Airships

>>991680

They also use them to film golf events, lol.

I think a solar powered airship might be cool when fuel prices get too high

I don't know why they aren't used more to capture overhead footage of sporting events, like F1, instead of using helecopters to be desu.

>>991680
Well, right away they take up a metric fuckton of space for a tiny cargo load. The Hindenburg carried about 100 passengers and crew at max, while a 737 a tenth of its size can carry the same amount. They're also very slow, and helium is expensive as hell.

>>992100
Yeah, but they look pretty neat floating up there and whatnot

>>992142
Until they violently explode, anyways. Then they look spectacular.

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I think it would be cool if airships were used as giant flying cruise ships, in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. I would never take a cruise on a regular cruise ship but I would on an airship

>>992147
Looks like a duck coming in for a landing.

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>>991680
>limited supply of helium
>slow as balls
>"Will there ever be a revival?"

>>991680
As a niche role-player? Sure.

As the be-all end-all of air transportation the way people thought of them back in ye olden days? Fuck no

>>991680
Maybe.

I could see them being viable one day as low-capacity cruise liners, for an experience more laid back and comfortable than an airliner. They could even be viable in the form of being a point to point heavy cargo hauler (though as larger electric VTOLs become possible this use will fade).

>>991782
Because when the event is over the helicopter gan go do some other meaningful job like recording footage for the news, transport VIPs, transport organs... and do it qucikly.

Fuck the Caribbean and Mediterranean, imagine taking a week-long cruise over the amazon or central china

If you need to get something somewhere and there isn't rail or an airport. An airship can get small amounts of cargo to anywhere on the planet. Just so long as you are not in a hurry and it isn't terribly windy when you attempt loading operations.

were literally losing all our helium

unlike water and other resources like 30% of helium that escapes just shoots through the atmosphere and leaves earth's orbit.

we can't fuck around with helium i'm sorry

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>>992147
I'm so turned on right now

>>995212
There's always hydrogen.

and before you say 'Hindenburg', look up the actual details of the accident.

>>995212
we can always make more. The cost will just go up because we have to make it from fusing hydrogen.

though in the future, helium will be insanely cheap. As it will be a waste product of fusion power plants.

They are looking at using airships for heavy lifting of mining equipment, for places with no roads. For stuff too large / heavy for even the larger helicopters

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-37111527

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THICC
BRITISH
AIRSHIPS

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>>995614
But seriously, the Airlander 10 looks pretty neat.

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>a fucking butt

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>>995627
Reminded me of this

>>995614
>>995616
>>995627
This looks like something that would fit in a baymax sex fanfic

>>995486
Dude, if there is a place to be mined, there will be a road because mined materials have to be transported for processing 24/7, usually by semis.

>>995903
>heavy lifting of mining equipment
Equipment, not minerals. Though if an airship that leaves every 12 hours can carry more minerals than 12 hours worth of constant semi delivery, it could be used for that.
It doesn't even have to carry more, as long as it's cheaper.

>>995903

http://www.mining.com/breakthrough-aircraft-to-transform-mining-economics/

The LMH-1 can carry 21 metric tonnes of useful load. They plan to scale it up to 90 tonnes. It is more fuel efficient than a helicopter.

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>>996328

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPbi53HDUAg

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>>996329
That's just a small prototype of the LMH1 mate
I don't think LM is going to build it

>>996329
Wtf nigga get that tripletit 4th gear luffy bullshit out my face dawg or imma blapblap you with my 9 aigh?

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Check out Zeppelin Europe Tours.
They are designing a semi-rigid Zeppelin based on the NT that can carry 40 passengers with a length of 125 m. They want 10 airships with 40 seats each, located in 10 European cities. The airships will change their destination every two days leading to a circular route in 20 days. The resulting possibilities are enormous. A 20-day European round trip, city to city routes including sightseeing tours on ground as well as one hour round trips over cities, everything is possible. Travelling in a new dimension would become reality.

