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Cargo Airships Are Happening

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Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#281

Post by yellowapple »

loeg wrote: post #177
mananaysiempre wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customs in software is already a bit of a thing, judging from what postal tracking reports on occasion. I guess that doesn’t obviate the need for physical inspections, but it should make them faster.

Sure, but why does that only benefit airships and not conventional airplanes?

Cargo planes require dedicated airports and runways and all that jazz, whereas the selling point of cargo airships seems to be to not need any of that; the article depicts one such airship handling a shipping container directly at a warehouse, for example. The need to go through some sort of customs process complicates things, but being able to put customs checkpoints further inland (closer to the end-destination) seems like it'd be appealing.

My concern is around the space an airship takes up; coordinating traffic for maximum throughput is going to be a nightmare.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#282

Post by yellowapple »

dash2 wrote: post #226
hazmazlaz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee that's not going to be a viable option. No nation, especially China or the USA, is going to allow an aircraft free access to land unknown cargo at a random warehouse without going through customs. It's going to have to land at some kind of airfield just like a cargo plane would.

I mean, the US just lets Chinese spy balloons wander aimlessly through its airspace :-P

Gotta give those F-22s target practice to keep their bloodlust sated. Otherwise they start snacking on commercial traffic and that can get real awkward real fast.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#283

Post by fulafel »

withinboredom wrote: post #166
dole wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hindenburg made 17 round trips across the Atlantic in 1936 — its first and only full year of service — with ten trips to the United States and seven to Brazil."

A modern ship can make the same number of trips and not be dependent on weather at all.

... with unsustainable CO2 emissions. We need to be ramping down fossils use rapidly.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#284

Post by brohee »

Wytwwww wrote: post #86
usrusr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some loads simply don't fit on trucks, or rather on the roads that the trucks have to use. Heavy lift airship would operate in a market segment that does not even exist without them.

> market segment So I'm just curious what is that segment and how large ($) can it be? What cargo exactly would it be transporting?

Big transformers are now limited to boat transportation, and it's a constraint on grid design. I assume this is also the case for other industries that become river bound but wouldn't necessarily be so if not for equipment transportation. So this could be a game changer (more so I think than this faster than boat slower than plane thing).

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#285

Post by incrudible »

withinboredom wrote: post #248
dr_dshiv wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please reveal the impossibility of the idea?

Sure. If you put it above ground, you are a few short bullets from killing everyone in the loop. Hitting a wall of air in a vacuum at hundreds of miles per hour is going to be like hitting a brick wall. Ask any reentering spacecraft. The same problem exists underground, the weakest points being the stations themselves which can be bombed. A failure in the system itself (even just a power outage or malfunctioning equi…

> The same problem exists underground, the weakest points being the stations themselves which can be bombed.

Few if any modes of transportation are safe when bombs come into play.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#286

Post by fulafel »

jandrese wrote: post #231
Ajedi32 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think "docks with extremely strong mooring structures" is a particularly difficult problem to solve? A giant metal hook anchored in concrete attached to the ship with some steel cables doesn't seem like it would be that difficult for a team of smart engineers with a multi-million dollar budget to figure out a good design for. Certainly not so difficult or expensive as to threaten to make the entire con…

Historically the difficulty isn't in building the mast, it is in preventing the airship from being smashed into the mast by the wind. Or in dramatic cases flipping end over end because it was only moored on one location.

Build two masts and anchor from bow and aft?

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#287

Post by acdha »

rtkwe wrote: post #270
acdha wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really so different from how customs officers go on board trains now?

There are a limited number of rail crossings they need to work with and it's conveniently on the ground. This company is pitching direct shipper to receiver deliveries via air so getting agents onto the ships is a lot harder and the company wants to drop off directly at customers all over the country meaning no proper port of entry. There are ways to do that but they're regulated as import/export businesses.

Rail lines go all over the country but they check when you cross even if that’s not your destination. I would expect the same to be true here: e.g. an airship leaving Mexico would go to, say, Riverside via a customs stop in San Diego or Calexico.

Re: Cargo Airships Are Happening

#290

Post by Log_out_ »

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…

Couldn't the sail factor be reduced by ionizing wind coming at the vehicle who then keeps away from the vehicle while going around it, depositing little energy?
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