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Cargo airships could be big

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Re: Cargo airships could be big

#191

Post by LarryMullins »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #186
LarryMullins wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Followed by: "Macon and other airships received life jackets to avert a repetition of this tragedy. When Macon was damaged in a storm in 1935 and subsequently sank after landing in the sea, 70 of the 72 crew were saved." Yeah, but notably they hadn't solved the problem of wind tearing airships apart. In the case of Macon they landed gently and in warm water, and lifejackets certainly helped. But a soft landing is b…

I think his point is that most of these are measurable, concrete problems that can be solved or mitigated enough to be considered "safe," in the same way airplanes have all sorts of risks and issues we solved or mitigated to make them safer than the cars many use every day.

The way I see it, aircraft have become mechanically reliable and airships could become mechanically reliable too. But airships will always be structurally vulnerable relative to aircraft. They're inherently very light with very large surface areas and there's no way around this.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#192

Post by snovv_crash »

LarryMullins wrote: post #191
Forgeties79 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point is that most of these are measurable, concrete problems that can be solved or mitigated enough to be considered "safe," in the same way airplanes have all sorts of risks and issues we solved or mitigated to make them safer than the cars many use every day.

The way I see it, aircraft have become mechanically reliable and airships could become mechanically reliable too. But airships will always be structurally vulnerable relative to aircraft. They're inherently very light with very large surface areas and there's no way around this.

The strength to weight ratio of a carbon fibre scaffolding would be far superior to steel.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#193

Post by the_af »

bobthepanda wrote: post #112
danbolt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s Mighty Kaiju Deimos .

That is a name of a piece of media in the game. It's 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim. It is like 90% visual novel and 10% RTS.

> It is like 90% visual novel and 10% RTS

Ah! That's a pity. Visual novels infuriate me. But the idea was cool :)

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#194

Post by hackerlight »

jodrellblank wrote: post #66

I'd like to draw your attention to " killing 35 of the 97 people on board in the inferno. " The Hindenburg had 7 million cubic feet of Hydrogen gas. It was the biggest aircraft disaster of its time. It had such rudimentary technology that the cockpit looked more like a sailing ship than an aircraft[1]. Despite that, well over half the passengers jumped out the windows[2], ran away and survived with few or no injuries…

You have to multiply by the respective probabilities of both of these things happening to arrive at the expected number of deaths. 0.01*(35/97) would be significantly bigger than 0.000001*(97/97), as a hypothetical example.

That said, planes have had years of safety R&D which helps get that number down to 0.000001, and maybe the same could have been done with blimps if they were given the opportunity?

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#196

Post by carapace »

Someone wrote: post #82
carapace wrote: post #19

I've been slowly and sporadically working towards making large airships. Basically you make a large (like a square kilometer or more) rigid kite (see Alex G. Bell's cellular kites) and add enough drone guts to make it into a giant drone. Then you lodge an Airstream trailer or something in it. I'm not an engineer, but the small models I've built make me think that there's no effective upper limit on the size of these…

> Basically you make a large (like a square kilometer or more) rigid kite (see Alex G. Bell's cellular kites) Those were incredible ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alexander-graham-... ), but it would surprise me if you could scale them up to a kilometer in size. Also, from that article: “Aggregated rectangles increased kite weight faster than they expanded wing surface area. Tetrahedrons kept the ratio…

> but it would surprise me if you could scale them up to a kilometer in size.

It's like the intuitive argument that heavier objects fall at the same rate as lighter objects: throw two shoes off the roof, if you tie their shoelaces together will they fall faster? You start with N kites and connect them, each kite retains its airworthiness and connecting them doesn't change that.

> nearly [constant]

The ratio falls off much slower than lifts add as you get bigger.

> you wouldn’t need stronger beams for huge kites

I don't think so, because you're just connecting small kites together, but you need to be flexible, or maybe modulate the airfoils' area (maybe open/close like butterfly wings.)

> a huge number of kites connected to each other would provide less lifting weight than the sum of the lifting weights of the individual kites.

If you just make a ball or cube, sure, but that's optional, eh? Most of my designs come out looking like modified 3D Sierpiński gaskets.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#197

Post by bboygravity »

snovv_crash wrote: post #192
LarryMullins wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, aircraft have become mechanically reliable and airships could become mechanically reliable too. But airships will always be structurally vulnerable relative to aircraft. They're inherently very light with very large surface areas and there's no way around this.

The strength to weight ratio of a carbon fibre scaffolding would be far superior to steel.

Isn't the clothy stuff the problem though rather than the scaffolding?

Same on most sailboats: what makes them get into trouble is not the hull cracking but rather the sail tearing up in a storm or the mast snapping off and making them uncontrollable / sink.

(Im guessing out loud here, statements probably wrong)

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#198

Post by nradov »

TylerE wrote: post #74
rootusrootus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a large dichotomy between the value of goods sent by plane vs ship, almost certainly due to the trade-off on speed. The intent with the airship idea seems to be to make something roughly similar in price and speed to trucking on land, but over the ocean. There is arguably a big chunk of cargo that would like to be in that middle area.

Why airships, a known failed technology, rather, than, say, a large hydrofoil/catamaran, tech that has been proving quite successful on long distance ferries for decades. The Hindenberg-class Zeppelins had the theoretical lift capacity of approximately... 8 40ft containers.

Y Combinator portfolio company Boundary Layer Technologies tried to build a hydrofoil cargo ship to target the market niche that wants to go faster than a regular cargo ship but doesn't need aircraft speeds. The basic technology probably would have worked but I'm skeptical whether the market really exists.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/01/boundary-layer/

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#199

Post by aeyes »

guruz wrote: post #6

Germany's cargo airship project is now an indoor waterpark located in Brandenburg (close to Berlin) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort (With rising energy costs, hopefully it can stay like this for a while)

Their argument is that it is less polluting because people don't have to fly to have a tropical vacation. It seems to work, they are constantly expanding.

I went last December, the place was packed. Surprisingly I'd say about 40% of the guests were foreigners. It's nice but I don't know if I'd want to stay a whole week.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#200

Post by genderwhy »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #150
sitkack wrote: post #125

The article completely omits trains. That is glaring. I had this steampunk like plan when I was in college to have huge hydrogen cargo airships pulled by trains to haul large bulk items (fully assembled houses, building parts, large trees, fully assembled combines, etc). A literal skytrain. Some new lines would have to be created a way to handle going through tunnels etc. I think now I would have a drone be able to c…

Trains can’t cross oceans or cover long distances or dynamically change routes

Trains can't cover long distances? Surely that's a typo -- trains can cover incredible distances...

And they can change routes within their network. So yes, there's some cost to get train stations and tracks built, but afterwards they can visit anywhere within the network and carry a whole lot more than airships.

Fair point on the oceans thing though.

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