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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

#171

Post by AstralStorm »

ppf wrote: post #120
kiba wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airships have a use case for bulk cargo, so it will displace some trucks.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that the efficiency of a powered airship is about the same as modern airplanes. Switching truck freight to airships would use an order of magnitude more fuel.

Higher, as long as the airship for not have to go fast and can use air currents mostly like any old balloon. It can go almost arbitrarily slow, as long as the weather is good and there is no time pressure.

The main efficiency losses in airplanes are wind resistance and takeoff/landing... An airplane cannot go arbitrarily slow or it loses lift. According to industry sources, airships are about 80% more efficient. Plus as fuel space efficiency and weight is less of a problem, they can use different fuel sources for the engines, including methane or hydrogen, and electric engines too.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#172

Post by nojvek »

rb808 wrote: post #155

Incidental article about Macys Thanksgiving parade baloons are filled with Helium https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2019/11/27/macys-than... At the end the gas is released, not recycled.

I think recreational use of helium ought to be banned. It’s a rare gas that once gone is gone from the atmosphere. It’s likely that our great great grandchildren won’t have it left for other uses.

Well it’s also likely that they really won’t have a habitable planet too.

But we gotta start somewhere right ?

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#173

Post by michaelcampbell »

teraflop wrote: post #51
cforrester wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that helium is becoming scarce in the sense that we can't get any more, though. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that it's just expensive to store, so nobody wants to do it if it's not worth the money. If air ships started to "take off", there would surely be more money in producing helium.

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.

So is hydrogen, and we produce that in droves.

Now granted perhaps there is no He + ? compound which we can easily split, but the fact it is an element does not imply we can't make more of it. (Pedantry aside; I of course do not mean "from something that isn't helium")

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#174

Post by Stratoscope »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #154
Stratoscope wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to ride on the Airship Ventures Zeppelin NT over the SF Peninsula and South Bay back in 2012. It was as awesome as you may guess. There were a couple of windows we could open, and a seat in the back with a big panorama window behind it. We were in the same cabin with the pilots, and they were happy to show us how the zeppelin worked and make little detours if there was something we wanted to see. We even got to…

> Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei still runs passenger flights out of Friedrichshafen. If you ever get to Germany, you won't regret taking a Zeppelin ride. Looked this up just now and Jesus Christ, 450 EUR for a 60 minute tour flight??

I didn't say it was cheap, I said it was awesome. It was an experience of a lifetime.

The US flights were $500 for an hour. We got lucky and it turned out to be a 90 minute flight.

I've spent $500 on things that I got a lot less enjoyment out of than this, and I would gladly do it again.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#175

Post by nradov »

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…

There is so little helium in the atmosphere that distillation is totally pointless. Almost all the refined helium we get is a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#176

Post by colechristensen »

cglace wrote: post #167
colechristensen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Continuous. I compared power (energy/second, watts) not energy.

Take the helium used in a year, calculate the amount of energy produced by nuclear reactions to make that helium. Compare to the solar intensity at earth's orbital distance (W/m^2) multiply by 1 year, multiply by area of circle with earth's diameter.

The result I got was within a factor of 10 between the two.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#177

Post by WalterBright »

zabzonk wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should just use hydrogen. We learned how to safely fly airliners full of jet fuel, we can solve the safety problem with a bag full of H.

You can throw a lighted match into a can of jet fuel and it will go out - try this with hydrogen.

Despite that, jet fuel burns quite fiercely. The fires that brought down the WTC were started by jet fuel being sprayed through the buildings.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#178

Post by WalterBright »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #96
WalterBright wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should just use hydrogen. We learned how to safely fly airliners full of jet fuel, we can solve the safety problem with a bag full of H.

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

Zeppelins aren't welded metal containers.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#179

Post by teraflop »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #173
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.

So is hydrogen, and we produce that in droves. Now granted perhaps there is no He + ? compound which we can easily split, but the fact it is an element does not imply we can't make more of it. (Pedantry aside; I of course do not mean "from something that isn't helium")

Sure, we can chemically extract hydrogen from compounds that contain it, but since helium compounds don't exist (for all practical purposes) that's not a relevant point.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#180

Post by nashashmi »

em-bee wrote: post #81
JasonFruit wrote: post #12

What I don't see is a discussion of how these airships would avoid the sort of weather-related accidents that destroyed the Shenandoah, the R101, the Akron, and the Macon. The Hindenburg disaster gets all the attention, but the bigger problem with the large rigid airships was their inability to avoid or weather storms. I'd love to see it --- I really would --- but I never see this point addressed.

according to the article, these newer ships could fly high enough to be above all the problematic weather. only take off and landing would be an issue. but at the speed they are flying, a few hours delay won't make much off a difference either.

I wonder if it would be easier to just lower the cargo instead of the entire airship
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