By P Gosselin on 2. April 2022
Green hydrogen powered dirigible could revolutionize long haul cargo transport worldwide.
More than 80 years ago, the Hindenburg Zeppelin LZ 129 exploded and crashed as it approached landing at Lakehurst New Jersey on May 6, 1937.
The behemoth 250-meter long vessel rigid airship had been in service for just under a year. At the time, numerous such vessels had been produced and employed with relative commercial success between the 1900s and the late 1930s. But the dramatic, fiery explosion of the Hindenburg spelled the end of dirigibles as a mode of transport.
Green resurrection
That may be about to change. In the latest video, Die kalte Sonne’s Energieschau features California start-up H2 Clipper, which wants to bring the dirigible back to life with “a 100% green 20th century version of the hydrogen dirigible”.
According to the company’s promotional video, the new vessel uses “green hydrogen” for propulsion and with it the company hopes to transform air freight and shipping worldwide.
Using liquid hydrogen and fuel cell technology, the H2 Clipper is claimed to “operate efficiently at service ranges from under 500 to well over 6,000 miles” and travel at 175 mph. It would be able to “deliver goods directly from a factory in China to a distribution center in the U.S. in less than 36 hours.”
The H2 Clipper also boasts a massive cargo volume capacity of over 265,000 cubic feet (7,500 cubic meters), which is “8 to 10 times more cargo space than any other air freighter”.
Air freight cost less than a quarter of traditional
The cargo transport cost: between $0.177 to $0.247 per ton, which is “less than one-quarter the cost of traditional air freighters”. Moreover, using today’s modern navigation technology, it could transport unmanned.
According to H2 Clipper’s site:
By using modern fuel cell technology, fresh water is the H2 Clipper’s only operating by-product. It is not only 7X to 10X faster than a ship and 4X less costly than an air freighter, but also the only climate pledge friendly alternative for long-haul transport.”
Sounds highly promising and thus may be a great example of an effective and even impressive way to put green energies to use.
They will, of course, not use nitrocellulose dope with aluminum powder and iron oxide pigment.Hydrogen fires are colorless, it was the smokeless powder and thermite fabric stiffener that was burning.
Of course they are ignoring that hydrogen has to be generated and is the fuel as well as the lifting gas. All of this is not cheap. Costs HAVE to be considered from cradle to grave, just as it has to be done for wind and solar, and also ethanol for gasoline corruption.
No, no, no – it’s way cool. Way think about costs?
Jim, how many times have we shelved these concepts?
Didn’t we work a proposal for Mars exploration that involved a floating instrumentation platform?
They also wanted to be able to deliver to rural areas where ground anchors weren’t installed (military). It would take a pretty robust anchoring system to hold down a 250M long balloon with hundreds of thousands of pounds of buoyancy. Plus you need to be able to add weight if you are running it at say half load
Amazon is using copter like drones to deliver freight. Of course their freight isn’t measured in hundreds or thousands of tons.
. . . and, trust me on this, the H2 Clipper dirigible will never be able to carry “hundreds of thousands of tons” in a single shipment.
Back of the envelope calculation – to be the approximate equivalent of the Boeing 777-300 series (most used long distance air freighter), it has to be able to carry a bit more than 76 metric tons.
That’s just comparing cruising speeds – the airplane has made more than three trips while the dirigible has made just one. There would also be three turnaround cycles for the dirigible, too. (Far more than that. Just “landing” one takes much more time than landing a jet plane – I spent a couple of hours watching the Goodyear blimp “land” some years ago.)
Also, like EVs – where’s the infrastructure? There absolutely is none right now for handling cargo dirigibles. How much to convert an airport to a dirigible port? Assuming you can, which is unlikely – moving people will still require planes, and the two types won’t mix at all well in the same crowded airspace.
Significant separation must be maintained. Look at LAX and Carson.
Same reason we don’t have bus stops combined with race car pit stops.
yep, this is exactly why we stopped making them
not fast enough to compete with planes, too expensive to compete with land/sea
also, if you want bulk cargo, you need a whole cargo terminal like a dock, with cranes for shipping containers and etc
and lifting capacity is hard-limited by the available lifting surface area
and if you think the Hindenburg was a disaster, just imagine a floating cargo ship in high winds knocking over skyscrapers like tinker-toys
You can operate the dirigible like a sub. Suck out hydrogen and replace with natural air to change the buoyancy characteristics. Not dissimilar to a hot air balloon releasing hot gasses (replaced by cooler air) to drop altitude. Make the interior a number of chambers and you can control the lift ratio. Is it practical? That’s a different question. I assume the bean-counters have concluded that it’s doable.
And by “suck out” I mean recompress and push back into the tank. Though I suppose they could release it too if it’s the end of the trip to consider it “fuel”
The devices you mention are called ballonets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballonet
They do have limitations as they are not passive devices.
Dynamic buoyancy whether in liquid or gas is a metastable condition in that you must be constantly adjusting your density to attempt to maintain “neutral buoyancy”. Any scuba diver will know this. The Scuba Diver’s ballonets are called BCDs (buoyancy compensating devices). If you are poorly trained you will eat up your available air supply quickly.
The exact same system is deployed on any navigable LTA and on many high altitude long duration balloons.
It’s considered bad form to be venting primary lifting gas to adjust altitude. Lets not suck out any hydrogen. That was the primary advantage of rigid shelled dirigibles, they could maintain aerodynamic shape by using internal bladders to hold the hydrogen and segregate it from the ballonet chambers. But, these have their weight penalties.
I hope they’re not using hydrogen as the lifting gas.
From the H2Clipper website…
Quote:”The H2 Clipper utilizes 100% green hydrogen both as a lifting gas and as fuel.
Well you see, green hydrogen is comprised of 100% organic unicorn farts, therefore it is generated magically and is impervious to lightning.
Green Hydrogen is like green wood – it doesn’t burn as easily.
So it is safe.
That’s how hydrogen works, right? 🙂
“as a lifting gas”
That doesn’t sound good.
Oh, the humanity!
The Hindenburg, whether from ignition of leaking H2 gas or the flammability of the “dope” covering the fabric, is the least of the problems with airships.
The US Navy had a small fleet of rigid airships using helium lifting gas and lost all but one to weather-related accidents.
Not to worry. When we eliminate “climate change”, our ideal climate will have no “weather related accidents”.
My good friend was president of Cargo Lifter, a German endeavor based in Raleigh, quite a few years ago. It was going to build these but went belly up. One of the reasons was the Germans couldn’t decide anything and everything just took too long to do. The money just ran out. My friend was exasperated.
One of the biggest issues is loading and unloading. For every ton you take off as you unload it, you have to replace it with a ton of something else (generally water) or it will go rise up like any balloon would. It does make sense, especially for the military which was one of their primary markets.
