Question mark headline rule applies. No, of course airships are not the future. They're cool as heck, though. I'll give them that.
Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
Doesn't mean an article isn't worth reading ;)
I hope so. I don't think there's a better way to achieve air transport free of greenhouse gas emissions than with airships.
Plus there's some really cool potential in moving bulky cargo (like windmill parts) overland where you'd otherwise have to cut down trees, take down power lines, and remove other obstacles around highways or train tracks. Plus the ability to act as a flying crane has some cool potential in stuff like delivering modular hospitals and other aid to disaster areas.
People have been pushing this for awhile. It's not going to happen.
Pathfinder 3, at 600 feet long and 100 feet in diameter, is designed to carry about 20 tons ref
and its cruising speed will likely be comparable to Pathfinder 1 at ~70 kph (dependant on relative windspeed).
By comparison, the Airbus A350F has a payload capacity of 109 tons and a cruising speed of 900 kph, and doesn't care about relative windspeed.
So the airship might deliver 20% of the cargo at 8% of the speed. This isn't useful. There is no use case in which this will make sense.
It's a luxury air yacht pipe dream for rich people, a hobby for a bored Google founder who doesn't know what else to do with his money.
That's because we've been stuck with an irrational mode of production that requires too many people and goods to get far places quickly while burning lots of fossil fuel. A more logical system would only have people traveling by jet and helicopter on an emergency basis. People traveling on vacation or non-emergency business should be able to slowly cruise in relative comfort on battery and solar power. Airship ports can be built along the paths of the atmospheric streams and then rail can be used for the next leg of travelers' journeys.
As far as capacity goes that's just a matter of building bigger airships and using relatively cheap hydrogen instead of helium as the lifting gas.
I love that even this modern day pitch has to clarify that its not hydrogen
Have we been waiting for it?
Really fun and all, but it's obsolete by alternative forms of transport. Like a helicopter for example. It can fly almost always, maybe lift a third of an airship, but an airship can't fly with anything more then just a little bit of wind. The very instances where an airship prevails over other forms of transport are so few, there's no market for it. But that doesn't stop startup companies to hoard money, build prototypes, develop super awesome machines, then to discover it's useless and obsolete while having burned load of money and producing massive amounts of carbon emissions. The concept is really great, but only in perfect weather conditions. But still 3 helicopter flights could do what an airship could, but faster and more reliable. Or trains or ships. There's no gap in forms of transportation that needs filling.
Yeah but helicopters require fuel and I don't know if you've been paying attention, but using fuel makes climate change happen.
Companies choosing profits over climate make climate change happen. Those companies rather use more reliable, cheaper and faster helicopters. Have fun convincing them to cut deeply into their profits to save the environment. Look, people in general should care more about our planet but they just don't give a shit.
You could make the exact same argument for any mode of transportation. And there are many possible applications for airships that are not possible with current technology, for example 100% carbon free overland travel in remote areas.
The wind issue is also not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Basically it is only a problem during start and landing or very high winds (which are also problematic for helicopters during start and landing). If you have small electric quad-copters that shuttle passengers and cargo to and from the airships it is basically a non-issue.
Plus there's a design for one with a winch system that can lift sea cans up into its cargo bay without landing at all.
Who the hell wants a two-day blimp ride to London?
I think that was an Archer reference, but I'd rather spend two days on an airship with a bunk, a dining room, and a bar, than seven hours stuck between potentially two of the worst people I will ever meet and with barely any room to stretch my legs.
It's a nice thought, but frankly if you have the ability to spend your time like that while traveling then you're probably already in the target market for this... wealthy people with money and time to burn. How often do you find yourself booking train cabins for long-distance travel?
And yes, it absolutely was an Archer reference.
I mean it would be a fun experience, but so is taking the Quean Mary II and even she struggles to stay in the black dispite being eminently more practical.
Over land a train will always win, and in the ocean and in the ocean there are ships that can outrun it.
More to the point, people travel by air because it’s fast enough to get you anywhere in the world in a day, give or take. Biofuels and even direct fuel synthesis using atmospheric carbon powered aviation is always going to beat out airships because airships do not solve a useful problem for travel.
This is how I see it. There isn't a practical use case that makes airships attractive compared to other options, and tourism will never be enough to sustain it at scale.
Have we not learned our lesson?
Most major transportation systems have catastrophic failures in their history, but are still around, and improved upon today. Ships sink, planes crash, trains detail, all with horrific consequences. When you look at the early track record on submarines it's amazing to me that nation states kept throwing money at the deathtraps long enough for them to become viable. Airships had one crash almost a century ago and our society threw out the entire concept.
Modern airships have a ton of advantages over the ones from a hundred years ago, including tremendous improvements on handling, and the ability to land on the ground unassisted. Not painting the gasbags with solid rocket fuel to seal them seems like the sort of thing modern aviation engineering should be able to put in a checklist.
Safe, nonflammable helium!
We might not have enough helium for medical equipment, much less a fleet of airships. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-doctors-are-worried-running-element-threaten-mris-rcna52978
Although this is a non-smoking area, sir.
