this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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This is why ultrasized cargo airships need to be a thing. Just sling that bad boy underneath a kilometre long hydrogen dirigible and fly it to its destination.
Or, historically, when you’re building a new factory, the first thing you do is build a rail connection right next to it
This is also good, but, on the other hand, airships are awesome
A rail line that can handle a 280 foot piece of cargo would be heaven for high speed adoption with how straight it would have to be.
Oh the humanity
if you look at the history of what happened to each Zeppelin airship you get a really good idea why it's a bad idea.
LZ1: damaged during initial flight, repaired and flown two more times before investors backed out causing the ship to be sold for scrap.
LZ2: suffered double engine failure and crashed into a mountain. While anchored to the mountain awaiting repairs a storm destroyed it beyond repair.
LZ3: built from salvaged parts of LZ2. Severally damaged in storm. After LZ4's destruction LZ3 was repaired and was accepted by the German military who eventually scrapped it.
LZ4: suffered from chronic engine failure. While repairing the engines a gust of wind blew the ship free of its mooring and struck a tree causing the ship to ignite and burn to the ground.
LZ5: destroyed in a storm.
LZ6: destroyed in its hanger by fire.
LZ7: destroyed after crashing in a thunderstorm.
LZ8: destroyed by wind.
LZ9: this one actually worked and survived for three years before being decommissioned.
LZ10: caught on fire and destroyed after a gust of wind blew its mooring line into itself.
LZ11: destroyed while attempting to move the ship into it's hanger
LZ12 & LZ13: both flew successful careers before being decommissioned a few years later.
LZ14: destroyed in a thunderstorm.
LZ15: destroyed during an emergency landing.
LZ16: was stolen by the French. ***
LZ17: decommissioned after the war.
LZ18: exploded during its test flight.
LZ19: damaged beyond repair during an emergency landing.
LZ129: the Hindenburg.
LZ127: retired and scrapped after flying over a million miles.
LZ130: flew 30 flights before being dismantled for parts to aid in the war effort
The problem is with airships and aerostats in general is you need a massive balloon just to lift a small amount of weight but the larger you make it the more susceptible to weather it ends up being. With the amount of surface area a balloon that's a 1km long has you would have to spend a considerable amount of energy just to stop it from blowing away in the wind, as inefficient as it is the truck may actually use less fuel because of this.
That said, the Zeppelin NT has, as far as I know, a perfect flight record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
We've made a lot of advances since the early 20th century, believe it or not. I don't think using semirigid airships as both cargo transports and "satellites" needed for temporary communications purposes over a large area such as a disaster zone where cell communication has been lost would be out of the question now.
The biggest advancement they made was making it smaller. Zeppelin NTs are a fraction of the size of what Ferdinand von Zeppelin was designing in his day. Because of their smaller and the switch to helium Zeppelin NTs has a miniscule payload capacity at 4200 pounds. To put that into perspective that's the same payload capacity as a Ford F250. Even with their reduced surface area and modern flight controllers controllers the Zeppelin NTs still haven't solved the weather issue as they are restricted from flying in winds greater than 22MPH and when VFR is not available.
And that's only the bed capacity. An F250 can tow over 20,000 lbs depending on the trailer design. Most trucks and SUVs can tow >4200lbs.
Towing capacity isn't really apples to apples which is why I used payload capacity which is more directly comparable. Don't get me wrong though I'd love to see an airship towing a trailer.
You're comparing a pickup truck to a zeppelin, there's no way to make that apples to apples. If someone needs to move something big with a truck they're probably going to tow it, not try to load it into the bed.
I am comparing payload weights because it's directly comparable between all vehicles. I am not sure if you understand payload weight fully. This is the rating for everything you put in the vehicle (airship or not) and includes everything from people to the trailers tounge if you are towing. Just because your truck can tow 20Klb does not mean you can exceed the payload capacity. A lot of first time RV buyers learn this the hard way when they buy a 10Klb trailer to tow with their 2018 F150 only to find out there isn't even enough payload capacity left over for the driver because the tounge weight is 1000lb. Air ships (and aircraft for that matter) use the same payload capacity calculations where again anything put inside the vehicle counts towards the payload including people. This is why we can directly compare the two vehicles payload capacity.
No, comparing a zeppelin with a pickup will never be a direct comparison.
How are the payload weights between pickup trucks and Zeppelins different then?
They are fundamentally different types of vehicles. But putting that aside, if you want to compare the largest payload that each vehicle can transport you wouldn't just use the pickup truck's GVWR, you would also include it's towing capacity. There's a reason 90% of the time people use a pickup to haul something, they're towing.
Yes because the 1920s-1940s are famously indicative of reliable hydrogen based airship transport
Sure, throw out a perfectly good idea because technology hasn't advanced at all in the last 100 years.
They aren't very good, and they probably can't be. You're limited by the laws of physics on what they can carry for their enormous size. The Hindenberg was the largest of them, but including passengers and crew together, it carried less than 100 people. They scale really, really poorly.
We can improve on old dirigibles somewhat with lighter weight materials and engines. We're ultimately limited by the volume of the lifting gas, and we're just not going to add that much more capacity. Even if someone figured out a vacuum dirigible (which would be very vulnerable to a puncture), it'd only improve things marginally. It's an interesting engineering challenge, though.
One thing where dirigibles might be useful is windmill blades. Blades aren't that heavy, but they can't get much bigger while being transported on highways. Constructing the blades on site is another option, so we'll see which one wins.
Science and engineering aren't magic that makes everything better over time always, and people need to stop acting like it does. There are physical limits that we can't breach. As another example, we haven't significantly improved on the drag coefficient of designs by Porsche or the Chrysler Airflow back in the 1930s. There was a design Mercedes came up with a while back that's based on the boxfish that did reduce it further, but its frontal cross section is so high that it doesn't matter, anyway. (It's also ugly as fuck, but that's a different matter.)
Isn't the more recent direction airships?
Lifting volume and flammability (is that a word?). It's just a very volatile gas and we're not going to magic that away with fancy tech. There are more reliable ways to move freight through the air.