Massive Airship Off to a Flying Start

Originally posted by Blue Shift
The problem has always been that they are very fragile and useless in anything but perfect weather, require a lot of relatively expensive helium to get anything off the ground, and are pretty slow. Attempts at putting helicopters/blades on them to provide extra lift have ended in catastrophic failure.

Yep - why heavy lift airships are never going to happen remains valid - physics is a beach!

The best alternative to trucks has been and will continue to be rail. It is the most efficient mode of transporting cargo, by far.

These sort of vehicles can be useful at the right point where you need to shift a lot of stuff but the ground is crap such as after a bad storm where the road/rail system has been washed away so they'd never be a great asset in the general sense of average value per mile but when you need to get some goods from x to y and its too heavy for general helicopters and theres no road/rail and even the pack mules are on strike then it may be worth it

If it can hit the 50-100 ton then it may have a good civilian use for taking those large items that generally travel at 5-10 mph and block the roads for hours due to police escorts and block off of roads etc

I have dreamt of an Airship just like this making a return.
Finally something decent to save up for. Thanks heaps for the share. I was wondering when the HAA would take off.

Question:

How do I get my Dirigible license????

Originally posted by steppenwolf86
The best alternative to trucks has been and will continue to be rail. It is the most efficient mode of transporting cargo, by far.

Pipelines are good, too, although the physics of hydraulics make that a little problematic sometimes, too. Viscosity, pressure limitations, etc. Yeah, you can't beat the physics.

Originally posted by krazykanuk
Question:
How do I get my Dirigible license????

I suppose you need to first get a pilot's license, and then work your way up into the blimp pilot world, working for Goodyear or MetLife or any of the other companies who have blimp fleets. Then I suppose it's a matter of waiting for a dirigible pilot job to open up. It's mostly a lot of low-altitude VFR piloting, with a lot of dealing with however the wind happens to blow you.

And for private pilots

Originally posted by krazykanuk
Question:

How do I get my Dirigible license????

You google for FAA dirigible pilot licence of course

The FAA's How to become a pilot page is probably the best pace to start

the requirements deopend whether you want to fly it "just for fun" - in which case you can apparently get a Sport Pilot licence, or something a bit mroe serious - in which case you ahve to go through the private-commercial pilots system.

FAA's testing standards for sport pilots (1.5mb pdf)

And for private pilots

But as noted on Airship.com, virtually all blimp pilots were already professional pilots befoer they flew blimps.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by steppenwolf86
The best alternative to trucks has been and will continue to be rail. It is the most efficient mode of transporting cargo, by far.

Pipelines are good, too, although the physics of hydraulics make that a little problematic sometimes, too. Viscosity, pressure limitations, etc. Yeah, you can't beat the physics.

Right, cause anything you can put in a boxcar can flow through a pipeline.

I wouldn't imagine these being used in a war-zone however to deploy tanks... seems they would be a pretty easy target since they are so massive, and slow .. still extremely impressive

reply to post by miniatus


Actually, an airship can be made virtully impervious to the type of small arms fire it is likely to encounter in a "hot" LZ (Landing Zone).

We not dealing with a fragile "balloon" here: the "skin" of an airship can easily be constructed of very bullet resistant material(s).

And, unlike airplanes, an airship can still fly even if its "hull" is "Swiss-cheesed" with bullet holes: as long as the lifting cells within the Skin are left relatively undamaged.

The only real threat to an airship are RPG's (rocket propelled grenades) and missles.

Even then, given the sheer mass of a typical heavy-lift airship, it would take a number of RPG's, or a fairly large missle, to take out the craft.


Also, don't forget that an airship, unlike a truck, train, or an airplane, can loiter high above a battlefield landing zone for as long as needed, safely out of weapons range, while the zone is cleared of "hostiles".

If can even assist in the location of hostile forces as it silently hovers above their heads, giving a "bird's eye" view of enemy troop placements.

reply to post by smyleegrl


My dad works for lockheed martin in the C-5 program, they are currently bringing the older models out of retirement and upgrading all the engine and computer systems making them much much more efficient and powerful, i know that they are used for military purposes right now but someone ought to try to get some of them for commercial use, would save alot of money converting some of them rather than designing a new plane.

