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Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

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Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#61

Post by Ekaros »

hfdskghkj wrote: post #58
bombcar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s lighter than air so the flames burn hot but the gas is going up too - and the ship is losing lift and going down at the same time. It’s a good combination if you have to be on fire. The main key would be a gasbag that’s not flammable.

>...the ship is losing lift and going down at the same time. It’s a good combination if you have to be on fire. Personally, I'd rather not be falling out of the sky while I'm on fire.

I would, depending on rate of descend... Falling out of sky faster and not being on fire might be worse.

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#62

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Is shooting back up into the air after dropping cargo a problem, or an opportunity?

If you need to pick up other cargo then some way to cleverly swap the weight from one to the other could be good, but if it's mostly outgoing weight then that doesn't seem to be an actual problem as long as all the connections let go at the same time.

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#63

Post by ZeroGravitas »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #12

This has been on here a few days ago. I didn't want to say anything, but have been thinking about the payload. I belive it's 675 lbs. That is not much. A truck can deliver thousands of pounds. (I have weight on my mind because I have to pick up a 800 lb mill, and bring it home in one piece.) It might make sense in Alaska delivering small amounts of material though, but not near power lines.

What did you mean about not near power lines? As in a safety thing, or that where there a powerline then theres some better option for transport? Like a cargo size hyperloop runing along the powerlines?

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#64

Post by ben_w »

bombcar wrote: post #49
jodrellblank wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Hydrogen can be made " Piggy-backing on your comment at a tangent - how did they make such large quantities of Hydrogen in the early 1900s (and store and transport it safely)? This[1] has some interesting reading on it; there were gas cylinders but no standardisation of valves, not good lubricants for compressors, a different set of pipes for airship filling and airship topping-up, some stations which could remov…

It’s interesting that the answer everyone gives is the least effective and efficient way - electrolysis. Sulfuric acid and iron into hydrogen is much simpler.

Efficient I can believe, but I’m curious why that’s simpler than electrolysis? I first played with electrolysis when I was nine.

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#65

Post by rini17 »

ben_w wrote: post #64
bombcar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting that the answer everyone gives is the least effective and efficient way - electrolysis. Sulfuric acid and iron into hydrogen is much simpler.

Efficient I can believe, but I’m curious why that’s simpler than electrolysis? I first played with electrolysis when I was nine.

It's simple but surprisingly fickle, even more if you want industrial amounts of hydrogen safely. This is an example of a home setup and nontrivial considerations that went into it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85OX6yEwE0

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#66

Post by simonebrunozzi »

chrisbrandow wrote: post #35

First question that comes to my mind is, “How much helium will this use if it scales”. Helium is still non-renewable, and it’s still pretty critical for MRIs among other critical analytical instruments. Probably insignificant. But it’s still the question I have.

I've heard that aerogel [0] is an alternative. Don't know enough details to elaborate. I guess it's way more expensive than helium, at least for now.

[0]: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/aerogels.htm...

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#67

Post by gpm »

midasuni wrote: post #59
sandworm101 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It had 232 tons of bouyancy. Most of that was taken up by its own mass. The amount it could lift , its payload, was a tiny fraction of that amount. Wikipedia says it could lift aprox 10,000kg. Roughly the 5% payload ratio of a typical space launch today.

A FH can put 63,000kg to low Earth orbit. A delta 4 heavy 28,000. Not sure where your 200,000kg “typical” comes from, even Saturn V, SLS and Starship aren’t 200t.

For those wondering:

Starship is "promissing" 100t [1] but targeting 150t reusable and 250t expendable [2], Saturn V was 140t [3], SLS 95 (block 1)/135 (block2) tons [4].

It's not clear we will ever see starship launch without an attempt to recover the booster stage, but at least in theory it's a 200t size vehicle.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1423677217133957127

[2] https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#68

Post by sandworm101 »

midasuni wrote: post #59
sandworm101 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It had 232 tons of bouyancy. Most of that was taken up by its own mass. The amount it could lift , its payload, was a tiny fraction of that amount. Wikipedia says it could lift aprox 10,000kg. Roughly the 5% payload ratio of a typical space launch today.

A FH can put 63,000kg to low Earth orbit. A delta 4 heavy 28,000. Not sure where your 200,000kg “typical” comes from, even Saturn V, SLS and Starship aren’t 200t.

Ratio. Payload to orbit is about 5% of launch mass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fraction

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#69

Post by clueless123 »

lachstar-x wrote: post #53
clueless123 wrote: post #52

How high can this ships go? How Fast? All along the Andes in south america there is a dire need to efficiently move products from high altitude to the coast (where major cities are) In Peru for example, there are hundreds of small farming towns sitting at 10'000+ feet of altitude but just 40 straight line miles from the ocean.. Today to get there, trucks have to use one of the few roads that ,zig-zag up to the high l…

One of the issues with getting that high is that the higher you go, the less buoyancy the airships have, and you'd need bigger ships with more gas to haul the same loads. But the sky is very big, so it might just be an economics of scale problem

In this case, ships will be heavily loaded on the way down (carrying heavy produce) and lightly loaded on the way up (carrying lighter products like medicine or high value manufactured goods)

Re: Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships

#70

Post by kragen »

ben_w wrote: post #64
bombcar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting that the answer everyone gives is the least effective and efficient way - electrolysis. Sulfuric acid and iron into hydrogen is much simpler.

Efficient I can believe, but I’m curious why that’s simpler than electrolysis? I first played with electrolysis when I was nine.

Depends on your metric. Sulfuric acid and iron is pretty simple if you don't count the blast furnace. Certainly a lot simpler than a gasoline generator. If you have grid power and a diode, electrolysis gets simpler --- though you probably want at least a transformer. Hydrolith is probably simpler and lighter than sulfuric acid and iron, though.
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