Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cargo Airships Are Happening

elidourado.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 308 posts

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#31

Post by cookiengineer »

jodrellblank wrote: post #18
cookiengineer wrote: post #9

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…

> " if they could invent a storage space .. offshore above the water " like, a boat?

On water: More like atlantis, with a harbor and a loading dock.

Above water: maybe rope-anchored airships.

What I wanted to point out is that taxes are ground based, meaning the volume that's available above the ground usually is not used because of physical limitations of buildings and construction.

You could increase that efficiency of recurring costs for land vs storage space with airships.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#32

Post by frickinLasers »

peterashford wrote: post #15
frickinLasers wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet a bunch of former SpaceX engineers will figure out a solution.

Yeah, dude was head of Hyperloop. Nailed that one

I take your point in that there are a lot of naysayers here, as there were with Hyperloop. There were also hundreds of volunteers working on the project, who clearly thought it had a chance of working--and many more saying rockets would never be made reusable, it had been tried before, too many problems that can never be solved...

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#33

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

00N8 wrote: post #5

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…

Rather than taking a huge shipment, delivering it, and having to deal with an empty airship, maybe it's better to think of it as a slowly drifting warehouse. Drones can handle delivery and restock across short distances, and the airship doesn't land at all. This would let you maintain a more or less consistent mass.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#34

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jordanb wrote: post #11
00N8 wrote: post #5

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…

Yeah although typically they used water ballast, which is cheap and easy to find. One thing worth considering is going back to hydrogen as a lifting gas. Not only is it a better lifting gas than helium and much cheaper, it could be used as fuel. An airship that burned its own lifting gas would have the curious property of getting heavier the further it traveled. This could be countered by dual-fueling it and also hav…

To move in the opposite direction you could use photovoltaics to electrolyze lifting/fuel hydrogen from water. Up there above the clouds you'd have pretty good conditions for solar if you could make the panels light enough.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#35

Post by knowaveragejoe »

imoverclocked wrote: post #25
00N8 wrote: post #5

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…

> it needs to take on another 100 tons of new cargo (or ballast) ... in order to maintain the correct buoyancy. Sounds perfect for a cargo situation. Add new cargo as old cargo is removed.

As I understand it, it's common for a cargo ship to unload full containers and take on empties for the return voyage. Are cargo vessels holds always partially full vs. empty containers, bouncing between ports?

Would this issue even be a problem for fixed routes? If you're always taking full containers between two points, that is.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#36

Post by knowaveragejoe »

jordanb wrote: post #20
jodrellblank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Graf Zeppelin burnt Blaugas[1] because it's about the same density as air, so as the fuel tanks emptied the buoyancy didn't change. See [2] for other things the Zeppelins did, which says " The LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin had bi-fuel engines, and could use gasoline and Blau gas as a propellant. Twelve of the vessel's gas cells were filled with a propellant gas instead of lifting gas with a total volume of 30,000 cubic me…

My understanding was blau-gass was unpressurized propane, which is a little more dense than air. But I guess according to that article it's slightly less. I'd expect that, like a lot of problems zeppelins had in the 1920s, burning hydrogen would be more feasible with modern technology. I'd also point out that the thing that made hydrogen dangerous in those airships was that the skin was two layers. The inner skin was…

The way the cutaway images on their site look, the bouyant members would be nestled in the actual structure in large tanks.

https://www.shipbyairship.com/

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#37

Post by fernly »

Maybe a smaller issue than wind, but something is wrong with this claim:

"If you can pick up goods directly from a customer on one side and deliver them directly to a customer on the other..."

How do you handle customs inspections and duties on imports? As TFA states, in current air freight, "there is a trucking company, a warehouse, a customs broker..." Freight has to go through the warehouse on arrival in-country so the customs inspectors can look at it and assess duties. The article seems to envision the airship dropping down directly at the destination address, which would be that nation's customs agency's worst nightmare.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#38

Post by maw »

If you can pick up goods directly from a customer on one side and deliver them directly to a customer on the other, you can actually beat today’s air freight service on delivery time.

I didn't understand this part, specifically how you could beat today's air freight. Why wouldn't airships be subject to the same (ahem) overhead at either end?

Competitive enough on speed while being less expensive makes sense, though.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#39

Post by MitPitt »

satisfice wrote: post #21

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…

> too many of them fell

How many of them fell? Tried searching this up and barely any fell. Very few deaths too.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#40

Post by bzmrgonz »

They are missing out on a golden opportunity, North Carolina disaster could be where they shine and show the world what they can do!!! Someone needs to advise these folks, they are desperate for non-road transportation up there... (western NC AND Eastern TN).
Post reply on HN