The loading and unloading is not really a significant problem – just anchor the airship securely to ground anchors or towers, load and unload all you like, and then release the anchors when you’re ready to fly. It’s just like loading a ship or an aircraft, except that gravity works in reverse with lighter than air design.
‘cept ships don’t sink as you unload ’em. The ship analogy would be more accurate if you had to unload them in dry docks.
Ships do move upwards as they are unloaded. Look up “plimsoll line”. They still have to be tied to the pier, or at the minimum to the bottom with an anchor or buoy to be loaded or unloaded.
Duane, neither making fast to a pier or anchoring have any control over the verticle movement of the ship. However, both have to allow for the estimated rise and fall of the ship and normally must be monitored so that the lines may be adjusted if necessary.
In theory yes, but that really never worked according to my friend. The added strengthening to accommodate anchors resulted in a pretty hefty weight penalty. The best solution was to balance weight in vs weight out.
They also wanted to be able to deliver to rural areas where ground anchors weren’t installed (military). It would take a pretty robust anchoring system to hold down a 250M long balloon with hundreds of thousands of pounds of buoyancy. Plus you need to be able to add weight if you are running it at say half load.
They also looked at recompressing the gas to reduce buoyancy. But who knows, they never even got a functioning scale model built so the best, final design was never known.
I was told the key to understanding aircraft design is that in
building them lighter you were making them stronger which is
why they went to aluminum & composites. As such, you
wouldn’t want any extra weight. Is that true for aircraft as well
as blimps?
Lots of practical problems. Returning empty, or flying empty to pick up cargo, requires significant ballast to avoid flying too high. Needing to anchor prevents one of a dirigible’s prime features, being able to lower straight down to a random location out in the middle of nowhere with no reasonable anchors.
It’s not a practical problem that isn’t already faced by ships, who also need to take on ballast (typically water ballast) to retain stability when unloaded.
Dirigibles never need to “be(ing) able to lower straight down to a random location out in the middle of nowhere with no reasonable anchors”, any more than a cargo aircraft of ship would need to, or ever actually do such a thing. Dirigibles have always utilized ground facilities, including ground anchors, hangars, and such. Where on earth did you come up with that one?
You propose that airships bring a big excavator arm to load up dirt while unloading cargo? It’s a poor analogy with ships and ballast water.
Many proposals for airships tout their ability to deliver and pick up cargo at remote locations because of the vertical lift capability.
if you fly it in to anchor it then its buoyancy to set to the height of the anchor , when you add weight to it it will sink to the ground …
In North Vancouver, B.C. in what was known as Cypress bowl, a steep forested (old Douglas fir) piece of wilderness a 1000ft+ above the sea with a view o the whole city and harbor, I once owned an acre that I bought for $6,000 in 1969. I sold it for 10,000 in 1974. Years later, giant trees were cleared for construction using a dirigible so not to damage the properties in that tract.
Yeah, they could be useful.
Balloon Logging was replaced by helicopters-easier to deal with but it was effective biggest thing was using helium as the lifting gas-not cheap. Wind was the enemy of all balloon/blimp/Zepp. ops. As I recall some used hydrogen but again, you have another set of problems.
With a 170 ton capacity, about 150 cubic meters of water would be all the ballast you need. Every 2200 pounds you take off, add a cubic meter of water. Could even use temporary bladders to fill, then as you add cargo drain and remove the bladders.
Gee — maybe you could vaporize the water to provide lift and then recondense it to land.
At night, they could illuminate a bullseye painted on its underside. This should work especially well in red neck territory.
Another problem with airships – blimps, balloons, dirigibles – is that they don’t deal well with bad weather and can’t easily fly at high altitudes to avoid being blown around. The illustration at the top of post shows a ridiculously small propeller and totally inadequate control surfaces. One can only hope that the unmanned option works out so lives aren’t at risk when on runs into a typhoon on its way across the Pacific.
Hmm. Unmanned eh? Perhaps this is exactly the craft you need to get small numbers of luxury EV’s to their destination?
The Hindenberg did not “explode” – it burned. Just watch the film – the fire starts near the tail and progressively moves forward.
Beat me to it – it just burned rapidly – had it exploded it would have been a huge bang.
It would also have burned even if they were using helium as the lifting gas.
Uuum . . . methinks that qualifies for the phrase “a distinction without a difference”.
I am highly skeptical of their low transport cost, especially due to their proposed use of so-called “green” hydrogen. Did they even consider other fuels? I doubt it. This looks like just one more in an endless stream of costly Greenie schemes, scams and dreams.
Except that unlike with wind and solar we know hydrogen fuel cells work, NASA has been using them for decades to power spacecraft.
Nasa does what is necessary regardless of cost as there is no second chance for them.
There is also little comparison between solar panels people put on their houses and the ones Nasa puts on spacecraft.
well, to generate power on the shuttle and some rockets … no satellites …
A space craft is tiny compared to cargo lift vehicles. The number of vehicles built is tiny too
Most of the major car manufacturers have been producing, selling, and maintaining fuel cell vehicles (FCV) for more than a decade. They’re highly practical, with the major limitation being relatively few retail hydrogen fueling outlets available. If the C-store industry were to start developing such outlets, the sales of FCVs would increase a lot.
That they have a few experimental models is not in doubt.
However the problems with them far exceed just the lack of refilling options.
That’s very lovely except for the kmown and finite amount of Platinum on this Earth – there simply isn’t enough of it
Unless someone’s found something else that replaces Paltinum in catalytic cells?
Actually hydrogen fuel is really cheap compared to gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel, and has been for a long time even before the recent runup in oil and gas prices. Fuel cell power is extremely efficient in terms of work performed (miles driven or flown) per unit of fuel consumed. Hydrogen fuel is adjudged on GGE – gallons of gasoline equivalent.
Flat lie, DuhWayne. Hydrogen is roughly 4 times the cost per gallon as gasoline. While hydrogen fuel cells are more efficient than an ICE engine, the efficiency difference doesn’t make up for the cost difference.
Before you tell another lie, you should know that I did my Masters on the thermochemical production of hydrogen
Meab, what do you think of direct hydrazine fuel cells?
Hydrazine is fun stuff, too.
The WHOOSH of out of control flames destroying the landing are and any leftover hydrazine poisoning anyone not in a protective suit.
Potential to solve Hydrogen’s low volumetric energy density. Much research still needed on cost-effective catalysts. You still have to input energy to make the hydrazine, it’s an energy carrier not an energy source.
I understand the input energy, which is > output energy. And I’ve read a bit about the catalysts.
I was just wondering whether air-hydrazine had been studied. Waste water vapor and N₂ is attractive for high-pollution basins, such as LA.
Natural gas fuel cells would be the ticket.
So maybe hydrogen isn’t the best fuel.; use whatever is. The particular fuel is irrelevant to the basic concept.
Worse than That, look at the date. An April fool joke one day late. .