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>>997692

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>>997693

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>>997692

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>>995614
>>995616
fug

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-37174417

>>997713
Hybrid Airships are a failed concept.

>>997713
BLUNDER OF THE CENTURY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Slv6E5ntQ

>>997738
Someone needs to set that to dramatic-movie-aircrash-music.

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>>997713
This happened because it's not Lighter Than Air.
It's a hybrid airship, aka gravity will pull it down if the engines aren't strong enough to overcome both that and down currents.

The design of the Airlander is horrendous ! Very bad aerodynamics. The placement and size of the rudders sucks resulting in this kind of shit, it can't steer properly either and go down or up, it relies on the little rudders on the back of the two engines. Absolutely shit! Airships need gigantic rudders otherwise this shit happens.

if Ferdinand von Zeppelin saw this atrocity he would've mocked them. There's simply no way an object this big, this light, and this unaerodynamic, can handle the winds. Regular airships that have the best teardrop shape already have a tough time handling rough weather, I can't imagine what will happen to this pancake!

>>997692
THIS is a much better design!!!

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>>997743

>>997713
>>997738
OH THE HUMANITY

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I like how the British are sucking their own dicks over this thing when Lockheed flew one 10 years ago.

>>997823
Both suck and while being larger they carry less payload than contemporary Zeppelins which were half the size 100 years ago (true, look it up.)

>>992145
"For the last time, the Excelsior is filled with non-flammable helium!"

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>>997713
>>997738
No.

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>>997827
>they carry less payload than contemporary Zeppelins which were half the size 100 years ago (true, look it up.)

LZ-1 length 420 ft
Airlander 10 length 301ft
It's like you're a complete faggot.

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>>992100
With modern engineering, automation (thus no 30+ crew) lightweight materials an airship the size of the Hindenburg could carry about 150 passengers.

The USS Akron (helium!) one time went up with more then 200 passengers.

The reason a 747 can carry so much more passengers is because everyone is cramped into a tiny space while on an Airship everyone had their own bed, and a room they shared with 1, 2 or 3 other persons depending on their class, a bar, a lounge, a smoking room (believe it or not), a kitchen, and a dining area. if you would cramp everybody on an airship the same as on a 737 you could carry about the same amount of people, but it'd be horrendous because it's so slow.

While it's true that airships are much larger they don't actually use much more materials, Empty weight is very similar if not less then a 737

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>>998145
>>998145

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>>998145
This is what the keels looked like, all of this would pretty much be redundant on a modern airship, allowing more weight and size for the passenger area.

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Hindenburg was originally designed for helium, heavier than hydrogen but nonflammable. Most of the world's supply of helium comes from natural gas fields in the United States, which had banned its export under the Helium Control Act (1927). Eckener expected this ban to be lifted, but to save helium the design was modified to have double gas cells (an inner hydrogen cell protected by an outer helium cell).[1] The ban remained however, so the engineers used only hydrogen despite its extreme flammability.[2] It held 200,000 cubic metres (7,062,000 cu ft) of gas in 16 bags or cells with a useful lift of approximately 232 t (511,000 lb). This provided a margin above the 215 t (474,000 lb) average gross weight of the ship with fuel, equipment, 10,000 kg (22,000 lb) of mail and cargo, about 90 passengers and crew and their luggage.

The Germans had extensive experience with hydrogen as a lifting gas. Accidental hydrogen fires had never occurred on civilian Zeppelins, so the switch from helium to hydrogen did not cause much concern. Hydrogen also increased lift by about 8%. After the Hindenburg disaster Eckener vowed never to use hydrogen again in a passenger airship. He planned to use helium for the second ship and went to Washington, D.C. to personally lobby President Roosevelt, who promised to supply the helium only for peaceful purposes. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes refused to supply the gas, and the Graf Zeppelin was also filled with hydrogen.

