the return of the airship or LTA transport

here is a short video from bloomberg



some of us here know there have been MANY advances in air ships.

from rigid structures to vaccume/negative space ideas to using ionic wind powered via the sun to keep a LTAV aloft for a very very long time.


i can imagine a rigid paneled LTAV with some new types of propulsion systems like eletric motors powered by the sun to other more tin foil-ish ideas.


i for one cant wait to see blips around and would take a sky cruise


imagine taking a cruise on a blimp like you would on a sea going ship, seem very cool

I think a sky cruise sounds awesome. I would definitely go on one

a reply to: noscopebacon

So, they have prefected a weather control system? That has been the downfall of almost all airships.

Why are they still spreading disinformation on the Hindenburg. It was painted with rocket fuel almost the same as used in the space shuttle solid rocket boosters. They used it for weatherproofing.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

well a blimp doesnt have to be like a balloon it can have a hard and rigid skin, and they were smart they would make the top of these craft giant solar cells

i think that if you we able to generate enough voltage and have an ion wind setup to help keep and hold its altitude and location and than with some other true of high speed system like jet engines(again on a hard shell) to have bursts of speed.


i saw little ISR blimps over seas that have cameras on them that would put Hubble to shame(not really), and they have all sorts of sensors on them and they just sit there passively.


you could even use a large one with some sort of stealth abilities you could have a drone airborne launch platform, depending on the drone it could land at a ground base or even come back to the LTAV, and with a small crew they could refuel, rearm and send it out again.

or as a missile truck imagine racks and racks of AMRAAM's or whatever air to ground munitions


there are so many things i could think of that a modern blimp would be perfect for

I swear there's a conman like Moller out hocking airships. There are good reasons based on physics why airships are a dead end tech wise.

a reply to: noscopebacon

The very definition of a blimp is that it holds it's shape by air or gas pressure. There are derigibles that are semirigid and zeplins that are rigid.

The Hindenburg, a zeplin, had it's shape by the metal struts holding the outer skin that was painted with rocket fuel. It was able to be supported in a hanger without any gas in the gas bags.

A blimp on the other hand is much like an inflatable boat. Let the gas out and you have mostly a pile of cloth.

You still have not addressed the weather problem. They can only fry when the weather is near calm.

This crash was blamed on a light wind change.


And this one is when it got away in a slight breeze.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

fly really really high, lol

land i never said the tech was perfect but i think some smalt aerospace tech company isn't going to be the one making leaps in tech.

beyondknowledge

we use blimps all the time in different theaters they call them aerosats

granted they are tethered to the ground

a reply to: noscopebacon

Yes, they do have many uses. Airliners and heavy freight are not among them.

my question is, where are they planning on getting the helium for them? another major issue with the Hindenburg was it was filled with hydrogen. which is rather flammable. it was originally designed to use helium, but since they couldn't get it, since the main producer, the US would not sell it to them, due to an embargo, due to the military use of lighter than air craft during WW1.

and as some people know helium is currently in short supply, and getting more expensive. at one time the US had a strategic reserve of helium, again due to military use (yes the US had B-limps and ridged airships back then). and for all the greenwashed people out there, guess where helium comes from? it is a byproduct of some natural gas projects. in other words a byproduct from that "evil" petroleum extraction, that the green morons want to completely get rid of ASAP.

a reply to: generik

you bring up an interesting point, there is a finite(for all practical proposes) amount of He in the atmosphere. We got a lot of the He from radioactive decay and i would guess some from the solar winds.

He is getting to be a very expensive gas, the place i went to school at used a lot of liquid He and they would NEVER just vent it off to the atmosphere, they had an elaborate collection methods to recollect and liquify the gas, only needing top off occasionally.

that being said LTAV these days aren't like the Hindenburg with cloth skin impregnated with lacquer and aluminum but with advanced polymers and coatings that do a pretty good job at keeping the gas in.

you could also 'cut' it with hydrogen, as we all know helium does not burn so in the event of a crash it would act like its own fire fire extinguisher, it would displace all the oxygen like a reverse halon system.


The military sure thinks they can be used for cargo and that can be a person or a tank.

having a HALE aircraft who is only limited by crew endurance or consumables that can sit on the edge of space and for relatively a low cost seems like a winner to me.

imagine not needing c130's or whatever to move LARGE ampounts of equipment around with no jet fuel or gas.

and even if it is only used as a mass mover in a friendly sky, the saving on gas alone would be huge.

a reply to: noscopebacon

Or, instead of "cutting" the hydrogen with helium (by which I think you mean mixing the two gases?), you could use an "over-and-under" bi-level lifting cell arrangement wherein non-flammable helium lift cells are placed under the primary lift cells filled with the flammable hydrogen as a "firebreak" buffer layer.

Hydrogen has a small advantage over helium in terms of lifting capability and availability; but at the cost of flammability and containment difficulty.

We are going to run out of helium. Its the gas that never comes back. Rare commodity. And getting rarer.

helium shortage

a reply to: DaRAGE

its crazy they have to ration it out to levels its effecting national labs.


not to mention the fact that the suppliers are not allowing recycling of gas....


i know the school i went to that they for sure recollected the He, it was a pretty cool system.

a reply to: Mantiss2021

yeah that's what I'm talking about.

'cutting' is just a more common word for what i was talking about


there are for sure ways to get a useable airship.

you should look up what the cost every hour the B2 fly's

a reply to: noscopebacon

Suppliers not allowing recycling is just greed at its finest but makes business sense. Honestly though helium recycling should be mandated by government if helium is used. I just want it not wasted on balloons ey. Lol

Found the most recent news items regarding the Airlander 10 hybrid airship:
www.cnn.com...
www.ainonline.com...

If the Airlander 10 goes into service with Air Nostrum, it will be the first airship to carry passengers since the Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin II, but also the first hybrid airship to reach production status.

Nearly a necro thread revival, but...Airlander "is" going into "production:"

www.flightglobal.com...

a reply to: anzha

Given the recent "hulla-balloon " over Chinese spy balloons and other UFO/UAP's, I'd say Airlander is just the beginning.

In fact, I remember a study that the RAND Corporation did back in 2005 regarding the Strategic significance of developing near space.

Up where LAV's are the thing to fly....slow and high.

a reply to: anzha
Maybe talk to JP Aerospace.They have been doing the same technology for a while.

a reply to: Mantiss2021

LTA aircraft are still subject to the issues of mother nature fscking with them far more than HTA aircraft and mama still messes with those hardcore.