bc2209
Well-Known Member
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2013-01-22/a-giant-floating-airship-could-be-future-of-flight
Looks like something out of star trek
Looks like something out of star trek
Future Airships
- Thread starter bc2209
- Start date
Ayork62493
GBR
Gross
Apophis
Resident Iconoclast
Airships will never be the future of flight. There is a reason so few of them actually exist today. Expensive to operate, they use an extremely expensive and finite lifting gas, they require a crew to launch and recover, and their low speed/maneuverability limits their effectiveness to a few "niche" applications.
ILS37R
Well-Known Member
Indeed. Unless they plan on filling it with hydrogen or have a helium capture ace up their sleeve (which would be far more valuable than their airship plans...), there's an upper limit on what you can do with LTA even if the launch crew and speed and maneuverability limitations are addressed.
Autothrust Blue
“If you jump on my shift, that’s just rude, man.”
Wait, I think I saw this episode of Archer already.
(of course, the military will buy whatever LockMart builds anyway...)
(of course, the military will buy whatever LockMart builds anyway...)
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Well, Aeros has this grand plan of compressing helium to drop buoyancy and replace it with air to offload cargo. Then, they let the air out and release the helium to gain lift.
My opinion, is that airship investments are an even better way to lose money than airline investments.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
No. There isn't an airship flying today that has a lift capacity of more than about a ton.
Tommay85
Well-Known Member
Ah, must have been one of those incredibly unrealistic insights into the future of transportation shows on the Discovery channel that I saw that.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Ah, must have been one of those incredibly unrealistic insights into the future of transportation shows on the Discovery channel that I saw that.
Yeah. And even at a "ton" of capacity, it really is a waste. The manpower required is simply too high. You need roughly 18 people to operate that airship and a boatload of ground support equipment.
ppragman
No pasa nada.
I've always had this idea for moving oil field equipment on the cheap. There aren't a lot of airplanes other than the "big planes" that can carry things like 40' long drilling tools, or move whole rigs - I always thought the airship was well suited for that kind of work.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
If you've got billions to develop the airship first, then yes, it might work. The problem is, these companies are trying to develop huge advancements in technology, on a budget to design an LSA, when they need the budget Boeing spent on the 787.
You want something to move that big, get a Mi-26.
ppragman
No pasa nada.
I'd straight up go old-school - hydrogen as my lifting gas, etc. Much cheaper...
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Other than cost, hydrogen doesn't buy you much, other than a much higher chance of me not flying it. Personally, I don't think manned airships will ever use hydrogen. Unmanned, maybe.
Beep
Well-Known Member
oh the humanity!
PhilosopherPilot
Well-Known Member
You can't rule out cost, since Helium is so freaking expensive. Zee Germans flew around with Hydrogen for years. If proper safety precautions are taken, it can be made fairly safe. (Positive pressure areas, etc.)
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Quite frankly, the Germans got extremely lucky. My point was, that other than cost, hydrogen isn't that great. Sure, its cheap, but it's not like it gets you massive amounts of additional lift.
Apophis
Resident Iconoclast
Speed an maneuverability will always be an inherent limitation with airships. Their extremely large volume and surface area create an enormous amount of drag. Even if you were to develop a propulsion system capable of overcoming this large amount of drag, you still have several problems.
An airship simply cannot withstand the same turning forces and air-loads that an airplane (or other heavier-than-air aircraft) can. Also, airships are much more sensitive to weather and wind than their heavier-than-air counterparts. You can absolutely forget about flying an airship into any type of freezing precipitation or known-icing conditions (large surface area + freezing precipitation = a LOT of added weight).
Airships fulfill certain niche roles such as aerial advertising and aerial photography/television filming. I can't see them ever expanding much beyond these niche roles.
As far as helium capture, I'm not familiar with any sort of technology that would make this feasible on a large scale. The larger an airship's envelope becomes, the more helium it is going to lose to diffusion. There is no such thing as a perfectly gas-tight envelope material. The Helium atom is so small, that it will eventually "seep" through even the most gas-tight envelopes. The larger the envelope, the more pronounced this diffusion becomes, and the more Helium you will lose over time; Helium is not cheap, and it is not an infinitely available resource.
Take a look at a heavy lift airship project by Northrop Grumman called the "LEMV". The thing is an unmitigated disaster. Plagued by many problems, it's over-budget and it leaks Helium like a sieve.