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>>998432
So it's basically WW2 that was the deathblow of the Airship. Combined with the fact that WW2 lead to the construction of thousands of airfields all around the world.

If ww2 had not happened the Graf Zeppelin II would've been filled with Helium. Zeppelin engineering would've continued well into this day. In fact, I think Zeppelins would've been the primary mode of air passenger transport up to the 1960's / 1970s if ww2 had not happened, because around that time the amount of airports and airplanes would've increased to a degree that gigantic Zeppelins became redundant for efficient travel. Still, they would not have dissapeared like today. In fact, there would've probably been a few Zeppelin liners still in existence as the size of the Graf II providing world wide air cruises for a niche market. Sadly, HITLER fucked up everything, including the white race

>>998432
>but to save helium the design was modified to have double gas cells (an inner hydrogen cell protected by an outer helium cell).

That sounds fan-fuckingtastic. Why don't they use it on blimps? Could bring the costs down on a huge level.

If you guys can find one, track down a copy of 'My Zeppelins" by Hugo Eckener. Beautiful book.

>>998708
Hugo Eckener is one of the most underrated guys in history. He was a great German who opposed the nazi's and got sidelined by the regime. He snubbed them and got really angry when they took out the Hindenburg in bad weather conditions for propaganda flights.

That guy saw his country go through two world wars, completely destroyed twice, the fall of the German empire and so the eventual split up. So many things. I think he died very unhappy, sadly. The future could've been so bright

I've always wanted to fly one of these for a paycheck. Would be awesome.

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>>998853

>>996913
>http://www.mining.com/breakthrough-aircraft-to-transform-mining-economics/
what is this from?

>>992273
>limited supply of helium
its the second most abundant element in the universe, ya dunce. we're not running out, and even if we were, we could always make more. its like saying we're running out of carbon dioxide.

airships are big soft clumsy balloons

they can't crash but they can be blown away in a storm and break up and THEN crash

>>998959 "we could always make more"
No, we CANNOT make it...there are 3 spots on the planet where it can be siphoned out of natural gas wells. When those are depleted, thats it...there is no method of manufacturing it except inside a star. Back to school, dude. Abundant inside stars & nebulae doesn't mean we can pluck it out of the air here on Earth. The helium from every balloon you've ever popped has leaked out of the atmosphere into space....'cause lighter than air.

>>997713

More like Airemergencylander, amirite

>>999221
When those are depleted we will be able to mine helium-3 out of the moon and gas giants in the solar system

and there are many more undiscovered helium deposits in the earth, they just found a large one in africa that will give us another few decades of supply.

>>999319
But why waste helium-3 on airships when would be more practically applied in nuclear fusion? If one was going to spend the money getting helium all the way from the moon, why not get more out of it by making electricity?

>>999590
>Not knowing that helium will become so cheap once we mine it from outer space in gigantic quantities that anyone can buy it
>Implying commercial helium-miners will not sell it off to anyone who wants it
In what kind of communist space dystopia do you live?

>>999319
It's funny how common some things are once you actually start looking for them.

>>999750
Yep, we weren't looking for helium for a long tme.

>>999221
>except inside a star

Or a tokamak. Which we're building. Although we'll need a bunch of them to produce anywhere near enough Helium.

>>991680
If God had meant us to fly, he wouldn't have made hydrogen flammable.

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Hindenburg was originally designed for helium, heavier than hydrogen but nonflammable. Most of the world's supply of helium comes from natural gas fields in the United States, which had banned its export under the Helium Control Act (1927). Eckener expected this ban to be lifted, but to save helium the design was modified to have double gas cells (an inner hydrogen cell protected by an outer helium cell).[1] The ban remained however, so the engineers used only hydrogen despite its extreme flammability.[2] It held 200,000 cubic metres (7,062,000 cu ft) of gas in 16 bags or cells with a useful lift of approximately 232 t (511,000 lb). This provided a margin above the 215 t (474,000 lb) average gross weight of the ship with fuel, equipment, 10,000 kg (22,000 lb) of mail and cargo, about 90 passengers and crew and their luggage.

