Lockheed: No Roads, No Problem

a reply to: CovertAgenda

spraying water or retardant maybe dampening land around an existing fire to contain it ,perhaps?
It could insert engineering teams after a disaster,drop logistic supplies to speed up recovery.

a reply to: CovertAgenda

Delivering desperately needed supplies at much higher rates than helicopter to areas who's infrastructure was destroyed by tsunami or earthquake, all while evacuating large number of injured to med. centers.
Wouldn't that classify as humanitarian? It does to me.

originally posted by: CovertAgenda

The Hybrid Airship enables affordable and safe delivery of heavy cargo and personnel to virtually anywhere – water or land – with little to no infrastructure

Read that as.... 'Able to deliver huge loads of military / mining / fracking / logging equipment and personnel deep into pristine wilderness areas minimizing the expenditure on roads and other infrastructure whilst maximizing extraction potentials'....

You could have read it as that, this aircraft was originally intended for a military platform, but congress wouldn't fund it for some reason, who knows because of the Zeppelin? I don't think so, but anyway the Zeppelin wasn't a flier this thing is, the goal now is to make it viable as a commercial transport, and Lockheed see the merit in this type of vehicle, and because it flies it's as quick as an intercity train at 138.2 MPH point to point without limits thus far. Think of that, tons of material being transported to wherever, without ships or ports, a whole new type of infrastructure. It's really a brilliant concept.

a reply to: Sammamishman
Did I say that either extreme was mutually exclusive?

The C130 does some lovely humanitarian work .... then they stick some armaments on it to become a spectre.

Hypothetically, you think a fleet of these owned by the military would have changed any of the humanitarian outcomes as played out post hurricane Katrina?

Its not the tool, the problem is the tools behind the tool.

Not too sure how useful something that moves so slow would be for transporting things that need to be there tomorrow. I guess if you wanted to take a month off and float across the country. Or maybe if someone wanted to mount an ultra high resolution camera to a stable and slow moving platform to capture gobs of minute detail.

a reply to: Sammamishman


Yeah. Great device, just don't take it where it is windy or stormy in mountains and where the people without roads, etc. also don't have any money for airfare.

But dangit I was sure that I've heard that Lockheed had a share in building the black triangles so why would they propose something like this that was not and never will be an efficient way to travel anywhere?


Oh, busywork, façade work, when behind the scenes....

a reply to: BrianFlanders

I've read that cruising speed is somewhere around 60 knots. And a range of 1400 miles.

that's 69mph roughly.

So it can travel 1400 miles or more in a 24 hour period theoretically. That's pretty good for a freight hauler.

Helium shortage,theres always Hydrogen
For fire fighting I would think the updraughts of the fire zone would make blimp operations quite hazardess.

It was originally designed to compete with a Northrop design for the LEMV program that was cancelled. The Northrop version was bought back by one of its prime contractors and has been returned to the UK for work and rebuild. It's based out of the old Royal Airship works site at RAF Cardington. They'd be fantastic for humanitarian uses given the increased weight of supplies they could carry and distances they could cover. Apparently the HAV Airlander only gets 60% of it's lift from LTA gasses and the rest is aerodynamic. If needed it can rotate its engines to provide up to another 25% of lift.

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: BrianFlanders

I've read that cruising speed is somewhere around 60 knots. And a range of 1400 miles.

that's 69mph roughly.

So it can travel 1400 miles or more in a 24 hour period theoretically. That's pretty good for a freight hauler.

No traffic, no corners in a straight line....pretty good, I cant understand why nay sayers say nay!

As Sam said take loads of people to hospital, heck it could be a floating hospital - the possibilities are enormous.

Think cruise ship / scenic railway of the sky - imagine traveling for 2 days in comfort across the Australian outback watching sundown and sun up floating near Uluru or even an African safari or rainforest.

Reduced lorries on motorways (UK thing) and a stop to the French Port authorities striking.

Load your car and fly from london to paris over the English Channel instead of getting sea sick.

Humanitarian

Expeditions to clean up Everest

A trip to the North pole.

I would love to see these become a part of our infrastructure, may ease the green house gas by taking trucks off the road (although I doubt it as trains can carry heaps more and havnt replaced trucks).

Can they fly into a headwind at 69mph?

Saw this the other day. Had to search but knew there would be a modern thread on this one!

Known as a "spider", one half the device is located on the outside of the airship while the other half is on the inside.

As they move together, the spider on the outside shines a light, which when it passes over a hole will be detected by the internal spider which will then apply a patch.

BBC News, Aug 1, 2016 - How a 'spider' could keep an airship airworthy.

Another link, CNET, has SPIDER video: Lockheed Martin's blimp-scaling robot hunts for leaks.

The spiders are fully automated! While not completely autonomous (they send a signal back to a human operator for hole verification), they take the place of a team of workers and work while the ship is inflating.

Helium, it is a slight consideration but now they know how to look for natural pockets (the Tanzania find) it should not be that big of a deal. And with a swarm of spiders hunting for holes losses should be kept down to a minimum.

Straightline Aviation has announced a new agreement with a Canadian mining company to deploy the Lockheed Martin LMH-1 hybrid airship to northern Quebec, shuttling 21 [tons] of rare earth ore concentrate more than 200 nm [nautical miles?] from a remote lakeside mine to a railway stop...
...
Several years ago, Lockheed executives had refused to launch development of a hybrid airship for the commercial market unless the customer pays the bill estimated at hundreds of millions to certificate the unique vessel. Such a policy works in Lockheed’s defence business, but commercial customers usually prefer the manufacturer to finance their own product development.
...
Meanwhile, Straightline and Lockheed need to prove to the finance community that a commercial market exists for such an aircraft. The company has now signed agreements with an Alaskan logistics firm [wrong], a humanitarian relief organization and lastly the Canadian mining company.

“Everybody in the banking industry has to be comfortable in SLA going forward and what they’re looking for is a business plan in terms of users that are going to buy the service,” Boyd says.

As soon as that comes together, Lockheed believes flight test and certification could move rapidly. If a firm order is placed late this year or in early 2017, entry-into-service for the LMH-1 would occur in 2019.

Flighglobal.com, news, Nov. 17, 2016 - New buyer signs for hybrid airship, but Lockheed waits on launch.

So there is the latest news on LMH-1 hybrid airship. There is some more info in the article, like LMH-1 runs on diesel, and how it is considered an hybrid. There is some genealogy on defense contractors and commercial use of blimps/hybrids that I did not know about. A good read.

The "Alaska logistics firm" is wrong. The firm is a global logistics firm with interest from an Alaskan client. I personally thought the global firm had already placed an order for 12 LMH-1s but I guess I am wrong. Secondly, I thought that Lockheed already had FAA approval (certification) so not sure what is up there.

The thing that worries me is "buy it up front" mentality from LM. Not because of the hybrid airship but looking down the road, the T-4 compact fusion reactor. Few states would be able to purchase one up front. Maybe, a big maybe, Alaska will lead the way again if the collective will of the people spend their dividend money from oil on purchasing one but that is like asking a druggie to give up their dimebag. Maybe Lockheed should do things like Boeing or SAIC where they have a government division and a public sector division to handle these types of situations. They probably already have something like that right now anyway (IDK) so I do not see what the hold up is but I do see the historical why.

So, 2019. Again. Most likely 2020. That is a shame because having one in operation would alleviate many of the nervous nellies in finance and insurance industries by seeing one in use for themselves.

2020 is the year of everything! Hybrid airships, Mach 5 public sector planes, nuclear fusion... makes one wonder why that year.