Return of the Airship?..

[Brock Samson]

interesting website...
looks like they're in the assembly phase.


http://www.aeroscraft.com/

[70charginglizard]

Hopefully they've learned from this. 

http://www.primititootaa.com/Images/Hindenburg.jpg

[Brock Samson]

yeah, I hear they're using politicans speeches... 

[TK73]

Really, what's the point??  After the novelty wears off people will still want to get to where they are going by the fastest mode of transport...

[dodgecharger-fan]

I'd say it's the same reason that people buy big luxurious yachts instead of Cigarette boats.

[Troy]

I don't know about that one. The specs say it can travel up to 138 mph which isn't a whole lot faster than a Cessna 152 (and slower than many other single engine prop planes and most jet helicopters). Cross country flight time from here New York to Los Angeles would be about 18 hours vs less than 6 for a non-stop commercial flight or probably just over 5 for a nice private jet. Max ceiling is 12,000 feet so it can't go "above the weather" in most cases. It's designed to compete with business jets (at the luxury level) and I just don't see a lot of CEOs or private owners willing to extend their trips by 4-5 times. You could maybe play tennis indoors and take a large entourage (100 people) so perhaps it will be a hit with the celebrity types. It has living quarters which will be a necessity at those speeds - but then you can't take as many friends.

On the other hand, they also mention using it for shipping/freight which may work since it's faster than a train, truck, or boat and can carry cargo that's much larger (physically) than most flights. It can hover and land vertically so it can get closer to the final destination (landing at an airport) or even all the way to the final destination if it's allowed to land off-airport. There aren't any specs on fuel efficiency but shipping some big piece of equipment on one may end up being cheaper than using a truck and dealing with hassles of oversize loads. It would have to be express freight, special delivery, or oddball sized cargo though since the payload is still pretty wimpy for straight cargo work (the site says "Additional series of Aeroscraft is on the drawing board and will be scaled to payloads of up to 60 tons.").

Troy

[Mike DC]

I would think it would be a payload gain.  Basically doing train-suited freight jobs without the need for a nice hi-speed track to every site it can stop.

As for passengers, they say those things are so damn quiet and vibration-free it's incredible.  You could build a card house on your table during the flight with no concerns of it being toppled.  And the view can also be good, unlike current planes that thrive on climbing out of the wind resistance to get their speed up.  An airship would really be much more like an ocean liner in the sky than anything we have now.

I don't know whether all that would make these things financially attractive these days or not.  Time will tell. 





What are they intending to fill up the gas bag with, anyway? 

Surely not hydrogen again. 
But I've also heard that worldwide Helium resources are getting scarce in general these days.

     

[Troy]

I couldn't find any reference on their site to what it uses to provide buoyancy other than "gas". It is a heavier than air vehicle though and one of the design requirements is that it can't take on ballast after off loading cargo other than surrounding air. It sounds like there's a system to expand and compress whatever gas it contains (no venting so it never needs more).

Since it's a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects) project you can be sure that it has military uses. I did a Google search and came up with some additional information:
"Relying on deep-water ports and billion-dollar airports to move its men and machines keeps the Army stuck in molasses mode. It can take weeks -- even months -- to get a division ready to fight. Take the 4th Infantry Division, for example; it missed out on the first months of the Iraq war, waiting for its gear to take the slow boat in from Turkey.

Darpa, the Pentagon's mad science division, has a typically far-out solution: a gi-normous airship that can take an 1,800-person "unit of action" anywhere in the world, without infrastructure, in four days."
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001043.html
That page also has a link to a PDF of the DARPA specifications.

However, it appears that Darpa killed the funding for the project in 2006 but maybe the project isn't quite dead.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/walrus-hunted-to-extinction-by-congress-darpa-02102/
And there's another that may take its place.
http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/spy_blimps.html?c=y&page=3
This article states: "Edward Pevzner, Aeroscraft marketing manager, will say that buoyancy would be managed in part through the compression of helium."

The initial phase of scaled testing was for a model capable of lifting 30 tons (a C-130 carries 22 tons I believe). I'd say that's probably what we're looking at on the Aeroscraft site. The goal is one that can carry 1,000 tons which makes it way more effective than trucks and probably most ships. One article also mentioned landlocked countries with little or no trade. Interesting. I can just see a giant Nike blimp now. How about a mobile Wal-Mart super store?

Troy