Color me very skeptical. Not because of hydrogen/fuel cells and all the green nonsense. Because of the market. Most goods cross the Pacific by container ship, cheap but relatively slow. Average transit time is about 15 days Shanghai—LA. The stuff that needs to be fast goes by expensive air cargo, average transit time about 15 hours. There isn’t a lot of stuff in between for a journey taking a few days.
Tweener solutions are seldom viable commercially.
Except if the are unmanned and the cost is even close to shipping by cargo ship they would be a boon for just in time processes.
Haven’t we recently demonstrated that JIT isn’t as good an idea as it seemed to the professors who extolled it?
It worked pretty well before the Wuhan flu & Brandon stole
the election. That was like going from the 21st century back
in time ~100 yrs. A lot of other things aren’t working that well
now either, just as they probably were hoping it wouldn’t!!!
It’s not JIT that is the problem, it is outsourcing to far away, strange lands. Works when it works, but when something changes, like a random disease for example, you suddenly find that those countries now want to keep all of the product that they manufacture for themselves. Screw contracts. Or politicians do their political thing and fall out, and suddenly your supply of something else vital just stops flowing. Or maybe your crane operators become lazy and you can’t unload all those containers as fast as they arrive, or the latest fashion in climate politics means that only super-expensive, mostly non-existent trucks ae now allowed to access the ports to try to clear out the container backlog.
Before worrying about long distance transport methods, maybe thought needs to be given to repatriating manufacturing. Maybe multi-sourcing might be a good idea too. Then perhaps the hydrogen that would power these devices might be better re-purposed into fuel-cell driven trucks and industrial drones.
It would be easier to make freighters unmannned.
Do you know how much maintenance a ship needs while
it’s en-route? They could probably do a lot of that remotely,
I guess, in the same way we have smart houses.
Cost for ocean shipping is around one cent per ton. That’s for an LCL – less than a full container. Quite a bit less for full containers (which are charged by volume, unless you have some very dense stuff in it). This will NEVER compete with ocean cargo, unless the idiots that want us to go back to sails realize their fantasies.
AIR freight, possibly. At best, they are costing their fuel and maintenance costs for the dirigibles. Nobody can make anything more than a WAG at the costs for amortizing the capital invested in new facilities, operating costs for those, rakeoffs for unions and politicians and Greens, insurance, etc., etc. etc. My estimate (my WAG, if you will) is that they’ll run somewhere between $3.00 and $5.00 per kilogram.
(By the way, their press release is cockeyed. It says that the cost per TON is between $0.177 and $0.247 per TON, “less than one quarter the cost of traditional air freighters.” Air freight currently runs between $4.00 and $8.00 per KILOGRAM. I find it far more likely that the PR flack was given the estimate in kilos, and heard tons.)
You must be joking.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/transport/publication/air-freight-study#:~:text=The%20demand%20for%20air%20freight%20is%20limited%20by,of%20air%20cargo%20typically%20exceeds%20%244.00%20per%20kilogram.
That’s the “all in” cost, not just operating the planes. Which is what you need to compare to.
See my other comment, though, after I found that their PR figure is actually per ton-MILE.
From your link:
also:
I didn’t read any further.
I beg your pardon. I apparently did not read well enough, myself. That report is from 2009.
The figures that I gave in the comment were from here: https://www.freightos.com/freight-resources/air-freight-rates-cost-prices/#definition
(Even this site is obviously dated – “the world’s largest cargo plane” is currently sitting in several pieces at Hostomel Airport. It’s certainly not carrying any trains now, or for the foreseeable future…)
Considering the vagary of the weather and the susceptibility of such craft to this the just in time folk would be crazy to rely on this. Even a modest crosswind on such a large surface would throw all time tables out of the window and a strong one would probably have the thing going nowhere at all.
Rud, at 15 hours for air cargo and 36 hours for this system, it’s a choice similar to ‘Next Day’ or ‘2-Day’ or ‘Ground’ which may take a week or two. There’s a cost difference for each.
People are making those choices right now. Gotta have it now? You pay more for ‘Next Day’. Others choose ‘Express’ but a day or two is cheaper and the extra day or so doesn’t matter vs the extra cost of ‘Next Day’.
And then there’s ‘Ground’ when cost matters most and arrival isn’t so critical.
This will be an ‘Express’ option where it’s significantly faster than by ship, but much cheaper than air freight.
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My objection is more along the lines of ‘Green’ being the design driver for the airships, not the transportation option niche where it could be profitable.
Go for the best design and wherever ‘green’ works, use it there. Otherwise, pick a better design option.
Plus you can always ship it by the US Postal service and it never gets there.
But would it be 36 hours?
The US airship fleet was scrapped because of disasters because they couldn’t out run a storm.
Weather forecasting is lightyears ahead of what it was back then but they’d still have to deal with them.
How fast are they?
It goes 175 mph which is > enough to be able to
avoid/maneuver through bad weather. Also, being able to use
a180 mph jet stream as a crosswind vs it being a headwind
is especially huge at this speed. So good weather forecasting
before it took off would be needed to make this “fly”.
An advantage of being a very fast HUUUUGE helicopter
drone is that it can hover/loiter without having to move
forward to keep air moving past an airfoil. If the destination
airport has unexpected storms, you could shut off your
forward propulsion several hours out to wait out the weather
& congestion, all while “riding” a jet stream forward- FOR FREE!!!!
175 mph is claimed. Not yet demonstrated.
Probably honestly calculated – as the maximum speed. As with airplanes, efficient cruising speed is going to be at least 20% lower.
175mph air speed. Look up jet stream speeds one day.
Or just do a few US west coast to EU round trips, and wonder at why sometimes going one way is so fast, but the same trip in the reverse direction takes SO much longer.
Actually, I flew in one that was 180mph, with my
ground speed down to 160mph- about as fast as
a Ferrari. If it was a tailwind, I would’ve been
flying ~ 3x as fast. The jet stream made for a
long day!!!
It isn’t because of the jet stream, except during rare occasions when said stream dips way low – and then only if you’re flying at 35,000+ feet. The Hindenburg’s normal cruising altitude was 200 meters, or 656 feet.
“Like Graf Zeppelin, Hindenburg often used the technique of pressure pattern navigation which had been pioneered by Hugo Eckener during LZ-126’s crossing to America. Pressure pattern navigation takes advantage of the Coriolis effect, which causes wind to circulate in a counter-clockwise rotation around areas of low pressure in the northern hemisphere. During a westbound crossing of the north Atlantic, therefore, an airship can pick up a tail wind by skirting the northern edge of a storm, and during an eastbound crossing the ship can do the same thing by skirting the southern edge of a storm. Rather than avoid storms and fronts completely, therefore, Hindenburg’s officers frequently took advantage of them to increase speed and efficiency.”
If you want to know what you’re talking about regarding rigid airships (which aren’t blimps), a really good starting point is https://www.airships.net/, the source of the above quote. It is a fascinating technical/historical site on rigid airships, which collects a raft of technical data (including operational information) along with the actual history of the rigid airship industry – which spanned decades.
