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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

#181

Post by perilunar »

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.

Use air propellors, like a hovercraft, and annoy the birds instead.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#182

Post by ericd »

nradov wrote: post #48
ericd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a company working on hydrofoils for cargo ships in one of the recent YC batches. No idea how it’s going, but they at least seem to think it’s possible to put foils on something large.

Boundary Layer Technologies is developing small cargo hydrofoils to compete with air freight. This may be a viable niche market. But their design looks like it has only about 1% of the capacity of the largest displacement hull container ships. Hydrofoil technology doesn't scale. And the cruising speed won't be much over 50kts.

Ah didn’t realize it was just for very small cargo ships, thanks for the analysis.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#183

Post by galaxyLogic »

anoncake wrote: post #113
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes kind of like a train but without disrupting the land below so much. Maybe much faster to install too.

> Yes kind of like a train but without disrupting the land below so much. ...or the ocean below. If the blimps can be grounded to ships, the ocean floor or don't need grounding, this could be a realistic way of building bridges across the oceans.

A movable bridge which hangs in the air :-)

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#184

Post by glenra »

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.

Did you mean to imply we are consuming crude oil "orders of magnitude faster than [reserves are] produced"? Because that isn't true - the amount of oil "known reserves" is how much we've bothered to find and figure out to tap thus far, but whenever it seems like we might be running out we just go find and figure out how to produce more such that total known reserves are approximately stable-to-mildly-increasing.

Here's a plot of known oil reserves since 1980: https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=oil&graph=reserve...

Does a similar plot exist for helium? My impression is that helium reserves are low because the world hasn't been trying very hard to increase the amount we capture as a proportion of the amount we could capture.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#185

Post by greenhatman »

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…

Floating bridges sound a lot easier and less dangerous.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#186

Post by colechristensen »

nradov wrote: post #175
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…

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.

Neon is distilled out of the atmosphere, and it is only about 3x as prevalent.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#187

Post by em-bee »

nashashmi wrote: post #180
em-bee wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

from their cruising altitude? more then 10000km up?

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#188

Post by yummypaint »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #90
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's the second most abundant element in the universe. Maybe we'll put in a tad more effort to explore it if Helium runs out.

Helium has way more important uses in cryogenic systems, neutron detectors, etc. It's non renewable, and alot of physicists are already concerned about increasing costs. This is especially true for helium 3, the cost of which continues to skyrocket (~$2k/atmosphere*liter) . Creating massive and unnecessary demand for helium when there are renewable alternatives available is a bad idea.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#189

Post by yummypaint »

zozbot234 wrote: post #122
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…

I think lower-purity Helium is not as scarce, and that's what you would use for party balloons, etc. No reason why it couldn't be used for Zeppelins too.

Purifying helium is relatively trivial. All helium comes from the same oil/gas wells, and is not renewable. Many sites that could capture helium choose not to because it wouldnt make them enough money, so it floats out of the atmosphere and is lost forever. It's used for party balloons because the market is too short sighted to price it at its true value because of what naively appears to be a surplus. In 100 years people will be WTFing at our senseless waste.

Re: Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for cargo

#190

Post by bshipp »

em-bee wrote: post #187
nashashmi wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

from their cruising altitude? more then 10000km up?

I assume you mean metres, not kilometres? There wouldn't appear to be much atmosphere to benefit a lighter than air ship at 10000 km.
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