The Germans had extensive experience with hydrogen as a lifting gas. Accidental hydrogen fires had never occurred on civilian Zeppelins, so the switch from helium to hydrogen did not cause much concern. Hydrogen also increased lift by about 8%. After the Hindenburg disaster Eckener vowed never to use hydrogen again in a passenger airship. He planned to use helium for the second ship and went to Washington, D.C. to personally lobby President Roosevelt, who promised to supply the helium only for peaceful purposes. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes refused to supply the gas, and the Graf Zeppelin was also filled with hydrogen.

The airship flew from March 1936 until it was destroyed by fire 14 months later on May 6, 1937, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. 36 people of the 97 on board died in the accident. Captain Max Pruss who survived the crash lobbied for airships after the war but to no avail.

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>>1000162
To the end of his life, Pruss believed the Hindenburg disaster was the result of sabotage. In a 1960 interview, he dismissed the possibility that an electrical discharge could have caused the accident, arguing that zeppelins had passed through thunderstorms and even lightning many times without incident:

Pruss: You see, we have on every flight to South America we have lightning and thunderstorms. In about 4 degrees north of the equator they have thunderstorms all the time, and we were going with a ship traveling right through the thunderstorms and never was there trouble. During the First War, we had lightning hit the ship. At the bow you have a little hole through was going lightning in [i.e., lightning burned a small hole at the bow], and then [the lightning went] through the framework and then the radio station and the antenna was blown up, and no more [i.e., nothing else happened]. This thing happened at Lakehurst two times–we had big thunderstorms before the start. Passengers which were coming with airplanes [i.e., flying from Newark to Lakehurst on American Airlines], must come with buses, because flying was forbidden. And we were waiting outside the ship, because we are thinking not that the next lightning would go in the ship. And when the passengers were there, we took them inside, and we [flew] through the thunderstorm toward the sea.

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>>1000165
During the 1950s, Pruss energetically but unsuccessfully tried to raise interest in the construction of new zeppelin airships to be inflated with helium. In support of his crusade he often used an argument offered by Charles Rosendahl in the 1930’s, when the airplane was already posing a competitive challenge to the airship: “If you want to get there quickly, take an airplane; if you want to get there comfortably, take an airship.”

In describing Hindenburg in his 1960 interview, Pruss commented:

I can only say that [Hindenburg] was a real ship for passengers, and a new ship, too, and it’s very regrettable that we have no airships. On an airship you have a wonderful trip, not with an airplane about 1,200 meters high and so you can’t see anything. In an airship, we have a height from 100 to 200 meters over the ocean. You have very nice islands, you have big ships. It’s for passengers a very, very comfortable [flight] and a very nice flight. No seasickness.

Pruss’s plan to revive passenger zeppelins centered on a modified version of LZ-131, which had been designed as a successor to LZ-129 Hindenburg and LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin II; it was proposed to equip the redesigned LZ-131 with four 1800 hp engines to carry 100 passengers or 42 tons of freight at speeds up to 100 MPH. Later plans envisioned another design for a 200 passenger, 920-foot long airship inflated with 10.5 million cubic feet of helium. But building such ships required not only a huge investment of funds for the zeppelins themselves — up to 24 million marks per ship — but also similar amounts for the reconstruction of hangar and operating facilities dynamited in 1940 by order of Hermann Goering and futher destroyed during the course of the war, and Pruss was never able to attract sufficient interest to turns these plans into reality.

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>>1000166
>>1000165
>>1000162
Max Pruss

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>>995627

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Personal airships are already a cool entertainment concept. An artist once used a more oblong design to fly around a mall untethered using wings for propulsion.

http://www.thedreamengine.co.uk/heliosphere/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5AltW9QiqU

>>1002062

topkek

>>998907
imagine this over burning man

Could be them viable on mars or another planets?.

