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Cargo Airships Are Happening

elidourado.com

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Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#51

Post by ben-schaaf »

0xCMP wrote: post #30
xnyan wrote: post #6

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…

I think they're aware of all these problems because they do mention almost everything you said in the linked post thinking through the idea: https://www.elidourado.com/p/cargo-airships 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-loadin…

Reading that article I see no proposed solutions to this sail problem. They mention wind as an issue for delivery times but not safety. There's also no acknowledgement that the "scaling law" that makes building huge airships lucrative also makes these problems worse.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#52

Post by ben-schaaf »

MitPitt wrote: post #39
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.

A partial list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents.

The list of Zepplins is also enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zeppelins

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#53

Post by usrusr »

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…

Uncompressed propane would have simply been called Propangas I think. That term had been established well enough in the second half of the century and while the Zeppelin-era was before that, I doubt that the term changed much.

But if you aim for a buoyancy-neutral fuel, you can just add hydrogen to the mix, as little or much as you need. That custom blend then would be precisely the thing you don't invent a creative name for but just use a color code ("the blue one").

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#54

Post by prmoustache »

mmooss wrote: post #45
nielsbot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah--I came here to highlight this too. I think all the legacy systems around international shipping won't permit direct to consumer pick up and delivery. Unless someone can show me an existing example?

Some international logistics businesses pickup from and ship directly to customers. They are well-practiced in avoiding customs delays and have extensive experience with non-traditional transport, such as semi-submursibles. Seriously, if a Toyota supplier in Japan delivers parts daily to a factory in Ohio, do they go through regular customs or is there some other arrangement? Can they fly directly to an airfield near…

The facts parts are sent and delivered daily doesn't mean they travel in 1 day.

Frequency != latency

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#55

Post by fulafel »

xnyan wrote: post #6

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…

I think if that was the biggest problem, they'd be used much more. There are a lot of places with light and regular winds, and we're also pretty good at predicting winds in the 1 day forward timescale. And of course there's the regular and predictable high winds that were traditionally used by sail ships.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#56

Post by hluska »

dudisubekti wrote: post #50
MitPitt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents This list is quite comprehensive I think

That’s a good article. I found this one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-8

The L-8/Ghost Blimp took off with a crew of two from San Francisco in 1942. They found an oil slick (which was the last time either crew member was known to be alive) and then drifted before it crash landed in front of a home in Daly City.

I had never heard of this event before now and it’s a heck of an interesting late night rabbit hole. Thanks for the link!

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#57

Post by cjbgkagh »

frickinLasers wrote: post #32
peterashford wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ch…

Apples and oranges. Of my many engineer friends none of them thought the hyper loop was viable, it’s an absurdly bad idea. Like installing compressed air jets in cars for faster acceleration. Another one of Elons missives.

Reusable rockets were more of an economic issue, is there enough demand for economic viability. That was always going to be the real magic. I think that is still an open question but it at least appears plausible.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#58

Post by danpalmer »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #33
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.

That’s cool, but also a quite different business and operating model where storage and delivery multiplexing are much more of a thing than with air freight.

The other problem is the drones. For this to work you’d be shipping either regular TEU containers or the air freight equivalent (not sure what they’re called but there’s a standard shape I believe), however no drone available today can move either of those. That means new drones, new shipping form factors, or both, and those are both hard problems that you probably don’t want to face when already trying to launch a new freight modality.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#59

Post by cjbgkagh »

cookiengineer wrote: post #31
jodrellblank wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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.

I don’t see how storage space in airships could come anywhere as cheap as storage space on land even taking land taxes into account. Airships are not cheap and would need regular maintenance. I guess the water analog of a warehouse would be a barge to get perhaps you’re thinking more of an airbarge concept. Even still, warehouses are cheap in a way that flying things are not.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#60

Post by eptcyka »

fulafel wrote: post #55
xnyan wrote: post #6

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…

I think if that was the biggest problem, they'd be used much more. There are a lot of places with light and regular winds, and we're also pretty good at predicting winds in the 1 day forward timescale. And of course there's the regular and predictable high winds that were traditionally used by sail ships.

The article is talking about atlantic freight trips - middle of the ocean is not one of those places with light winds.
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