I started skimming towards the end but does the author get into how the speeds are airspeeds, not ground speeds?
Cargo airships could be big
131–140 of 385 posts
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FAA approved modifications to piston engines to use unleaded avgas. Jet fuel doesn’t have lead. Also, this isn’t about the FAA just being slow for no reason. Switching from leaded to unleaded without the engine modifications was not safe for the piston aircraft that need it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas
It's not safe for us to be breathing. But that doesn't matter to cheapskate rich private plane owners or their regulatory-captured FAA.
The really rich private plane owners all have planes that burn jet fuel, which is always unleaded. The piston planes are generally owned by "doctor rich" upper-middle class people, who have political influence to be sure but they're hardly the billionaires that might be known by name to politicians.
I think it's more likely that the FAA protects general aviation because general aviation is part of the professional pilot training pipeline.
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#133This, my friends, is why we should colonize the upper atmosphere of Venus, where you could chill outside with only a respirator, rather than the inhospitable, irradiated, mangnetosphere free mars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Venus_Operationa... https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasa-study-proposes-airships-cloud...
I've always felt people with these ideas are doing pie in the sky thinking and missing the other trends that would beat this concept out. Humans aren't suited for these environments. We evolved to fit this planet. These gasses, radiation levels, terrestrial foods, etc. The economics of going to Mars, Venus, etc. are iffy, and humans probably won't enjoy being there. It's McMurdo times about 1000. Getting back is hard…
>Basically, space will be inherited by our successors. Artificial intelligences.
Ha ha, I love this. The sentiment has been there for a while now in the zeitgeist but had been overshadowed and outperformed by the lesser idea of 'Robots, and then AI, are coming and they are going to get us!' Finally, I don't know what section of human psychology is permitting it now, we are slowly and slowly coming to the understanding that AI will be humanity's child and will inherit the stars.
I wonder if we'll, as in individual us humans, come along for the ride or if we'll be laid to rest. Peter F. Hamilton and his contemporaries like Neal Asher sure have interesting thoughts on it.
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are only 'very slow' when compared to aircraft, which are kind of poor vehicles for transporting cargo in the first place. A dirigible flying with the jetstream is almost twice as fast as a cargo ship doing the same. I think they're impractical for lots and lots of other reasons, and your "delay-prone" critique is probably salient, but "slow" needs to be contextualized somewhat.
Twice as fast as a cargo ship is still only 50kph right? And the Jet stream only goes one way and only West to East (in the northern hemisphere) and only at certain latitudes right? So if you're only competing against cargo ships. And you happen to want to head East (only, no returns). And you need to go faster than a ship, but not over 100kph. And you are already at the right latitude and so it your destination. And…
You're exactly right, but perhaps missed that the trade route you're describing is China to Los Angeles, which alone accounts for $132 billion in trade every year, and perhaps that cargo vessels allegedly account for 20-25% of anthropomorphic carbon emissions.
Also probably worth pointing out that airships going against the jetstream are still faster than cargo ships which are also going against sea currents.
I'll repeat my disclaimer again here, that "I think they're impractical for lots and lots of other reasons" but there is a definite benefit to cutting the carbon emissions of the world's most popular trade route by 90% and halving the time spent in transit even if you assume that there are no other applications, which is probably not correct.
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#135Finally people are waking up to the airship meta.
I want blimpworld so bad.
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#136The 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.
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#137I'd like to draw your attention to " killing 35 of the 97 people on board in the inferno. " The Hindenburg had 7 million cubic feet of Hydrogen gas. It was the biggest aircraft disaster of its time. It had such rudimentary technology that the cockpit looked more like a sailing ship than an aircraft[1]. Despite that, well over half the passengers jumped out the windows[2], ran away and survived with few or no injuries…
There's actually no need for hydrogen. Helium would do just fine. From the blog post, filling the hypothetical airship with helium would cost $8 MM, while filling it with hydrogen would cost only $100k. Sounds like a no brainer. But, the overall cost of the airship would be at $100 MM. Hydrogen would result in a less than 10% cost reduction. Now, the FAA approved unleaded jet fuel in 2022. Yes, that's how conservativ…
Author mentioned a market for 25K of these airships, which is like half the helium on earth the first time you fill them up. $8M will go up once you start building
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some of the Canadian provincial governments were looking at using airships to provide a means of supplying some of the more remote northern towns - because of weather/terrain conditions, you can't build a rail head that far north, and the roads aren't reliable, so light cargo planes are the only reliable means of getting goods around. Airships, even of the good year variety, would be far cheaper for the weight…
How do airships fare in bad weather?
Not very well. [0]
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's actually no need for hydrogen. Helium would do just fine. From the blog post, filling the hypothetical airship with helium would cost $8 MM, while filling it with hydrogen would cost only $100k. Sounds like a no brainer. But, the overall cost of the airship would be at $100 MM. Hydrogen would result in a less than 10% cost reduction. Now, the FAA approved unleaded jet fuel in 2022. Yes, that's how conservativ…
So, if filling your gas tank cost 8% of the price of your car... you'ld think nothing of it? Lift gas leaks (esp He) and gets vented. So this seems odd to me. It's kinda like buying your car again every few months to a year or paying $250/gal to fill up. Now 80x lower at 0.1% of the car price you're in the regime where it's negligible like an EV.
> Lift gas leaks (esp He)
Hydrogen more than helium, I believe.
Re: Cargo airships could be big
#140I'd like to draw your attention to " killing 35 of the 97 people on board in the inferno. " The Hindenburg had 7 million cubic feet of Hydrogen gas. It was the biggest aircraft disaster of its time. It had such rudimentary technology that the cockpit looked more like a sailing ship than an aircraft[1]. Despite that, well over half the passengers jumped out the windows[2], ran away and survived with few or no injuries…
Aircraft today are so safe because we had decades of improvements in both engineering and safety regulations. I am adamant that we could improve reliability and reduce potential damage in accidents so as long as we apply the same principles to airships.
Aircraft survive because they're mechanically reliable, and airships could also be made mechanically reliable. But aircraft also survive because they're reasonably robust in adverse environmental conditions. Airships aren't and never will be, because they have to be built very large and very light or they don't work at all. Furthermore airships are slower and harder to hanger, which makes it even harder for airships to avoid bad weather. Better weather forecasting could help some, but keeping airships out of storms really is of the utmost importance.