Jet streams are irregular, variable and discontinuous. They often make big loops to the north and south and sometimes cut off into circular eddies. They are turbulent and can produce strong vertical winds. There would be large uncertainties about duration of flights and arrival times that would have to be managed.
BS Meter has pegged at max. Making an inference here: They perhaps intend “farming” water from the atmosphere in flight, supplemented with lake, ocean and river water and converting to hydrogen for fuel.
The thrust required to move an airship at 175mph will be enormous. The engines required will likely be of a weight that will be heavier than the planned available lift capacity. The airship frame alone to support the aerodynamic loads associated with flight at 175mph, or even 120mph (cruise???), would be enormously heavy and eat into available payload. Aerostatic lift from the hydrogen is best at sea level. If flying in the flight levels above 10000ft, aerostatic lift is greatly diminished as too is any atmospheric water recovery.
Airships have always had issues with storms: storm fronts in particular. 175mph would be nice, but an airplane can land. An airship of this planning has to be able to go around the storms. When storm fronts extend for hundreds of miles moving west to east at 30 or 40mph, and many times extending 1/2 the width of the US, it seems like the proponents of this design need to reconsider the logistics.
Airfoils for flight control at 175mph are way different to controls at 5 or 10 mph in hover mode. I suppose the designers are planning on some sort of vectored thrust. Good luck! More stress on the airframe that has to be factored in, in addition to gas pumps, gas lines, water pumps, water ballast containment systems, gas pressurization systems, flight balancing systems through water and gas mass transfer at high volumes. Factor in that no material will ever perfectly contain hydrogen. There will always be some leakage and any leakage will have to be constantly vented to avoid accumulating in any one location and this will be almost impossible to avoid.
This airship design as depicted in the link is unlikely to ever get out of the hangar.
I was just going by the article, Gunga Din.
Perhaps the 36 hrs is puffery; downhill with a tailwind and sunny shies.
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Further down this thread were two good points (forgot who posted)
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a) It bypasses the Port of LA and the bottleneck there
2) If it was such a good transport idea, the zippy zepplins would already be all over the place because it’s an old technology.
I thought those were the best pro and con I’ve seen on this thread.
I admit, anything that bypasses LA, Portland or any other Left-Coast port is a point in it’s favor. 😎
“Bypasses it” – to where, exactly? Left Coast or not, the infrastructure just does not exist.
Just needs a hook loop to hold it down. The balancing act can be managed by lowering the cargo a skid at a time. Pump the hydrogen out of the bags and compress it into a cylinder to make the ship less boyant.
Not that I think airships are practical for any common purpose – most of the promos mention military, peacekeeping or disaster relief situations where a functional port or airport is not a given.
Still they cool to watch, not practical just cool.
Like wind turbines.
Have you ever lowered something from a significant height (“significant” being much over 3 meters or 20 feet)? Without a set of belay lines, the load starts swaying. Not a good thing if you’re talking about a ton of mass.
Happens even on a windless day, from a rock stable platform. Just the basic physics of a pendulum; as it gets longer, it moves faster. A completely unnoticeable movement at the top turns into a nasty one as it approaches the bottom.
There are plenty of open areas, railroads, and interstate highways all over – not just on the Left Coast.
Assuming the docking and servicing facilities are constructed for the airships, what else do you need besides material handling equipment?
Oh, yes, open areas. Where you have to build the docking facilities, hangars and shops for maintenance, warehousing for transfer to “last mile” road transport (possibly the roads to handle the traffic), and – very important – control towers for airspace deconfliction.
That is if you want to replace the current air freight system.
Now, some people have mentioned their use for delivering to disaster areas where the infrastructure for airplanes and roads is partially or completely unusable. Intelligent use there, not what the company is advertising. Some very tiny use for remote areas that are not accessible for time critical goods. Again, not what the company is advertising.
I’m not going to address railroads or interstate highways. Things get QUITE hairy when something that they are not designed for uses those.
See above. My estimate (WAG) is around 25% cheaper, which is significant. However, it assumes a support infrastructure that is as mature as that for airplanes. Otherwise, you could be shipping your memory chips from Taipei to LA – then cross-loading to a 777 (at a different facility) to get it in four or five days after ordering it for your plant in Kansas City. At maybe $0.25 less in total cost than just having it travel on a plane all the way, and available in one or two days.
How many years, and how much capital, to build a dirigible port? Multiply that by around 5,000 to match the number of public airports in the US.
“There isn’t a lot of stuff in between for a journey taking a few days.” Well, duh, that’s because there aren’t any dirigibles engaged in large scale cargo transport. If they were, then there would be “a lot of stuff in between”. The economics are obvious – 1/7 the transit time of ships and 1/4 the cost of heavier than air freight.
Claimed, not yet demonstrated.
Not even WAGged.
Heck with market research, lets just assume that as long as we build, customers will start demanding it.
Well, duh! Where are all these economical airships if it’s such a no-brainer?
I’ve been seeing articles like this for literally decades and nothing’s come of it.
A lot like fusion.
Your evidence for that is?
I’ve purchased several camera related things from camera sellers in Japan – lenses etc. Usually for about 60% of what I’d have to pay here. The shipping cost is usually about $30 for fedex air for a one to two pound package and it takes about 4 days total. Considering the cost of the item – 200 to 600 dollars – the shipping cost is minor
Long distance supply chains need to die – I hate financing the Chinese slave factory and green alarmist should be calling out all that unnecessary, “dangerous” CO2 baked into every purchase from overseas.
As a shareholder, it would be remiss of me to not point to this competitor. HAV (hybridairvehicles.com)
Do these people have a learning disability? Why would you not use helium? Using hydrogen is just stupid.
What is used for propulsion, not lift, is what is under discussion. I imagine helium is used for lift. It is the safest.
All I am seeing is talk of hydrogen. As a fuel for ICE propulsion it would be good. Went to their webpage, and as others have said it will need massive subsidizing to work out. Wonder if Elon would be interested.
I looked at their website and it suggests to me that they do use hydrogen as the lift gas.
But then it weighs twice as much.
and probably costs orders of magnitude less
You can make hydrogen. Not so for helium (at least for the next 40 years until the fusion plants go on line…)
H2 weighs the same as He1.
The answer is in the story. They use it because it is “GREEN”.
Green! Yay! Brandon is illustrating to America how stupid green is. Hopefully enough people are paying attention.
2hotel9, when have enough people ever paid attention? Beliefs, regardless of how they’re created, always win over reality for many persons, sadly.
Regards,
Bob
True. Emotions win people over regardless of the facts.
That’s why there is a degradation of business and education systems to promote diversity and inclusion rather than critical thinking and merit.
The oligarchs are trying to dumb down the populace so as to lead them through emotions rather than facts.
It appears to be working considering how well lockdowns and vaccination passports worked for a longer time period than I thought possible.
