Massive new AIRSHIP to enter commercial service at British dirigible base An enormous airship built for the US forces has been bought back by its British designers and is to go into commercial service based in old Blighty. Regular Reg readers will already be familiar with the ship, formerly designated as the first of the US Army's* planned fleet of Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) …
It is always better to compress air to take on as extra ballast than to compress your lifting Helium. Since the COSH apparatus is shrouded in much mystery I am not convinced that this is not exactly what it does.
As far as usefulness goes: Any tracking outfit will have 50 tons of water available wherever they operate, and they might benefit greatly from getting 50tons of equipment delivered in exchange.
Simpler would be to use a balloon with hydrogen that can be easily generated and cheaply disposed of to provide the marginal extra lift required to allow the ship to land. But flammability is a concern as the Hindenburg demonstrated - could a small balloon with the hydrogen be isolated from everything else, as opposed to the big helium balloon, so as to reduce this to tolerable levels?
Putin's actions in Ukraine could well see a sharp reversal in US military spending. It's just the thing the hawks have been waiting for.
So, the LEMV may be resuscitated yet. I can't see it making it as a commercial offering without a military option.- too "different" to shift units to a world of conservative buyers without the USA guaranteeing spares and support for the next 30 years.
"Putin's actions in Ukraine could well see a sharp reversal in US military spending. It's just the thing the hawks have been waiting for."
But I can't see airships being the way to project your military force. Even allowing that before a war breaks out there's no problem with anti-aircraft weaponry, the speed and payload balance is still too limited. A C17 can carry an M1 tank or equivalent at five times the cruising speed of the Airlander and has rough field capabilities. Even at 50 tonnes payload the Airlander wouldn't be able to carry an M1 tank, and it would take around ten hours from (say) Germany to Ukraine, or fifteen from the UK.
You'd need a vast fleet of AIrlanders and plenty of notice to move stuff any worthwhile volume of men or materials, and to be confident that the prospective enemy wouldn't attack your rather vulnerable airships pre-emptively.
Interesting to see this is not a dirigible, so not much like a Zeppelin at all.
IIRC British Airships started in the sixties and had a few design that had potential but the company didn't last in spite of interest from the military and industry.
I hope this one gets somewhere.
As an aside, my dad who was a keen cyclist before the war; had a bicycle made from the tubing that was part of the spares supply for the R101 framework, I think it was stainless steel but not too sure about that.
Hey a downvote does that mean the OP has downvoted my post rather than look up the word dirigible in a dictionary or does it mean there are two people out there who share the same incorrect definition of the word dirigible.
Honestly I really want to know what these people think dirigible means. I'm fascinated by the possibilities.
" The massive envelope maintains its shape by internal gas pressure, blimp-style, and is intended to generate extra dynamic lift over and above that from its helium filling as the ship flies along."
Without having read a dictionary definition of dirigible but having been taught (possibly before you were born) that a dirigible as opposed to a balloon or blimp has a framework to maintain it's envelope shape whereas a balloon or blimp or this airship uses the gas pressure to maintain it's envelope shape, a deliberate design feature to increase it's potential lifting ability.
Or maybe I read it wrong!
I don't bother down voting people who disagree with me, I can be petty, overbearing , arrogant or violent but I try hard not to be childish.
As parts of the basic structure have a permanent shape but the shape of envelope above is determined by gas pressure perhaps it is a semi-dirigible?
"dirigible (dɪˈrɪdʒɪbəl)
adj
1. able to be steered or directed
n
2. (Aeronautics) another name for airship"
A semi-dirigble would therefore be an airship that is not-quite-steerable or maybe steerable only to the left and not to the right or maybe only to the right and not to the left...
Now, as to the structure or lack thereof, the word would be "rigid" (or "non-rigid" or "semi-rigid" as may be the case)..
@Chris G what you were taught was wrong, which only goes to show that you shouldn't blindly believe everything you are told. I would also suggest that you now question everything else you were taught by the person who taught you that.
Dirigible has always meant capable of being directed since before their were airships.
Oh and yes you are arrogant. Why do you assume you are so much older than I?
"It's true, vessels along Airlander lines are quieter than jets when you're standing next to them. But when you're standing on the ground, ducted props driven by Centurion V8s at a few thousand feet wouldn't be as quiet as a cargo jet at stratospheric cruising altitude."
Ah, but the noise nuisance from jets isn't caused when they are flying at stratospheric altitudes, but at low levels particularly when taking off and flying. So if noise nuisance were the only criteria (and it isn't) Airlander would have the jet beaten.
