301–310 of 385 posts
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…
Here's the amazon one if anyone is interested:
https://www.amazon.com/Remote-Control-Swimming-Inflatable-Ba...
After 40 years I’ll believe it when I see it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1 ATM of air is the same amount of material as 33 feet of water which provides a great deal of protection from charged particles. I doubt enough charged particles can penetrate to the surface that it’s a meaningful issue. I’ve seen many books etc suggest the earths magnetic field is required, but I haven’t found direct evidence for it doing anything beyond protecting the ozone layer.
>1 ATM of air is the same amount of material as 33 feet of water which provides a great deal of protection "Amount of material" isn't what's relevant. It's closer to "number of atomic nuclei." A certain mass of air is less shielding then the same mass of water. By number density, air is mostly nitrogen atoms, whereas water is mostly hydrogen atoms. Overall this means that per kilogram, water contains 2.4x as many ato…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 don't see how the vacuum ever wins. 3 ways. - Vacuums aren't combustible. - Vacuums can be created without sourcing a gas. - Vacuums allow you adjust buoyancy without requiring you to carry extra gases. The major downside of a vacuum is finding something ridged enough, light enough, and cheap enough to maintain a vacuum.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But hey, on the up side, at least no one would have to worry about a blockade!
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.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel>
A fully-automated, cargo-only submerged floating tunnel might be an acceptable pilot / risk model.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32967216>
(From a previous airships discussion, as it happens.)
They spent a surprisingly little amount of time on this... you can probably offset your fuel by a substantial margin by considering how much solar energy you can generate with that much surface area on the airship.
A 400M x 50M airship could accommodate ~20,000 sqm of film solar panels on the top-most section. Something like Maxeon's Air panels are 6kg/sqm and at 20% efficiency, so with 7hrs of median peak sunlight per day, you could generate 28mWh per day with about 120,000KG of added solar panel weight.
That is sufficient to power the ship at cruise speed for 8 hours per day, reducing fuel requirements by 33%. Forgoing fuel altogether, if the ship only moved when it had power to do so, but at 90km/h, it could still cover the same distance as an ocean liner in a day while using no fuel.
Still a far reach from the tonnage of a standard cargo ship (by a factor of 200 or so, 800,000 tons vs 165,000,000 tons) but given the reduced running costs it could be a cheaper method of transportation than ocean liners. Plus picking up and delivering to somewhere other than a major ocean port has some substantial advantages for cost savings and dock-to-dock turnaround times.
I'd be a bit concerned about performance in bad weather - it's not uncommon to have a storm at sea with >90km/h winds, and you can't exactly run from that.