Emotion has been well proven over millennia.
Yep! In the Spokane, WA. area a week ago. Even in establishments where mask-wearing has been ignored for months, about 15% were still wearing. I asked a young employee (nicely) if he was aware that they were more or less useless against flu viruses, got a “uhuh” and a walk away. ???
Because helium is relatively scare and much more expensive. Do a little more research before calling people stupid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_gas
We have already seen the results of using hydrogen. Lets us not learn from history! That is always fun.
That was more the result of the materials of the skin and paint. If you put gunpowder on cloth, and then have a high static charge that is inadvertently discharged through the cloth to the mooring tower, a really vigorous fire will result. Make the skin something non-combustible and protect the lift bags from oxygen and there won’t be a problem.
Of course, if someone starts shooting at you, you’re a sitting duck on a bomb, but hopefully it won’t be used in combat.
Having both crewed and flown airships in the 90’s I can guarantee you will get shot at. We would find bullet holes and occasionally spent bullets every time we did a lift week normally once a week. Chicago and NW Florida seemed to be the worst culprits. And who would shoot at a cute flying whale?
Should be “lift check” …
A short search on “hindenburg paint” turns up all sorts of interesting factoids.
I’m not part of the anti-gun tribe but it is impossible to ignore that there are a lot of idiots with guns. Consider Extinction Rebellion or the new group of idiots deflating SUV tires or the not inconsiderable number of malicious jerks spreading malware.
The idiots in gov’t. far outnumber the idiots with guns, and do FAR more damage.
One major disaster, not the fault of the hydrogen. It is rather like Chernoby having killed nuclear power all on its own.
I heard that Wiki had become ‘woke’. Should it be trusted, like we trust the msm?
It would be just as green to use helium for lift, hydrogen for power, and a great deal safer. However, unless this gets subsidized heavily, it will crash and burn as a business. Hopefully not literally!
Most commercial helium is a bi-product from natural gas wells. The helium has to be separated out at the well-head and piped off separately for processing and purification. Most gas producers don’t bother with it because it is a lot of trouble for very little product. Because of that natural gas association, greenies wouldn’t want to be associated with it. (We euphemistically say it is a “mined” resources to ease the consciences of the resident greenies.)
Of course those of us who work with superconductors bathed in liquid helium wish more sources were available. Our provider got the stuff we use from a little place in northern Ukraine which unfortunately no longer exists. I have about 3 months to figure out where I am getting liquid helium before my magnets become wires and the research they support stops. Also more sources might bring the price down from the $3000 for 100liters to something less traumatizing to the budget. (Research ain’t cheap.)
$3000/100 litres? So $30,000 per cubic meter and still it’s not worth it for some producers???
That is liquid cryogenic helium. The gas volume to make it is much larger. 750 to 1.
Because it’s twice as heavy as hydrogen. Hydrogen is a diatomic gas with a molecular mass of about 2. Helium is an inert gas with an atomic mass of about 4. Further, helium is more unreliable in availability, with on-again, off-again scarcity. Hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis of water or through chemical processes.
Helium can be produced by one of the many fusion reactors that are about to come online.
Then the question is: What’s the excited state half-life for the resulting helium?
When those four protons fuse and then two gender-bend to become neutrons, there is a gamma release. Then they almost never combine in the ground state, so they keep emitting gamma rays until they settle to the ground state. Of course looking at the data, the half-lives are on the 10s of nanoseconds. So after a few hours the gamma detections will go down to background. The only constraint then is how they are collecting and segregating the helium nuclei. I haven’t looked at the various technologies to see what they do with the alpha emissions.
The first generation of fusion reactors, if they ever happen, won’t use proton-proton, they’ll use Deuterium-Tritium because it’s a factor of ~1000 easier. The Deuterium can come from sea water but the tritium will have to be made by bombarding Lithium with neutrons – that is if there’s any Lithium left after it all gets used in batteries.
Currently tritium is $30,000 per gram, GRAM. A ton of coal produces about the same amount of energy as a gram of tritium (let’s pretend D2 is free… But it ain’t) last time I crunched the numbers and currently fusion reactors don’t even make enough power to keep themselves going mush less have any surplus. And are horrendously expensive, so that the fixed costs alone on your electric bill would be ruinous.
None of the big labs will lead to anything useful, already obsolete really.
Smaller labs and private startups are using newer higher temperature superconductors in tighter spaces with much more concentrated fields. That’s where the breakthrough will happen.
“Helium can be produced by one of the many fusion reactors that are about to come online.”
Hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha
But the lifting effect is proportional to the molecular mass of air minus molecular mass of gasbag fill. Air has molecular mass about 30 (mid way between O2 and N2 so it is 28 units of lift for Hydrogen vs 26 units for helium . -Not much difference really
H2 weighs the same as He1.
Hydrogen gas is H2 atomic weight 4 while helium gas is monatomic so atomic weight also 4.
You might want to check you H2 mass. H is a hair over 1 (1.00784), so H2 is a hair over 2.
Where are you getting that from? Not correct unless it’s Deuterium.
Chances are they’ll have to use Helium at least over the USA – Hydrogen is still banned for use as a lifting gas.
Brandon will fix that up in short order – the various blimp companies just have to make the appropriate transfers through Hunter.
He is in short supply and expensive.
Hydrogen is half as dense as Helium.
not much difference in lift =see above
Hydrogen gas is diatomic Emile helium gas is monatomic. So they weigh the same.
Because helium costs roughly $300 per mcf. It’s a rather scarce gas. How much helium would one of these heavy lift 250 m long puppies hold? anyone?
helium is somewhat rare, thus expensive. It cannot be manufactured, unlike hydrogen, as it isn’t part of any common molecules.
Hydrogen is really abundant on Earth. Helium is not. What is here is the product of radioactive decay. Unlike hydrogen, you can’t just “make more”. There is a very limited supply, and when it is gone, it is gone.
There’s a helium shortage going on for a few years now.
Here we are, Helium is again in short supply (scitation.org) Reading this article it appears much of the problem is mismanagement/incompetence at BLM here and same at Amur in Russia. Imagine that.
Might make sense for an unmanned vehicle
Because helium is expensive and scarce but either option is stupid anyhow.
From what I am reading when we get Bureau of Land Management and EPA out of the helium business that would change. Still a stupid idea over all.
Well, why not? As long as it’s not taxpayer funded / subsidized. Maybe one of the tech billionaires will step up to the plate – the first test load could be a Apple toys. One advantage not mentioned in the story is that if it’s really economic, the Left coast’s death grip on cargo handling could be broken.
I think this is one of the more interesting aspects, not being held geographically hostage by existing ports and deep harbors. I recognize there’s a lot of momentum behind the existing ports in terms of multi-modal infrastructure and connections, but I don’t think it will take long to realize they are not optimal locations for distribution, and getting a dirigible near a port city, with complex air space, people, etc. is not ideal. There’s typically other rail and road hubs in the middle of a country, often with a willing and under-employed blue collar workforce.