Not sure bits been said but its extremely important to take into account that this is a military project. in a commercial environment this aircraft would not be efficient enough for transportation of people or goods; but, in a military environment or during wartime this aircraft could be used for refueling and restocking aircraft carriers before they ever dock or even reach the shoreline. this vehicle could allow an aircraft carrier to continue its outing during wartime. this is beneficial in many ways as it provides the possibility of a nearly endless push of aircraft.

another major benefit is that this aircraft will also allow aircraft carriers to become transporters of terrestrial military vehicles such as tanks, personnel transport etc.. this is basically an add on to the aircraft carrier that will drasticly increase efficiency and trip length during wartime.

also, being that this tech is relatively new (rigid floating fairly fast aerial equipment transport with no infrastructure necessities) we'll have the chance to improve upon it in the next few decades.

oh, another random thought. you know that enormous x-ray machine that floats about at sea. this aircraft will give the military the ability to fly that device anywhere on the planet. so now places that were out of reach (which was already pretty much nowhere) can be seen with unprecedented detail. (the x-ray machine is not what it is. the machine simply operates like an x-ray machine and can detect the spin of a baseball from nearly 3000 miles. this machine was built in conjunction with HAARP.)

I suggest that the people of Aeros stop their work to build such a craft and start reading the tidbits of news and full-featured works that reaches the public about sightings of the massive, black triangles that are silent, can hover with ease, flick across the sky in a moment's time and land on the proverbial dime.

The future of aviation is being demonstrated almost daily by these and similar craft. The future of aviation is not in the use of air or buoyant gasses for transporting vehicles, so even that terminology will be discarded.when discussing these amazing craft.

It makes no differance if you want to argue whether the triangles are alien or domestic. They obviously are real hardware that somebody is lofting and eventually that technology will overtake all military and commercial means of rapid transportation. Presently, they make a nice replacement for about any aircraft or shuttle you care to mention. In short, they make one Hell of a "secret" weapon of war.

reply to post by michael1983l


Yeah, isn't it something like 1 shipping vessel puts out more pollution than all the vehicles in the world or something crazy like that? I'm trying to find data, so I'm not talking out my ass.

shipping pollution

Exhaust emissions from ships are considered to be a significant source of air pollution, with 18 to 30 percent of all nitrogen oxide and 9 percent of sulphur oxide pollution.[12] "By 2010, up to 40 percent of air pollution over land could come from ships."

That's just the air pollution factor. Not the ballast water, sonar damage, oil spills, fuel spills, chemical spills, noise pollution, propeller damage to marine life. etc etc.

An Air ship like this would be a wonderful idea, but could you imagine the kind of air traffic if this takes off? I suppose that's a fairly large cargo capacity but I believe the largest cargo ships hold at least 100 times that of this airship.
DWT = Dead weight tonnage.

Dry Cargo
Small Handy size, carriers of 20,000 long tons deadweight (DWT)-28,000 DWT Handy size, carriers of 28,000-40,000 DWT Seawaymax, the largest size that can traverse the St Lawrence Seaway Handymax, carriers of 40,000-50,000 DWT
Panamax, the largest size that can traverse the Panama Canal (generally: vessels with a width smaller than 32.2 m) Capesize, vessels larger than Panamax and Post-Panamax, and must traverse the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn to travel between oceans Chinamax, carriers of 380,000-400,000 DWT with main dimensions limited by port infrastructure in China Wet Cargo Aframax, oil tankers between 75,000 and 115,000 DWT. This is the largest size defined by the average freight rate assessment (AFRA) scheme. Suezmax, the largest size that can traverse the Suez Canal VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier), supertankers between 150,000 and 320,000 DWT. Malaccamax, the largest size that can traverse the Strait of Malacca ULCC (Ultra Large Crude Carrier), enormous supertankers between 320,000 and 550,000 DWT

If we were to switch to these air ships, you would need several thousand to keep up with shipping demands, and what about things like petrol, or crude oil. Could you imagine one of those crashing with goods like that on board? Any goods on board for that matter. Accidents happen, an airship falling from that height with flammable cargo is a bomb and nothing else.

Still amazing, but I can see some serious logistical issues with this vessel.

Everyday, Skies of Arcadia gets closer to becoming a reality. The longer they refuse to give us a proper sequel or remake, the more humanity's collective unconscious will push us toward creating airships and floating islands in the sky until we're simply living in that world. At least... that's what I choose to believe.

In all seriousness, though. This is a pretty amazing achievement if it works as envisioned. I would absolutely love to see one of these in flight. I had never even heard that this was something being worked on. Really interesting.

Peace.

Originally posted by Spookycolt
reply to post by jimmiec

 

Yea, I don't think so.

Try backing a blimp like this into a back of Wal-mart to unload their cargo.

Probably not going to happen.

I would imagine that the airships would take the cargo to a central location in a given city, and the cargo would then be moved to short-haul trucks to go to businesses. That would be logical, anyway.

shortly after 911 I saw a web site of a couple of college engineers who worked out an airship to replace cargo vessels. this design lockheed is using very much reminds me of what they were doing. They were also trying to make a small retractable version to use in place of a car. They were in Illinois or Indiana. They got the article on the web cause the FAA would not let them use their ideas because the FAA didn't want terrorist to use them instead of a plane. I have not been able to find the article since 2005 or 2006.