For me the biggest issue for the airship is not to be measured in terms of its impact on the environment, but in the environment's impact on the airship. Airlander like all blimps is affected by wind to a much greater degree than heavier than air jets. Reliability of service would be much lower than a jet, so it's markets would be restricted to those where such matters were not particularly important.
USE
Getting anything heavy around the third world is a nightmare. THis is where the sweet spot is IMHO i.e. getting equipment to third world minerals.
Also getting the minerals out is a nightmare too. Taking High value low wieght minerals such as Tantalum, Gemstones...
VARIABLE BOUYANCY
Steam has an attomic weight of 18 so converting water to steam would add bouyancy nicely, and its much lighter to keep it warm, rather than holding helium at pressure.
KEEP TETHERED
Why not keep the thing tethered to the ground and just use it to lower the axle weight. I love the concept of the Balloon Assisted Donkey (BAD) pulling a tonne along some mountian track. (But not on a windiy day!
I assume this is some sort of elaborate joke that is far too subtle for me.
You think keeping steam hot (not warm) takes less weight than storing helium?
For a start you don't have to keep the helium under pressure. It's perfectly happy at atmospheric pressure. The only pressure/volume issue might be at low altitude (ie taking off and landing) which is covered in the article. Of course the lower the cruising altitude the less the issue.
As for keeping steam hot, not only do you need the means and fuel to heat the contents of the envelope hot, but there would be the added weight of insulating the envelope. Without that steam contacting the envelope would condense. Unless of course you were going to heat the entire envelope skin to over 100 degrees centigrade, which would probably be even heavier than insulation.
Go on build us a model that could lift itself let alone carry a decent payload.
Load it up with aid, fly to [insert an African developing nation name here], plonk the aid, take a load of asylum seekers as ballast, fly back. Charitable donations pay for the kerosene on the way out, traffickers' fees - on the return leg...
Added benefit - most of the asylum seekers get sent back to their motherland on BA flights, thus supporting the flag carrier and also making sure that the ballast pool never runs out at the destination...
Apologies, I have an acute bout of cynicismitis this morning.
That could solve the buoyancy issue you know?
One Brandreth or Fry as self-loading cargo
Supply said cargo with a mirror and some millet
They will gitter like budgies for hours on end, thus
Supplying all the hot air one could ever need, but....
getting them to stop may be a problem, and you could be faced with a Flying Dutchman/Masque of the Red Death scenario, where they would roam the skies for eternity, listening to utter drivel.
On second thoughts......icon says it all.
Given the large surface area, the fact that these will generally operate above the cloud ceiling, and solar panels can now be made with lightweight plastic substrates, has anyone looked at making these things solar, or at least hybrid?
I mean, sure it'll add to the cost, but in for a penny...
"I mean, sure it'll add to the cost, but in for a penny..."
On the contrary, although the power sums for using solar power look good due to the large surface area, the last thing you want to do is pioneer new power trains and control gear when you're already on the cutting edge of airship design. As a commercial venture you can't afford delays caused by building in too much unproven tech, and I'd guess that's why they are using diesel engines. When the airframe design is proven, you've found a market and sold a few (and there's more money), that's when you look at PV coatings, high efficiency electric motors, hybrid power control systems.
Hydrogen is very troublesome in several ways:
-its production is very "carbon-intensive", as they say; whether it's a big problem depends on your views, but it would negate much of the low-carbon pitch on which the airship program relies
-it's very flammable; although its confinement inside a big baloon or unreactive helium would help in-flight, the proble reappears when you vent it off... or when you refill the tanks, for that matter.
-it's very difficult to store efficiently -not to mention safely- for a long period of time, especially in the kind of volumes needed for an airship.
Carbon intensive? Are you serious? Hydrogen is cheap as water compared to helium, which really is a scarce resource and can only be obtained by cryogenically distilling large amounts of natural gas from some wells, which is at least as carbon-intensive.
Hydrogen is widely used in industry, so ways to store and manage it are well known.
The Germans ran completely hydrogen-filled airships for decades before serious problems, using materials and technology way inferior to what are available now.
Hot air? As any balloonist will tell you it takes a of fuel to keep a normal sized envelope full of air hot. Look at the size of that envelope. How much exhaust do you think those little diesels will produce. Not forgetting of course that you would have to filter out all the heavy crap from the exhaust, noticed how diesel exhaust gases don't rise into the air very quickly? Much heavier than helium.
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