As far as the amount of cargo it can handle, it should still be thought of as an
aircraft, not a ship. In a paper exercise where we were fighting a simulated
war in the Middle East, it took a day or two for 250 C-130s to distribute all the
cargo from a normal sized ship, ~15T (half a semi load) at a time. It’s for that
reason, the Army needs a port nearby for conflicts half way around the world
& land routes to supply the troops locally as air supply is only a temporary
solution as it also burns a lot of gas. Logistics, logistics, logistics!!!!
Since Afghanistan was land-locked, we had to rely on Pakistan for
most of the material. It’s obvious the Pakis didn’t mind Al Qaeda too
much as that was where Bin Ladin bin hidin’ & every $ given them
would be used for the Indian border. I knew from the beginning a
sustained operation wouldn’t go too well as the logistics were bad &
Al Qaeda could hide in Pakistan, like the VC went into Cambodia.
There was no rock & a hard place!
“Green hydrogen”
Only it isn’t ‘green’ at all. It takes energy to get the Hydrogen from a molecule of water. And of course, that energy is unlikely to be entirely from unreliables.
They want to walk progress back to relying on wind and Sun – beau temps – and now they want to go back to the balloon. That’s fine if time is not an issue, but you cannot run a modern economy on Zeppelins instead of freight aircraft.
Not without some form of rationing and crisis management
Except they are talking about replacing fast air freight, but providing a middle option. Not every suggestion that has green in it is talking about a complete replacement of existing tech…just what comes out of the IPCC’s recommendations.
presume you meant “they are not talking about”…
Balloons, wind mills, and government run centrally planned economies: why do the “progressives” only have failed ideas from the early 20th century.
Hydrogen as the lift? Oh boy…
Not sure. They may have to go with Helium instead and Hydrogen just as propulsion – Hydrogen is still banned as a lift gas in the USA.
The H2 Clipper – H2 Clipper, Inchttps://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/h2clipper.com.icohttps://h2clipper.com
The H2Clipper utilizes 100% green hydrogen both as a lifting gas and as fuel.
Then they won’t be flying it over the USA without a change in the law. Perhaps it’s intended for the export market?
If there is “green” in the label, laws and regulations will be no barrier.
Please define the difference between “green hydrogen” and regular hydrogen?
I’ll have to ask Greta. Maybe she can see
hydrogen, too!!! 😉 😉 😉
Just about every year there seems to be a story about the possibility of a resurgence in Dirigibles. Going back to the sixties.
While I can see the potential for certain limited usages, they would not provide enough profit to make it worth while.
The best I’ve ever seen is a long duration spy station hovering for weeks at high altitude, but satellites have pretty much filled the niche for that.
I can see it as a passenger service, for tourism specifically as a dirigible can provide more space which means either more luxury and comfort or more seating. Considering the longer travel times, I would, if operating a company opt for more luxury and comfort to redistribute money from the middling rich to my pocket. 🙂
The concept of cargo dirigibles and zeppelins always has a predicted time to become widespread of 10-15 years. Just like fusion!
They are building way too many solar farms in California and need a sink for all of that excess power. So they are going to dump it into hydrogen production, flooding the market and thus lowering the market cost. It is not a terrible idea to try and clean up the mess they are making of their power grid.
Energy cost of PV panel production, plus power conditioning equipment, plus electrolysis equipment, plus operation of electrolysis equipment, plus compressor equipment, plus liquification equipment, plus operation of compression and liquification equipment, plus storage equipment, plus transportation of stored H2, plus thermodynamic losses on the whole shebang.
Will this be a net energy source or sink?
Show me the math before proceeding.
The ridiculous part starts with building the solar facilities. Once those exist and, as those is southern California, produce oodles of electricity when it isn’t needed (which CA currently pays other states millions of $ to take off their hands), putting the excess electricity to some kind of use isn’t so stupid.
“Show me the math before proceeding.”
Too late, the government has already spent OUR money on these kind of 💩.
I wonder if they factored in the cost of insurance into their costings? Can’t imagine ANYONE would want to insure them.
That was what I was thinking with the cost of insurance going exponential, even if you don’t have a claim. And once you start having claims, and Gov’t regulated, if you can’t get insured, you might not have a viable business. Assuming the technology actually works as advertised for the price point they are requiring to be profitable.
Load it up with hundreds of Electric Vehicles and spare battery packs and Solar Panels and fly it around the world a couple of times to show off the Green Miracle.
I like it.
Also, do not forget to observe all OHSA safety regulations. (That should help a lot.)
The Hindenburg, for example, used a diesel-powered engine. If the concern today were in fact cost (and this includes all manner of subsidies for “greenness”), then I imagine some sort of diesel engine would be used today as well. But noooo, they want to “save the planet”.
The Zeppelins were able to use ‘blaugas’ for their engines which did not change the mass of the ship when burned. This reduced the problem of getting lighter as the ship used up fuel. They also had a water recovery system from the by-product of combustion as well as water collection from the top of the ship from precipitation. The biggest operational issue for airships is weight management in flight. Read Hugo Eckner’s autobiography ‘My Zeppelins’.
Well managed hydrogen is probably the best lifting gas but regulators and the public will never allow it.
Ground handling is a challenge and would need a mast (but still not easy). Weather also remains a constant issue. Flying in winds over 100 kts is exceedingly difficult.
I am surprised the design has the airscrew at the rear in messed up air from the (small) control surfaces. Having 4 or 6 airscrews on the lower sides that could be turned 90 degrees would give forward and back, turning and some up and down control.
You bring up a good point – this design might just be to hook some gullible green investors.
Maybe there’s an Osprey duct taped to the other side.
Thing is, if it wasn’t for the ‘green’ credentials – such as they are – would they have even bothered with this development? Is it actually supportable as a transport business?
The fact that we don’t have fleets of them already plying the trade routes across the world should answer that question adequately – the technology is hardly new.
“deliver goods directly from a factory in China to a distribution center in the U.S. in less than 36 hours.”
I hope they have a back-up marketing plan because that trade is about to come to a screeching halt.
Airship history is fraught with disaster. The British M101 went down over France on its maiden voyage to India in 1930. Only 8 people survived. Passengers included an A-list of British diplomats and parliamentarians and the airship program was cancelled. M100 which had made a successful maiden voyage to Montreal including a return trip across the Atlantic in 56 hours, was put in its hangar and eventually scrapped.
