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Cargo airships could be big

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Re: Cargo airships could be big

#241

Post by dathinab »

Starupable?

TL;DR: Technical viable but I think it doesn't bring enough benefits in enough situations to be a success in most areas of the world.

Yes, but uh risky.

Close to where I live are old end/post WW2 above ground large aircraft hangars you can buy/rent etc.

So there had been airship startups, multiple times.

I'm not sure if a single of them is still around.

The main problem isn't a stable hull, or non explosive gas anymore.

AFIK:

The main problem is that there are nearly always much much more convenient solutions.

Like they only make sense (due to economics,convenience) for transporting things which don't fit easily on the road, e.g. huge thing. Which also tend to be heavy so the airship need to be huge.

But airships are sensitive to wind and the bigger the more wind can get a grip on them.

And only being able to use them at top (wind) wetter conditions where plains, trains and cars can go even with pretty bad wetter is a major problem.

Another use-case could be areas where cars can't go, but airships can e.g. huge swamps, areas with a lot of folding, but likely not mountain sides where there is no street be you need to transport things, too. But how common is that and how many of that cases could also be fulfilled with other "special" but more convenient to use transports like larger drones.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#242

Post by WorldMaker »

dbrueck wrote: post #222

Probably a very stupid question, but can someone help me understand the following: once you have airships that have a rigid shell, why isn't using a vacuum better than a lifting gas? Isn't the buoyant force simply the result of displacing some volume of air with something less dense? (i.e. any excess lifting force comes from the fact that the mass of the hydrogen or whatever is less than the mass of the displaced air…

One interesting modern wrinkle versus hydrogen is the idea of using an H2 fuel cell for easy access to electricity (versus lift) without needing to carry another electricity source.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#243

Post by dathinab »

mastax wrote: post #104
hguant wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know some of the Canadian provincial governments were looking at using airships to provide a means of supplying some of the more remote northern towns - because of weather/terrain conditions, you can't build a rail head that far north, and the roads aren't reliable, so light cargo planes are the only reliable means of getting goods around. Airships, even of the good year variety, would be far cheaper for the weight…

How do airships fare in bad weather?

They are more wind sensitive then car, train, plain, etc.

AFIK in combination with modern drone tech they are less wind sensitive then in the past making them much more viable for many but not all areas.

They could be snow sensitive in the sense that a unlucky combination of wind/weather change and stronger snow could make snow stack on them somewhat, especially on larger ones. But we are speaking about blizzard like snowing here, so not really a problem.

It should be possible to make them operable even under very cold weather, but additional care must be taken to make sure the used materials do not get brittle due to the cold or electronics/mechanics stop working.

So technically it likely is reasonable viable for the Canada case.

The question is if it's good enough above other solutions and not to pricey to the right kind of airships, especially given that they are not mass produced.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#244

Post by jodrellblank »

hackerlight wrote: post #194
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?

The Graf Zeppelin, one of the Hindenburg's contemporaries, flew regularly accross the Atlantic, flew into the Arctic Circle and exchanged mail with a ship there, was the first vehicle to fly around the world and set a round the world speed record, was the first vehicle to cross a million miles flown, did 590 flights, carried 34,000 passengers, and did so with no harmful accidents and no fatalities, despite losing four engines on one flight and needing a forced landing.

Yes I imagine something similar could have been done in the last 70 years if they'd kept being built en-masse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin#/media/Fi...

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#245

Post by veb »

xg15 wrote: post #230
echelon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always felt people with these ideas are doing pie in the sky thinking and missing the other trends that would beat this concept out. Humans aren't suited for these environments. We evolved to fit this planet. These gasses, radiation levels, terrestrial foods, etc. The economics of going to Mars, Venus, etc. are iffy, and humans probably won't enjoy being there. It's McMurdo times about 1000. Getting back is hard…

Still having a soft spot for some cyber/biopunk future where we'll just eventually become the machines - or be able to bioengineer bodies which will be capable of overcoming those limitations :)

I have a cochlear implant so I'm already half cyborg!

Still - I am surprised people aren't building on top of CI research/engineering to do _more_. When my processor is upgraded and I get bluetooth which I'd be able to not have to use headphones anymore during calls and such - I kinda wanna make a "hack" as in have an app on my phone that does some beep beep beep kinda thing when I'm facing north, less beeps south etc and see if my brain starts to know north or south without any aid.

I think I read something similar of someone who made a vibrating belt on hackaday that did the direction thingie and apparently it did work.

Fun times!

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#246

Post by WorldMaker »

jliptzin wrote: post #63

Is there any discussion about personal airships? I wouldn’t mind the slow speed if it meant I could go to sleep in a quiet, bump free, spacious craft and wake up a couple hundreds miles away at my destination (weather permitting, of course).

This article glosses over it a bit, but yeah, almost everyone discounts passenger airships as a viable option, but as someone who enjoys a good cruise ship every so often, I could absolutely see a lovely market for airships in recreational passenger travel. Airships may never beat airplanes for speed/cost, but yeah, I think people greatly underestimate the demand for an air travel option where you could walk around, lounge, play board games, comfortably grab some sleep, maybe even shower if you had lift budget for enough water.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#247

Post by schiffern »

marcosdumay wrote: post #54
twawaaay wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venus has plenty of atmosphere above the surface, but not above the point where there is 1 ATM of pressure. In case of Earth most of protection comes from our magnetic field. The reason is that magnetic field sweeps ALL charged particles coming from the sun while atmosphere only stops some. When a particle drops into atmosphere it has a chance to collide with an air molecule, the deeper the higher the chance. But the…

It has about as much atmosphere above the point where the pressure is 1ATM as we have on Earth. And no, we don't know if Earth's magnetosphere ever filters most of the incoming radiation (we don't such good measurement of the incoming radiation), what we know is that at sea-level, our atmosphere alone is enough. AFAIK, every time we measure it better, the effectiveness of our magnetosphere decreases. But it can only…

>And no, we don't know if Earth's magnetosphere ever filters most of the incoming radiation (we don't [have] such good measurement of the incoming radiation)

Where did you hear that?

The space station (and presumably other satellites) is perfectly capable of measuring this.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia04258-comparison-of-marti...

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070018244/downloads/20...

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2016...

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#249

Post by Asooka »

lordnacho wrote: post #237
dbrueck wrote: post #222

Probably a very stupid question, but can someone help me understand the following: once you have airships that have a rigid shell, why isn't using a vacuum better than a lifting gas? Isn't the buoyant force simply the result of displacing some volume of air with something less dense? (i.e. any excess lifting force comes from the fact that the mass of the hydrogen or whatever is less than the mass of the displaced air…

I think the key is in the wikipedia article: You only gain 14% lift with a vacuum vs helium. The tradeoff is either: - Build a pressure vessel to withstand the differential to the atmosphere - Let the helium do the pushing from the inside but make the thing 14% bigger I don't see how the vacuum ever wins.

I wonder if there is a sweet spot between the two. Have a rigid structure with an internal pressure less than one, but more than zero atmospheres.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#250

Post by inamberclad »

Not sure how to use a neutrally buoyant fuel for a vehicle like this. at 1 kg/m^3, like air, your fuel is 10% of the volume of your vehicle, which displaces lifting gas and increases structure (which requires more lifting gas).
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