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Cargo airships could be big

elidourado.com

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Re: Cargo airships could be big

#291

Post by bee_rider »

innagadadavida wrote: post #70
jp57 wrote: post #55

The airship renaissance is the fusion of transportation world. It's always ten years away. Seriously, I've been hearing about the great promise of modern airships for twenty years. Where are they? Are there any airships operating commercially now outside of niche applications?

If US, China and Taiwan situation escalates and US imposes a naval blockade, this can be used to effectively circumvent it. Perhaps China should invest in this.

Imposing a blockade is an act of war, in the unlikely (and horrifying!) event that it came to that, they’d probably be better served with overland shipping. Also airships would seem to be a pretty bad pick against America, we’re primarily an air superpower.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#292

Post by smegger001 »

einpoklum wrote: post #229
elihu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourism, mining high value minerals for Earth, mining low value minerals for construction on Mars, manufacturing rocket fuel so that Mars can be the gas station for ships headed for the asteroid belt (enabling more high value mineral mining), low-gravity retirement communities for people with mobility issues who would be wheelchair-bound on Earth, real estate speculation, movies, sports, manufacturing space infrastru…

If I were living on Mars, I would absolutely not be willing to let the rare minerals get sent up into space then down to Earth. Learn to recycle, damn lazy Earthers.

If we can get enough minerals from space then we can stop mining on earth which is a horrible process that has horrible effects on the environment. make earth a park nature/nature reserve and move all the industrial base to space where toxins wont poison the rivers, and industrial waste wont kill the animals

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#293

Post by throwaway2037 »

hguant wrote: post #97
jp57 wrote: post #55

The airship renaissance is the fusion of transportation world. It's always ten years away. Seriously, I've been hearing about the great promise of modern airships for twenty years. Where are they? Are there any airships operating commercially now outside of niche applications?

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…

You wrote:

    you can't build a rail head that far north
The Trans-Siberian Rail can do it... but Canada cannot?

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#294

Post by smegger001 »

veb wrote: post #245
xg15 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 et…

I often wonder what will happen when artificial since organs are better that natural if we will see people getting replacement. I would love to have Bluetooth enabled hearing, or camera base eye prosthetics that see into other spectrum or have zoom function, or a overlay a heads up display.

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#295

Post by throwaway2037 »

hef19898 wrote: post #136
jp57 wrote: post #55

The airship renaissance is the fusion of transportation world. It's always ten years away. Seriously, I've been hearing about the great promise of modern airships for twenty years. Where are they? Are there any airships operating commercially now outside of niche applications?

No, the airship renaissance was over a decade ago. Cargolifter tried, and failed. From what I heard so, the water and holiday park they built in the ex Cargolifter hangars has to be quite good so.

Are you talking about Tropical Islands Resort outside Berlin, Germany?

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Islands_Resort

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#296

Post by richiebful1 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #293
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…

You wrote: you can't build a rail head that far north The Trans-Siberian Rail can do it... but Canada cannot?

It's not really under consideration to build a railway to Attawapiskat or other remote areas. It's a question of cost mostly.

Railways (I imagine especially in permafrost) require a lot more maintenance than a basic airstrip

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#298

Post by sitkack »

hutzlibu wrote: post #273
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…

This is a neat idea, but I think the main problem is, that those trains would have to go slower than an ordinary train (and much slower, than an high speed train), thus blocking the rails for normal trains. But it might make sense for some routes.

I wonder if you could make the tug small enough that it could get off the track, Like a really big big-dog (also with train wheels) or you might have to insert small sections where a train could bypass the tug.

Or! The airship unhooks from the tug, the tug proceeds on with the train and train drops a tug off the end and the airship reconnects.

Freight trains only travel 40-50 Mph (lightly or unloaded) the average speed is just under 30 Mph [1].

I think most of the problems are solvable with some wit once you have the right pieces in place. Going slow will be key, you will have to, the thing will be massive.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/547745/average-train-spe...

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#299

Post by dredmorbius »

impossiblefork wrote: post #226
criddell wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> high octane fuel Doesn’t jet fuel have a relatively low octane rating compared to most liquid fuels?

Yes, but this octane-fire mixing is a bunch of confusion to begin with. Gasoline is less ready to ignite than diesel~=jet fuel, but has fumes. Diesel~=jet fuel has little fumes, but is easier to ignite by heat, i.e. in an engine, but it will almost never be ignited outside of an engine. Meanwhile, gasoline is hard to ignite with heat and pressure in an engine, but easier to ignite in air than diesel. Octane also has…

The situation's more complicated than that.

Gasoline is easier to ignite than diesel fuel.

Both fuels burn as vapours rather than as liquids. The vapour pressure of gasoline at any given temperature is higher than diesel, that is, gasoline evaporates far more readily, making liquid gasoline far more hazardous to store, as the vapours can ignite and explode.

Diesel fuel resists autoignition under compression to a greater degree than gasoline, and so can be used in high-compression engines without spark ignition.

The flash point is the temperature at which vapours of a fuel can ignite given a spark. These are given for various fuels here: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/flash-point-fuels-d_937.h...>

For gasoline: -42.5 C / -45 F

Diesel: 37.8 -- 54.4 C / 100 -- 130 F (depending on grade)

Kerosene / Jet Fuel: 37.8 -- 72.2 C / 100 - 162 F

Yes, the autoignition temperature of diesel is modestly lower than that of gasoline, but in practice the principle concern is vapours igniting from a spark rather than net ambient temperature reaching the autoignition point.

(I'd expected gasoline to have a lower autoignition temperature than diesel, this was a surprise for me, though multiple sources seem to indicate a lower ignition temperature for diesel. I learned something researching your comment.)

The autoignition point of various fuels is given here: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fuels-ignition-temperatur...>

For gasoline: 246 - 280C / 475 - 536F

Diesel: or Jet A: 210 / 410

Kerosene: 210C / 410F

Re: Cargo airships could be big

#300

Post by bagels »

lucideer wrote: post #223
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…

Wild wild speculation: I'd imagine "rigidity" is a trade-off between weight and ability to withstand the given pressure differential for any two gases (outside & inside). A vacuum would undoubtedly give extra buoyancy but the additional weight required to achieve rigidity might not make the trade off worthwhile.

It's an understatement. It would not be buoyant, and would not fly.
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