Anyone thinking airships are a good idea should read “Sliderule” by Nevil Shute. His conclusion is that their economics died with the introduction of the DC-3…..
https://www.airshipsonline.com/airships/r101/index.html
I see it as a very fast-moving HUUUUGE helicopter drone, none of which exists today. Someone suggested it could fill the 2nd day delivery market as
air freight is very expensive. This would act more like a plane. In emergency
situations, it would be more like a ginormous helicopter, going places where
trucks & planes can’t reach. There’s potential with this concept- maybe in
smaller/bigger sizes. The Osprey was designed specifically to as a big
plane/helicopter after the Iran hostage rescue attempt failed. (I think-
regardless who was president- it’s chance of success was quite low- ~5%-
20%, as it was too far for the slower helicopters along with the big
uncertainty of where exactly the hostages were being held. In Vietnam, they
raided a POW camp S of Hanoi & unfortunately it was empty when they got
there.)
In the case of a flight from China to Chicago, where the weather
turned unexpectedly bad at Chicago, the forward propulsion could
be shut down over the Dakotas for an hour or two, letting both the
weather & the congestion clear. The jet stream would then propel it
eastward to Chicago- FOR FREE. Planes can never do that!!
That is one huge sail in a gale!
China to Chicago could go over the North Pole.
I think their pipe-within-a-pipe concept for transporting hydrogen up to 1000
miles is very interesting as it may have other applications
https://hydrogen-central.com/h2-clipper-patented-pipe-pipe-technology-last-mile-delivery-pure-hydrogen/
Windmills, dirigibles…let me hop on my penny-farthing and ride on down to the chemist to get some mercury for my sniffles.
Agreed. What is it with the green blob and their endless fascination with resurrecting past technology?
They are getting more modern. Windmills are 14th century tech. Photovoltaics are 19th century tech. Dirigibles are 20th century tech although it is based on earlier balloon tech.
Pretty soon the greenies will catch up, just give them time. 🤢
I didn’t know PVs were used in the 19th century as they
were still using cat’s whisker’s 100 yrs ago to get non-
inearity. I’m curious to know about what we think as new tech
actually being old tech. Thanks ahead of time.
OOPS- inearity = linearity
Not sure we have enough time for that learning curve!
Digs are c19th tech although they only came of age into the c20th. First Dig flights were in the 1870’s and 80’s.
cyberpunk
That’s the SOTA curve you’re thinking of, I believe.
cyberpunk is real and not some kind of curve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Um yeah, right. The SOTA curve is a real concept that has been in use for some time. Do look up the SOTA or “State Of The Art” curve, it’s been a staple of the cyberpunk genre since the 80’s.
And have the women go down to the corner drug store for some arsenic-tonic to lighten their complexion.
“Moreover, using today’s modern navigation technology, it could transport unmanned.”
Great idea!!! It may be the largest drone built.
The USAF have been interested in using fleets of drones rather than expensive manned vehicles.
Another buyer might be Amazon – imagine a few of these flying around with smaller Amazon drones flying packages from them to the customer’s house!
Super-duper idea. Get funding & you could be the next Bezos!!!
Coat it with Martian Stealth Technology and you have a winner. 😉
I am pleased someone got the reference.
Do the 5-6 containers just dangle underneath? I didn’t see any bomb bay doors in the video to bring them inside…. to challenge the loadmaster.
Or is it going to move fuel across regions when pipelines are forbidden?
Great idea! It could be used in emergency situations to haul a lot
of freight a short distance that can’t be reached by ground or where
there is no runway!!! And it all can be done with this “super-drone”.
Also- evacuate a lot of people who are stranded. The risk over
a short distance would probably worth it. Smaller versions
could also be an option.
That is called a parrafin parrot or helicopter.
Brilliant idea – you could load them up with water and they could be emergency firefighting vehicles for forest fires – oh, wait. sarc
Any low, slow flying in mountainous are is much, much
more dangerous than when doing so over flat terrain. I
know of at least three incidences, one of them fighting
a fire in the Black Hills, where the plane crashed under these conditions. Like them, I was also used to flying
over flat terrain (I refer to myself as a “flatlander”)
Since that is what you are used to doing, it’s SOOOO
easy to make mistakes that can cost you your life
where they wouldn’t have been an issue back at home
base. A big problem is that when you are flying visual,
there is no flat horizon upon which to get a visual
reference. It’s very easy to think you are flying straight
& level when in fact you are climbing & will fall out of
the sky after stalling.
Actually, your idea may be better than you thought as it
could be done remotely where there is no risk of loss
of life. The drone can hover & hit a hotspot far below it,
which is a lot easier than hitting a target flying @ 130
mph. I did 1000s of airdrops- day & night- & can vouch
for what I’m saying.
1st sentence- are = areas
I’ve always been a fan of lighter than air ships. I think the Hindenburg disaster caused an out sized backlash to the technology. I can also see these as a more comfortable form of air travel for leisure travel.
They just aren’t practical.
A personal hovercraft isn’t practical either but I still want one.
The marketing folks at H2 appear to be innumerate (50-60% of the population is, so they’re not alone). A 170 ton payload? That’s 4 semis, big deal.
7,500 m3 of water (specific weight 1) is 7,500 tons. So maybe the thing can transport 7,500 of something with a specific weight of feather down.
Yet another dead end technology re-cycled.
The amount of CO2 “saved” by not using diesel for propulsion is immaterial to a “green world.” I smell a huge amount of boosterism/marketing involved in this informercial.
I like the idea in theory but am a bit concerned about the security. Namely, if China decides they don’t like us anymore they can take these things down with pebbles. We should be very damn careful when pursuing automation just to lower costs. At the same time as we lower costs, we may end up greatly raising risks.
Wow, a 170-ton load!!! Almost as much as 2 railroad cars……
Any discussion of the technical or commercial details is moot if this thing can’t outrun or hide from a squall line. Convective weather is death for LTA (lighter than air) vehicles.
Being “green” does not make something a bad idea; what makes it a bad idea is economics. I don’t care if it’s “green” as long as it works and it’s less expensive than the alternative. Admittedly, “green” has not very often delivered on those things.
This is just a guess, but if someone asked me to design one of these things, it would have a heavier than air gas along to use as ballast to adjust the buoyancy (CO2 would be good). When you wanted to reduce lift you would release heavy gas into ballast chambers and pump the light gas into pressurized storage. Reverse to gain lift.
And the ballast and storage tanks, Tom.1 — what is their weight?
Oh man, I never thought of that.
This assumes a low or zero cost for hydrogen. Similar overly optimistic fuel and overhead costs are used to tout other forms of transportation. It is far from a promise and is at best irrational exuberance, but more commonly an outright confidence trick not far removed from net zero and other nonsense.
A low cost hydrogen economy requires hydrogen generation using low priced fossil fuels, and will do so for at least another century.
You’ll also note that the cost comparison is to other air freighters, not to cargo ships. Compared to heavier-than-air transport, you’d also have to account for the time difference — an airship might take five to fifty times longer to transport the same distance as a cargo aircraft, rendering the LTA ship unsuitable for some goods or locations. Dirigibles required much different support infrastructure than do modern airports, as well as different operational considerations — the differences adding up to much more costs hidden by the writer of the article and promoters of the technology.
