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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

#161

Post by [deleted] »

arcticfox wrote: post #144
gambiting wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 the FPV video on social networks. Literally the exact same thing could happen with a regular plane(just send a drone into a plane as it takes off), and yet somehow it doesn't happen. I guess people aren't psychotic…

I think it would be far more difficult to take down a plane than an airship given the enormous difference in velocities. Even at takeoff, a drone-sized IED would probably only be fatal to a small part of the plane's occupants, while it could probably 100% destroy a hydrogen airship in flight. That said, I don't see any reason we'd need to put humans on these, so that probably lowers the risk massively.

[deleted]

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#162

Post by paulsutter »

szemet wrote: post #83
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…

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…

This is for cargo - hydrogen is fine. They don’t even need a crew on board.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#163

Post by andechs »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #5
emanuensis wrote: post #2

If they used H2 (vs He) for buoyancy they could make (liquefied) H2 fuel very cost efficient: When you want to come down you are high up and it is cold! Perfect time to liquefy! Making H2 gas is also subsidized on the production end, as Airship travel is cheaper than any other method, so making H2 has that cost advantage. Safety is not an issue for transport. Human travel has that tradeoff though over He.

> Safety is not an issue for transport. It's less of an issue. You still don't want a burning hydrogen zeppelin crashing down on a populated area, and unless you've fully automated it you'll still have human crew aboard (though they'll be better trained and equipped to deal with problems).

If it's filled with Hydrogen, it doesn't burn for very long - it would be an explosive burn. The cargo is still aloft in the air though, but that's also a theoretical problem with planes.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#164

Post by kaffeemitsahne »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #61
perilunar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zeppelins can have huge windows and fly relatively low Also they are constrained by weight, not volume, so there's plenty of legroom. The Hindenburg had private cabins, a lounge, a bar, and a dining room (and a smoking room!). More like a cruise ship than an airliner.

Here is a picture: https://images.app.goo.gl/7Q7T2DLDjwU3xk367

Never realized there was passenger space inside the hull! That makes me slightly less stupefied about the enormous size/capacity ratio of zeppelins.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#165

Post by john_moscow »

simongr3dal wrote: post #77
john_moscow wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, the rational way of solving a complex problem that cannot be addressed entirely is to break it down into smaller ones, estimate their individual cost/impact/risk and start with the most cost-effective options. In fact, people who actively shame others for eating meat, having vacations, and raising kids, are doing exactly that. Except, instead of optimizing the ecological impact, they optimize their o…

It might be some sort of at-first-glance rational thing to do, certainly not very efficient. There are a lot of people on earth, working in parallel or asynchronously should be a lot more efficient than fixing problems synchronously one-by-one and reassessing in between?

I used to think this way when I launched version 1.0 of my first software product. Just toss it out there and let people asynchronously find it, as long as it's great to use, right?

5 years and about 10 major releases later, I can confidently tell you that convincing a large group of people to do anything, even it if pays off great for them, is a long and time-consuming process, that is often more labor-intense and risky than the engineering part.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#166

Post by usrusr »

boomlinde wrote: post #133
usrusr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That answers GP's "how do you drive a container ship over land" but we seem agree that container transport is a solved problem that airships can't meaningfully contribute to.

But there are objects that don't fit the rail profile that still need transportation.

And a lot more objects that don't fit that profile, or the more generous limitations of an oversize road load, that could exists if matching overland transportation existed. A lot of technology is severely size-constrained only because roads between factory and deployment site are size constrained. A cargo airship that can take those loads could completely change whole industries.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#167

Post by cglace »

colechristensen wrote: post #97
teraflop wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helium is scarce in much the same way that crude oil is scarce: there are plenty of reserves still in the ground, but we are consuming them orders of magnitude faster than they were produced, and as the reserves dwindle the costs of extraction will rise. Helium is a chemical element, and aside from nuclear reactions (which are economically infeasible for non-microscopic quantities) we can't produce more of it.

We can produce more of it by distilling it out of the atmosphere, it is just rather expensive. This is exclusively how neon is produced (as far as I can find) so it is obviously economically viable at a certain price. I did a calculation once about nuclear production of helium and found that the heat from the nuclear reactors producing enough helium to match current usage would be on the same order of magnitude as th…

Over what time period?

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#168

Post by macinjosh »

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…

It was mentioned in the article. The claim is that it is a general misunderstanding that we are 'running out'. Watching the embedded video apparently they have tanks where they compress the helium, removing it from the balloon, and saving it for reuse.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#169

Post by jbay808 »

cardamomo wrote: post #32
teslaberry wrote: post #7

Better idea ultra high speed megascale nuclear powered cruise ships that never dock. They pull in 1 km from port and use deckside drones to transport tens of thousands of passengers safely on shore in different places all at once or as needed. Speed should reach at least 150mph. And with nuclear power become the domina t coastal form of circuit/belt transport. Not just people but cargo. Nuclear powered merchant marin…

I'd hate to think what the propellor noise would do to whales and other sea life.

If we're already fantasizing about going nuclear, why not also use classified military submarine propulsion systems? That ought to keep the noise down.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#170

Post by gus_massa »

pvaldes wrote: post #147
layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm only rambling. Sometimes is useful for finding new ways to crash things. Okay... lets see. Water splitting recipe: 1) Put water in a recipient with a pinch of salt, 2) add electricity, 3) hydrogen will float upwards and must be recovered in a different recipient or if mixed again with the oxygen could explode. Anything else that we would need to take in mind? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZJEDe_HUcw

> 2) add electricity,

This is the part you are underestimating. You need a lot of energy to produce the lot of electricity that is necessary to split the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. You will need very big batteries, or some other source of energy like a big solar power plant.

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