Cargo Airships Are Happening • Hacker News Board

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#121

Post by Qwertious » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #119

Animats wrote: post #62

The article on the site is vague, but if you go to the company's site, and examine the images, you can get a close look at the airship design. The image on the web site [1] is higher resolution than the web site needs, and you can zoom in if you open the image directly. The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU. This is comparable to a B-747 freighter. Current new price o…

At some point in the future the real cost of operating with fossil fuels will catch up.

Battery cargo ships make a lot of sense, since you can slow-steam far slower without losing efficiency, with an electric motor.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#122

Post by staticvoidstar » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #92

> Over the summer, Jim incorporated Airship Industries. He hired a team of cracked ex-SpaceX engineers. And he raised a large pre-seed round... This typo is perfect.

[dead]

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#123

Post by Qwertious » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #90

frickinLasers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do people lionize trying ideas that are known to be dumb and/or impossible? Is it because we just no longer believe that things truly are impossible (or dumb)? The ideas that all turn out to be "impossible" successes are ones where the math or physics bears out the idea but the engineering is "impossible." Hyperloop (and vacuum train systems for the ~100 years they were called that before the Musk rebrand) had ph…

>Why do people lionize trying ideas that are known to be dumb and/or impossible?

Because airships are really cool.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#124

Post by echelon » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #106

ralfd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am blind. What typo?

"Crack engineer" means an engineer who is smart and capable. "Cracked engineer" means an engineer who is insane.

> (slang) Extremely good at something (usually a video game).

>> 20 kills? Dude, you're cracked.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cracked

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#125

Post by pbmonster » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #62

The article on the site is vague, but if you go to the company's site, and examine the images, you can get a close look at the airship design. The image on the web site [1] is higher resolution than the web site needs, and you can zoom in if you open the image directly. The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU. This is comparable to a B-747 freighter. Current new price o…

> The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU.

Either that's a smaller airship than his articles describe, or it's just artist's discretion. They always talk about 500 ton cargo ships - as in "delivering 500 tons of cargo", not "500 ton total mass". And 500 tons of cargo are at minimum 25 TEU.

If they are competing with 747 freighters, those containers will almost always be "cubed out" (the container volume is full long before reaching its maximum legal weight), meaning the airship would load several times as many containers.

This is another advantage they have against air freight. Those 747s are frequently cubed out themselves, flying lighter than they would like. And you can't easily build much more volume into jet aircraft (well, you can, that's what the Airbus Beluga XL is, and apparently several air freight companies are pestering Airbus to re-open a production line for those). Airships, on the other hand, will be practicably impossible to cube out.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#126

Post by danielovichdk » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

This reads as a technologist that has absolutely no clue about anything regarding the shipping or the logistics industry. I hope someone told these guys what the spent is on new (water) ships globally, because it points only in one direction.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#127

Post by conductr » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:19 PM UTC

pistoleer wrote: post #103

bilbo0s wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite how it works. (At least, not in the US). Firstly, not just any FBO is a point of entry. Which brings us to the second point, the entire reason for designated points of entry is so that the customs officials can be on site already. As in, assigned to that FBO. Now at times specialists have to be sent out. (Think exotic or rare animals or biological/agricultural products.) But if that happens, your freight, a…

FBO = fixed base operator = private jet terminal or service provider at airports that caters to general aviation (non-commercial) flights. FBOs provide services like fueling, hangar space, and sometimes even customs clearance for international flights.

So they build operate their own airship FBOs? Honestly seems like the smaller hurdle to jump if all the engineering problems are solved, they will find a way to navigate this too. It’s a bit naive to assume they will comply with existing constraints versus defining what the airship industry would need. They won’t roll this out globally on day one, the largest and most obviously profitable areas will be source/destinations are probably easy to guess. They could even do their proof of concept it less regulated markets before coming to the US later. Plenty of room to solve these problems later.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#128

Post by user_of_the_wek » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:20 PM UTC

fl0id wrote: post #64

thecrumb wrote: post #3

I see this brought up every few years but nothing ever seems to happen. I used to live not far from the Weeksville station in NC and would occasionally see flights from there. Would love to see these all over. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weeksville-dirigible-han...

This. Anybody remember cargolifter?

For anyone not familiar with Cargolifter, this might be a useful start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter

I remember when i had a students job, some older colleague told me he sunk a nice sum into this. Foolishly, maybe!

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#129

Post by QuadmasterXLII » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

sethherr wrote: post #24

imoverclocked wrote: post #23

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 describes diesel electric airships.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#130

Post by dralley » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

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

Hyperloop succeeded at exactly what it was meant to succeed at, which was planting just enough FOMO to get a handful of rail projects in California delayed and ultimately canceled.