They also say “cost per ton.” Note that “traditional air freight” is (or was, before the plandemic) at the lowest $2.50 per KILOGRAM. Or $2,500 per metric ton. Their press release claim is cockeyed.
Ah. Finally bothered to look at their website. The PR flack left off “-mile.”
So, at 6,000 miles, that is a lowball of $1,060 per ton, or $1.06 per kilogram. Which IS about a quarter of the (current) lowball for air freight at $4.00 per kilogram.
BUT – that is only the OPERATING cost. Dirigible port capital cost amortization. Port operating expense. Union wages for, at least, Western countries. Payoffs to union bosses, politicians, “green” activist organizations.
I’ll stick with my lowball of $3.00 from above.
Hmmm… I recall the cargo carrying dirigible or blimp idea showing up every 10 or 15 years going back to when I was in college in the 1970’s, during the first “energy crisis” caused by the Arab oil embargo. Airships were going to make cargo shipping dirt cheap. More recently I saw a design for one that would really work, this time for sure, because it had a double flotation chamber design, looking like two bananas glued together. It may have been the last time oil was up around $100/barrel.
All they’ve done this time is cook up a “green” angle to the same idea that has yet to, shall we say, float.
“All they’ve done this time is cook up a “green” angle” guaranteed to attract naïve investors and government subsidies.
When the program goes bust, the founders will walk away rich, the investors will suffer their loss, the citizens will be poorer (for having had their pockets picked), and a mess will be left for others to clean up.
The only way this ship can travel at 175 km/h is in the jet stream with a 160km/h tail wind.
It’s 175 mph, not km/h. One can’t get away such shenanigans! I did have a
160k (180 mph) headwind for awhile while flying against the jet stream, so
you did bring up a very good point
It will of course be another autonomous vehicle overhead to go with autonomous 18-wheeler trucks and cars on the road with you and battery fires in your neighborhood. Will we add autonomous dirigible chaser lawyers too?
No, the Hindenburg didn’t explode. And I’ll be very impressed if this thing can fly at 175 mph.
There is never any shortage of pessimists who are quick to dismiss every new idea that comes along. If this were an immutable characteristic of the human animal, flintknapping would still be our most advanced technology.
The word is “skeptic”, not pessimists.
And if more were more skeptical of all the the nonsense (costly nonsense) going on in the guise of “Going Green” we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
PS Commenters are asking good questions about the idea’s viability.
As long as there are no tax-payers dollars propping it up, I wish it all the luck in the world.
(But I won’t be investing until those good questions are answered.)
I’m an optimistic sceptic – I always hope for the best but frequently get disappointed.
Nor a shortage of suckers for snake oil.
There is never any shortage of ignorant people that think an old idea is new. The airship predated airplanes by 50 years. The rigid airship predates the Wright Flyer.
While new technology can make an old, discarded idea more attractive, the desire to develop a modern Zeppelin appears to come about mainly from (pseudo) green considerations – not from a reimagination of the concept using updated technology. That’s the kiss of death.
There is never any shortage of optimists who are quick to hare off after every new idea that comes along, without considering the costs. If this were an immutable characteristic of the human animal, we would long be extinct.
I’ve read through the numerous comments and have not seen one from an aerodynamicist or anyone in the industry.
LTA (lighter than air) vehicles are at a distinct disadvantage over than Lighter Than Water vehicles (boats) primarily because the density of water does not change that much due to climatic or diurnal atmospheric changes. The buoyancy of these vehicle and hence their ability to transport mass (cargo) through their respective fluid mediums is of paramount importance. LTAs suffer from needing to constantly adjust their densities. Those nonrigid types (Blimps) have very limited ranges as they must adjust pressure within parameters required to provide structural stability.
If the LTAs didn’t constantly adjust buoyancy they would be popping up in altitudes or dipping down below acceptable levels. This would cause all sorts of undesired weather issues and drastically effect ability to navigate. To allow for buoyancy adjustment all LTAs must carry pressurized gas to replace that which was vented when excess buoyancy conditions existed. This limits range as they have fixed adjustment capability.
An interesting side note as to the classifications of airships.
Type A was rigid and had internal frames to provide structure. They were the Zeppelins and such and suffered from the added structural mass.
Type B was limp and require inflation pressure to provide shape and structural stability.
Type B (limp) eventually became just Blimps
Oh, and BTW try to fly an LTA over a mountain range.
You can have price, performance and safety. But never all 3 at the same time.
Air pressure goes up as the square of the wind speed. You can certainly make a large balloon that can lift weight, but can you make it rigid enough that it wont flog itself to death once set in motion?
175 km/h is hurricane force winds. Dacron and kevlar main sails on a boat quickly flog themselves to death and they are not by any means light weight.
”Green hydrogen”??? I smell a rat. The term “green” can be translated into “we have hidden all the fossil fuel inputs, pollution outputs, natural lands destruction and harmless CO2 emissions in our business model so that all people see are our waving hands and blue skies. Let’s assume the H2 is sourced form reactions driven by electricity from wind and solar – well the rare earth minerals, steel, concrete, plastics, electronics and all of the energy work going into making the windmills and solar panels are almost entirely derived from traditional mining, and energy intensive industry run on fossil fuels. Not to mention all the unaccounted costs of decommissioning and “recycling” (i.e burying) the residual materials at their premature end of life.
If they get to use the term “green” with their implied meaning then they must prove that there is no net use of fossil fuels and no real damage to air, water or land quality in the whole life cycle of this proposal. If they can’t prove that then they can get in line with all the other snake oil salespeople.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t assess the idea of dirigibles as transport vehicles for their own merit, but let’s not pretend they will bring the long extinct rainbow farting unicorns back to life.
You’re right, Andy. They’re parasitic on the fossil fuel economy.
“green hydrogen”
Amazing. After 30+ years in chemistry, I had no idea (!) that H₂ had a spectroscopic signature in the visible wavelengths.
Let’s see, a green color indicates absorbance around 410 nm. Where’s my spectrophotometer?
I think ‘green hydrogen’ is located somewhere in the vicinity of ‘dilithium crystals’ within the Periodic Table. But I’ll defer to a real chemist.
Unobtainium comes to mind. 🙂
Post of the day for this article.
Well, dilithium (Li2) does exist. I’m not sure whether it is at all possible to form a crystalline lattice from it, even with the appropriate temperature/pressure.
I’m quite certain, though, that there will never be dilithium “miners.”
“Not miners, minors!”
Right now the minors in Africa are too busy mining lithium to go go after dilithium.
Thanks for the info. I’ll just have Scotty switch us over to the impulse drive…
Well, if tax-payer subsidies are involved, that would explain the absorbance of $Green$.
The sky’s the limit!
Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander is well advanced. They have demonstrated numerous problems and are by no means assured of success, but their effort is entirely credible. If the dirigible can be revived I won’t be surprised if it’s them who do it. https://www.hybridairvehicles.com