>>1007151
but they ARE viable here

people just don't know it yet

>>1007151
They're our top chance for human habitation on Venus. The upper atmosphere of Venus is remarkably good for human habitation.

>>1007266
Blimp cities sounds great, but maybe the winds are crazy there.

I was thinking of something, a blimp-taxi! A small blimp ( 10m in diameter) with a passenger cabin for 4, great for cities and much lower operating cost than helicopter, but drones may be a problem

>>1008140
>small blimp
no such thing

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb1n20_5RoQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIkjU0jgQ9w

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>>1008906
Incorrect

>>998959
Helium is a bitch to capture because it just floats off into space. Also we're selling off our once-MASSIVE helium reserves because Bill Clinton is a dipshit with no foresight.

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,

Airships are fun, it´s a shame helium is so damn expensive and hydrogen isn´t allowed for blimps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSrufZVeQwg

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Check out this blob

>>1013883
>hydrogen isn´t allowed
by who?

>>1015236
Insurance companies

Put the engines on a low trim, steer it in the wind and let it hover...nice view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm2m3aOWbQw

Why aren't airship drones more of a thing? Imagine how much much uptime you'd get if your brushless motors were used just for steering and thrust instead of lift also.

>>1007151
Mother fuckin' space blimps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0az7DEwG68A

the atmosphere on venus is thickk you don't need helium or hydrogen, normal earth air is good enough

>>1015423

we need that for breathing though p h a m

>>1015427
why not both

>>1015440

well what if like

you're floating in a gas that's more dense than oxygen and less dense than carbon dioxide

and then you're there floating in your space balloon but then as you respire there's less oxygen and more carbon dioxide so you start to sink

>>1015456
you don't use the gas in the balloon for breathing m8, there are special tanks for that.

AIRSHIPS OF THE FUTURE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-g0Ol_EI8M

>>1009191

That's somewhere between the size of a van and a small bus just to transport one guy.

>>997713
Wth happened to the horizon in this?

>>1002075
I'd like to get my dream engine between her heliospheres, if you catch my meaning.

>>1016203
And it's pretty damned small compared to a regular blimp. Maybe not small compared to a compact car, but still small.

>>998959
>its the second most abundant element in the universe
Yeah...
Know where the closest nebula is? About 700 light years away.

Helium is a finite resource.

>>999590
Fusion produce He-4

Would it be economical to operate airship to islands like Kerguelen Islands, Tristan da Cunha or Ogasawara Islands where they are currently only accessible by long time ship travel?

>>1017206
Maybe. The islanders might appreciate the influx of money and tourists, too.

>>1017244
But what prevented that to be done now

>>1017248
Money.

>>1017416
How much it cost?

>>1017511
A lot.

>>1017522
Compare to a ship that cost millions to operate per journey ?

>>1017206
No, hydrofoils are more economical

>>1016434
Yes, but just a little larger and blimptaxi is reality.

>>1017660
Then how come airlines around the world are still making money giving that most of them sell their tickets almost as cheap as ferry tickets? And airships are cheaper than planes to operate right?

>>1017692
Are you being dumb here?
>Would it be economical to operate airship to islands like Kerguelen Islands, Tristan da Cunha or Ogasawara Islands where they are currently only accessible by long time ship travel?

You can't land an airplane on an island with no airstrip.

>>1017694
I mean, comparing existing option between places with both airplane and ships connection their ticket prices doesn't seems to be so different and the cost to operate airship seems to be between both of them then why airship aren't used to serve those islands airplanes can't land on?

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>>1017694
>You can't land an airplane on an island with no airstrip.
We must reinvent seaplanes.
It is the only way.

Btw how about ground effect vehicle

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>>1017812

>>1017694
What an embarrassingly dumb thing for you to have said.

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>>1017766
Stranger things have happened. :)