Airships are making a comeback?

[Thorin]

You can now order your own private sky yacht from Aeroscraft: http://www.aerosml.com/ML866/model.html.  The ML866 is 210 feet by 118 feet by 56 feet, with nearly 5,400 square feet of cabin space that Aeros will happily arrange any way you want.

Check out some artist's renderings: http://www.aerosml.com/ML866/config.html#

The craziest part for me is that you can actually order this if you have the money!

[Mr. Analog]

This reminds me of old concept art from the 60s/70s where you see airships and hovercars everywhere!

[Tom]

I wonder if is has any better stability in wind than a regular rigid airship's (ie: the zepplin). Or even the kind they built on Top Gear.

[Lazybones]

As long as it has the power to deal with some wind I think it is a great idea.

Honestly what are the down sides over other aircraft?
- Speed...
- Power to deal with wind.....

[Thorin]

For the old style of airships, one of the major downsides was having to vent lift gas to try and return to earth.  You see, the airship would have a certain buoyancy and carry a certain amount of weight and fuel, but as the airship traveled to its new destination, fuel would get used up.  This would decrease the weight carried, so to allow the airship to descend, the buoyancy had to be decreased to match the new weight.

Venting the lift gas was no big deal when the lift gas was cheap-and-plentiful hydrogen, but then the Hindenburg exploded and showed us why hydrogen is not a good choice.  After that, airships were made to use helium, but helium is rare and expensive compared to hydrogen.  So venting helium costs a lot of money, possibly more than buying fuel for your jet.

One of the cool things about the new airships being considered is that they're finding new ways to increase and reduce buoyancy without venting any lift gas.  Thus the price of flight might drop significantly as compared to jet airliners, especially if the price of gas keeps rising.

So for current downsides:
- speed
- price of flight due to venting lift gas
- hangar size
- rate of ascent/descent
- structural rigidity
- in-flight crew size
- ground crew size

The last two may not be a problem with computerized systems these days.

[Tom]

For the old style of airships, one of the major downsides was having to vent lift gas to try and return to earth.  You see, the airship would have a certain buoyancy and carry a certain amount of weight and fuel, but as the airship traveled to its new destination, fuel would get used up.  This would decrease the weight carried, so to allow the airship to descend, the buoyancy had to be decreased to match the new weight.

Venting the lift gas was no big deal when the lift gas was cheap-and-plentiful hydrogen, but then the Hindenburg exploded and showed us why hydrogen is not a good choice.  After that, airships were made to use helium, but helium is rare and expensive compared to hydrogen.  So venting helium costs a lot of money, possibly more than buying fuel for your jet.

One of the cool things about the new airships being considered is that they're finding new ways to increase and reduce buoyancy without venting any lift gas.  Thus the price of flight might drop significantly as compared to jet airliners, especially if the price of gas keeps rising.

So for current downsides:
- speed
- price of flight due to venting lift gas
- hangar size
- rate of ascent/descent
- structural rigidity
- in-flight crew size
- ground crew size

The last two may not be a problem with computerized systems these days.

Slight nit pick. The zepplins were designed to run on helium. Due to embargoes, everyone refused to sell germany any helium, so they had to switch to hydrogen, with disastrous consequences.

[Thorin]

There's some serious talk about using airships to get goods in and out of the Canadian Arctic: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/Airships+their+Canada+North/5359575/story.html.  A good idea I think.  Get rid of that ice road.

Those Aeroscraft links from the original post don't work anymore   The website still exists, though: http://www.aeroscraft.com/

[Mr. Analog]

That's quite interesting actually, and not that far fetched as some would think. It's high time zeppelins came back into serious commercial use (especially with jet fuel costs).

Oddly enough I was reading recently that the Russians want to build a rail cargo tunnel under the Bering straits connecting to Alaska, the implications of that would be huge of course, linking Asia and North America by freight rail.

So many amazing possibilities with both options there.

[Lazybones]

Wonder how helium prices and shortages will impact such efforts... Apparently the supply is rather tight and prices are low due to government intervention.

[Tom]

Not just tight, but the only real supply of the stuff is in the hands of the US Gov't which has some mandate to sell it cheap for no real good reason. The US Helium reserve accounts for more than half of the total supply on earth, and that mandate/law says it has to be sold by 2015, regardless of actual value.

[Mr. Analog]

Wonder how helium prices and shortages will impact such efforts... Apparently the supply is rather tight and prices are low due to government intervention.

Forget helium, hydrogen is the way to go. Before anyone jumps on the Hindenburg Disaster as an example; recall that it was a combination of the highly flammable doping used on the skin and the mooring lines weren't property grounded, the skin caught fire and the rest is history (if the Hindenburg was full of helium it would have been just as dramatic a catastrophe).

I think it might actually be feasible to set up remote fuelling stations that produce hydrogen through electrolysis in the north through solar/wind/tide generators. In fact I can easily imagine remote towns generating hydrogen fuel in such a way as a means of income.

[Thorin]

Keep in mind that they've got new systems these days that compress the lighter-than-air gas (helium, hydrogen, whatever) into liquid form to make it heavier than air, allowing the airship to change it's altitude without venting gas (aka throwing it away into the atmosphere).  So there might not be as much of a "fueling" requirement for the flotation gas.  That said, there'll still be a need for propellant gas of some sort.

The north would sure look different, hey?

[Darren Dirt]

This reminds me of old concept art from the 60s/70s where you see airships and hovercars everywhere!

makes me think of

-Sky Captain
-Watchmen
-The Probability Broach (graphicized version of sci fi novel, set in alternative universe -- and yes, there's high-speed hovercraft as well as airships!)

[Mr. Analog]

This reminds me of old concept art from the 60s/70s where you see airships and hovercars everywhere!

makes me think of

-Sky Captain
-Watchmen
-The Probability Broach (graphicized version of sci fi novel, set in alternative universe -- and yes, there's high-speed hovercraft as well as airships!)

Neat!