 days to fill the Graf Zeppelin's 200,000 cubic meter capacity

So, perhaps we could float giant plastic solar balloons in a lake -- and semi-organically "grow" enormous hydrogen cells for aerostatic lift.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#133

Post by boomlinde »

usrusr wrote: post #92
riffic wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful thing called a railroad network.

Rail can only carry objects that can fit inside the cross-section and streets aren't much better. The defunct Cargolifter protect was quite open about not attempting to be competitive for loads that easily fit conventional transport. They saw their market exclusively in loads that are too bulky for ground transport and I don't think that anything has changed. Other than that this hypothetical market could be really h…

> Rail can only carry objects that can fit inside the cross-section and streets aren't much better.

Trains typically carry the same intermodal containers that cargo ships do.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#134

Post by cco »

VonGuard wrote: post #36

This article doesn't seem to take into account that Helium is becoming scarce, and when used in airships, it's eventually just released and lost forever. NYT Article on the shortage: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/science/helium-shortage-p... We used to have a strategic Helium reserve in the US for zepplins and so forth, then it was just kept for chemistry and other purposes. I think we started selling it down un…

Isn't 131 of something rare relative to the number of cargo airplanes, trains, ships, and trucks produced?

It seems pretty clear that those numbers side by side tell the tale.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#135

Post by _-o-_ »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #50

I got a dumb idea. Permanently stationed blimps around the world that never land. And cable cars for moving between them, on pulleys. Pros: Energy efficient: no need to generate lift. No need for fans to move the cars as you are on pulleys, which are more efficient. Minimal noise! You could go as fast as you want but your efficiency will start to drop due to drag. It can't be any worse an idea than a hyperloop can it…

Let's just make orbital lifts while we're at it.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#136

Post by melling »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #88
melling wrote: post #4

All air travel combined emits 2.5% of our yearly CO2 emissions. That’s hundreds of thousands of flights a day. We could just eliminate all coal electric plants in the world and make a real impact. Then use that cleaner energy to power our electric cars.

Emissions from air travel are set to triple by 2050. Also that 2.5% doesn't take into account the affect of NOx on climate or contrails. The IPCC estimate the effect of air travel is 2 to 4 times as high as that expected just from CO2 emissions.

In 30 years?

We could reduce the CO2 emissions of our electric by half within 10 years.

Begin moving to electric vehicles en masse within a decade.

Maybe a big 2025 goal should be a priority?

We should be doing more now so we need to do less later.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#137

Post by TN1ck »

sllabres wrote: post #69

German company Cargolifter tried, about 20 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter

My father worked at the company back then, designing the rudders. After that, he worked at Airbus until retirement. He always said that his coworkers at Cargolifter where really good engineers and much brighter on average than at Airbus, I always wonder where they might be if they didn't run out of funding / if they would have started the company today, where people are much more willing to invest into risky firms like these.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#138

Post by icebraining »

734129837261 wrote: post #22
melling wrote: post #4

All air travel combined emits 2.5% of our yearly CO2 emissions. That’s hundreds of thousands of flights a day. We could just eliminate all coal electric plants in the world and make a real impact. Then use that cleaner energy to power our electric cars.

You're right, air travel is just a drop on a hot plate, and is by far the cleanest way of transporting hundreds of people in (relative) comfort over vast distances. Try taking a Tesla from SF to Amsterdam. But eliminating all coal plants in the world is not feasible in the short term. Germany tried it a while back. Turns out that some days are too dark to catch enough sunlight. Turns out that sometimes the wind doesn…

> But Europe has bad memories of that because of outdated tech in eastern Europe going haywire.

Opposition to nuclear plants is much older than Chernobyl's catastrophe; it started at least in the early 70s, with the big protests in Wyhl, Germany.

And frankly, the way some western European states have been dealing with the plants we do have is not reassuring. Maybe the distribution of iodine pills in the German towns bordering Belgium was overkill, but it shows that those nuclear states aren't taking the concerns seriously enough.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#139

Post by brnt »

squarefoot wrote: post #116
b0rsuk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also rather use hydrogen. The Hindenburg disaster was spectacular, but not especially deadly! 36 fatalities, 62 survivors. Compare to modern passenger airplanes, where EVERYONE tends to die. If modern dislike for zeppelins is mostly due to Hindenburg, it's irrational.

The Hindenburg accident happened while the ship was about to land; people on the ground were already holding the ropes hanging from its nose. Had the explosion happen at a higher altitude nobody wold have survived. Using hydrogen, especially today, is a disaster waiting to happen, since any idiot with a medium quadcopter drone carrying a small explosive charge could easily outrun and shot down an airship then post th…

I think since Hindenburg fabrics has developed tremendously, and collision, perhaps even explosion safe fabrics for zeppelin hulls could be possible.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#140

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

pvaldes wrote: post #105
layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jet fuel can be contained easily. Hydrogen diffuses even through welded containers. It can also weaken them structurally: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

Easy to store in form of water as long as we could create it when needed, but water is heavy as fuel so it cancels the floating effect. An airbag for airplanes that would create a floating bag of hydrogen in seconds helping to do a safe landing would be awesome on the other hand. We could use the extra oxygen for masks also.

Sorry but these “ideas” are reddit tier naive... I recommend you researching the topic of water splitting.
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