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It’s not just an easy target to hit, it’s a symbolic target.
Airships were abandoned because very large objects falling out of the sky did not appeal to the public… and too many of them fell.
Extremely severe weather brings down relatively tough aircraft, but once on the ground or in hangars they are relatively safe. Airships are flying cheesepuffs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?) Not to detract from your overall point, but you do the same thing you do when burning fuel while cruising: Add ballast. Yes, but how do you add ballast to an airship while it is underway? Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did.
> Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did. Citation? Would not the condenser need to burn fuel, thus lightening the ship?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did. Citation? Would not the condenser need to burn fuel, thus lightening the ship?
You are carrying fuel and using oxygen from the atmosphere to combust it. When it's hot, it's a gas. By simply cooling it and recovering most of it, you are potentially left with more mass than you started off with... and Oxygen is relatively heavy.
One challenge I've heard of is: If you carry 100 tons of cargo from point A to point B in an airship, for the airship to return to point A, it needs to take on another 100 tons of new cargo (or ballast), or it needs to vent (or compress) lifting gas, in order to maintain the correct buoyancy. I wonder what the best approach is here, & how it affects the economics? Is water ballast safe & cheap enough, or is there a b…
Sounds perfect for a cargo situation. Add new cargo as old cargo is removed.
The article said nothing about weather hazards or the fact that it’s a big fat target for a war drone to bring down. It’s not just an easy target to hit, it’s a symbolic target. Airships were abandoned because very large objects falling out of the sky did not appeal to the public… and too many of them fell. Extremely severe weather brings down relatively tough aircraft, but once on the ground or in hangars they are r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are carrying fuel and using oxygen from the atmosphere to combust it. When it's hot, it's a gas. By simply cooling it and recovering most of it, you are potentially left with more mass than you started off with... and Oxygen is relatively heavy.
The article describes electric airships
The article said nothing about weather hazards or the fact that it’s a big fat target for a war drone to bring down. It’s not just an easy target to hit, it’s a symbolic target. Airships were abandoned because very large objects falling out of the sky did not appeal to the public… and too many of them fell. Extremely severe weather brings down relatively tough aircraft, but once on the ground or in hangars they are r…
Luckily, we have much better weather forecasting than we did last time we tried airships for realsies.
I think this has actually great potential for fruit transports. Many countries export and import fruits from neighboring countries, because goods like fruits need a riping process and time, and storage space locally is more expensive than transporting them via container ship. For example, almost the same fruits that are exported from Hawaii are simultaneously imported from Chile, and vice versa. Both nations grow tho…
Fruits picked ripe from the tree are significantly tastier and probably healthier.
The (biggest) problem that keeps airships from practical use is that they are huge sails. Big sails mean even small amounts of wind can be powerful forces acting on the airship. In the air a big push from the wind might be safely managed, but if you're near anything solid such as the ground, you can get smashed to bits. To safely operate a suitably efficient (large) airship, we'd need both huge specialized docks with…
Obviously that was simply a post thinking through everything hypothetically and I didn't read anything that seemed like they actually had the best solution, but at least they seem to be aware of the challenges to landing and off-loading cargo efficiently.