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Cargo Airships Are Happening

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Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#251

Post by graybeardhacker »

I feel there were very good reasons that airships were abandoned. I don't know what those reasons were, but unless they enumerate the reasons and explain why they have now solved them, I will assume they are also going to fail.

According to AI, there have been 5 historical attempts to make airships work before the modern resurgence:

The early experimental phase (1780s–1850s), The pioneering era (1850s–1900s), The golden age (1900s–1930s), A post-Hindenburg decline (1930s), Cold War military uses (1940s–1970s), and A modern resurgence (1990s–present).

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#252

Post by dylan604 »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #246
bee_rider wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar powered airships floating around the world, following the prevailing winds, accepting durable goods by… catapult or something, delivery by chucking it out the window over populated areas. Paint them some nice pastel colors and we’re in Solarpunk world.

how about people? why only freight? enter the Jump-o-cabin, press The Button, be catapulted into airship 3, fly to somewhere else, get parachuted down.. Bonus: the just-landed Jump-o-cabin can be used as free-standing toilet. uh, Was already used as...

I like the people delivery idea. Maybe wrap them in bubble wrap, and then drop them with a smallish parachute like NASA did with the Mars lander.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#253

Post by dylan604 »

numitus wrote: post #247
dylan604 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just cover the thing in solar, and run it on electric. Add a couple of wind turbines too. I mean, the whole concept is preposterous, so why not just lean into it?

I calculated, than the airship with 100tonns capacity, and wind speed 25m/s require 25tons trust to compensatecthenwind. It is Boeing jet engine, not Electric fan require.

I've seen some YouTube videos converting Boeing jet engines to electric, but you have to smash that like and ring that subscribe bell to be able to see the build

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#254

Post by selimthegrim »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #29
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…

I just want to say that fruits need a ripening time because they are picked too early to accommodate transportation. Fruits picked ripe from the tree are significantly tastier and probably healthier.

Meet ethylene.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#255

Post by Qwertious »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #249
Qwertious wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do people lionize trying ideas that are known to be dumb and/or impossible? Because airships are really cool.

Great, form an airship club. Stop throwing $100 million after $100 million of your investors' cash at your hobby.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever have money to invest in airships with.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#256

Post by imoverclocked »

dotancohen wrote: post #199
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article describes diesel electric airships.

The fine article shows them lowering a container from a crane. I'd love to see them connect the crane to an electric generator and actually regen the potential energy of the container into electricity.

Even more efficient might be raising another container at the same time in a (mostly) balanced manner. Then you don't have as much loss from conversion/storage.

Fun fact: many inclined elevators work this way :)

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#257

Post by Qwertious »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #160
Qwertious wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ballast is for cargo, which needs to be picked up and dropped off. Fuel is just a potential solution.

Why condense water from fuel or the air then when you can just connect to the local municipal water system? You're already at port!

Not necessarily - the great thing about airships is that they can go anywhere, and pick up cargo at places that aren't ports. You can go pick up logs from logging camps directly, for example.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#258

Post by numpad0 »

pnut wrote: post #239
scottLobster wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are still in the lab, Starship is an incremental improvement that was largely a matter of funding, LLMs are at best a threat to telemarketers and customer service reps, perhaps paralegals. I'm really sick of breathless, Disney-fied tomorrowland fantasies of what technology might theoretically be able to do, and pronouncements of "breakthroughs" that dissolve into nothing once any real-world application…

I don't know how old you are, but regardless, can you not see how technological change has occurred within your own single human lifespan? This wasn't true in a meaningful way to an individual's life trajectory until the last century or so. The changes are coming so continuously and with such significant future implications, it's impossible for me not to just stand in awe. Whether the specific proof of radical change…

Then iPhone 4 came out in 2010. Google SDC prototype drove for 140k miles by then. It's 2024, and iPhone 4 is still sort of usable. Might run 0.25B LLM? Waymo is serving just couple small areas in US. There's no categorical successor to phones. No one other than Waymo achieved SDC.

Oculus DK1 shipped in 2012. VR is still a niche anime/gamer/anime-gamer product. AI bubble is correcting fast. Boom Overture supersonic jetliner isn't flying. Starship just landed for the first time, and it did land but appeared to have gone full banana soon after. Insane but it's not going into service for a little while. Brain-computer interfaces... meh. They were always stuck at immune response problem and that's why no one is doing invasive BCI, not because it wasn't invented back in 80s or whenever it was.

GP's claim is that things are slowing down and none of inventions are life changing big. Things are definitely slowing down and none of recent inventions are intercontinental teleportation certified for commercial services big.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#259

Post by pclmulqdq »

Qwertious wrote: post #255
pclmulqdq wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, form an airship club. Stop throwing $100 million after $100 million of your investors' cash at your hobby.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever have money to invest in airships with.

(This was obviously not aimed at you, but at the VCs who have been trying this for the last 30 years)

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#260

Post by antifa »

pnut wrote: post #239
scottLobster wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are still in the lab, Starship is an incremental improvement that was largely a matter of funding, LLMs are at best a threat to telemarketers and customer service reps, perhaps paralegals. I'm really sick of breathless, Disney-fied tomorrowland fantasies of what technology might theoretically be able to do, and pronouncements of "breakthroughs" that dissolve into nothing once any real-world application…

I don't know how old you are, but regardless, can you not see how technological change has occurred within your own single human lifespan? This wasn't true in a meaningful way to an individual's life trajectory until the last century or so. The changes are coming so continuously and with such significant future implications, it's impossible for me not to just stand in awe. Whether the specific proof of radical change…

TBH the last 10 years of my life I've noticed technilogical stagnation, enshitification, marginal improvments. The 20 years before that was an amazing wild ride.
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