Google Cofounder’s Airship Cleared for Flight

Airships are one of those 'futuristic' 19th century things that just won't die, but then - BEVs are 19th century tech too.

Squids like me have a complicated history with airships.
EVEN today the "V" in squadron designations (i.e. VFA-14, or "Fighting 14) are a vestigial part of a time when we had to differentiate 'heavier than air' ships from their old-school brethren.

Airships are one of those things that people are just going to try to keep doing, no matter how many times they disappoint us.
On the surface, and there's a LOT OF SURFACE!!! there are a lot of advantages to being a blimp.
They have tremendous endurance, offer near vertical takeoff and landing ability, have loads of cargo capacity, you can kit them out with enough solar panels to supply much of the power you would need, AND with computers to do the stick and rudder work they're probably an order of magnitude more controllable in contrary winds and with those pesky temperature variations.

UNFORTUNATELY, science doesn't care about people's feelings.
Helium is a finite global resource, which is becoming vitally important to recover and reuse as it continually diminishes. The helium recovery process 'can' generate a large carbon footprint. You can hide things like that when manufacturing batteries by pretending not to notice where they really come from, but helium has other uses competing for a limited supply.
Surface areas get to be VERY problematic in high winds with airships, and even though they are a lot faster than most terrestrial cargo transport, they're relatively slow when compared with heavier than air ships.

It's a good 'play-pretty' flex for billionaires that don't want to tinker with rockets or set up foundations that rival some nation's GDP, but I wish they would just embrace the old-schoolocity of the thing.

 

A lot of technology spin offs developed from airships.

Light weight aluminum alloys and aircraft construction was developed by Zeppelin AG and Goodyear.

We owe the long line of transmissions that developed from ZF (Zahnrad Frabrik) Transmissions from the Zeppelin Company.

 

Vast majority of successful technological innovations were preceded (sometimes long preceded) by unsuccessful versions, so that idea does not provide much lift.

Helium extraction was long wedded to petroleum exploration because they made deep enough holes and paid attention to what came out. Largest recent discovery in Zambia 2016 was a different geological setting, and now people will begin looking for it differently

Scientists unearth one of world’s largest helium gas deposits | News | Chemistry World

Helium processing will forever (?) require large supplies of electricity. That will eventually mostly limit production areas I suppose. The right geology is not everywhere but it's not rare either. The big zipper in Africa (rift valley) figured in hominid evolution and here it comes again...

Current production leaders are US Russia and Qatar (all linked to petro) but future leaders may not be.

Cryogenics (including medical MRI) uses about 1/3 of production, Several other uses are in percentage teens including 'other' which includes party balloons and blimpy things. With geo exploration and electricity supplies sorted out, I expect a future with much less constraints on use. Nobody (including me) thought that way 10 years ago.

Later this century it is not highly speculative to anticipate lots of Helium airships. Perhaps none of the current versions, but change happens.

 

Helium production requires cooling to -250 oC, and there's the electricity requirement. Hydrogen, even more buoyant, merely requires electrolysing water. Much smaller electrical requirement. However, hydrogen always looks longingly at oxygen on other side of Periodic Table, and goes boom whenever that possibility arises.

So hydrogen blimpies are inconsistent with oh the humanity. Helium (when produced at 5x current scale) stands ready. Does it stand ready on earth? Now it seems so.

Second most abundant element in universe, blah blah blah, but most of it is in fusiony stars. Going after helium there is way worse than jumping out of Graf Zeppelin. Or not jumping, either one.

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This is a blimp thread, not fiber optics, but I'd like to understand better helium's role in fiber optic manufacture. That will also increase 5x or so this century. Because we need to move more zillions of ones and zeros from one place to another.

 

Lighter-than-air ships were a thing in Germany before heavier-than-air vessels were introduced by Wright Bros in US circa 1908. The 'lighter' thing focused on aluminum, a very light metal with poor strength properties in pure form.

A German Carl Berg developed aluminum alloys with Cu, Zn, Mg and other metals, but it looks in hindsight that he was flailing about. Berg died in 1906 having not made a good-enough Al alloy. But he opened door on this research. German Alfred Wilm in 1906 made 'duralumin', 90% Al 10% Cu and a little Mg and Mn. It is still the basis of flying, with newer tweaks on tempering and anodizing. It is beyond me to know why they have not been celebrated. Bad decades in Europe then, I guess.

Anyway, strong light-metal alloys have been available for both types of flight for many decades. If a newer much better recipe has been developed ... Secret!

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All we who fly commercial benefit from duralumin in the wing box. We may also enjoy carbon composites on vessel skins; it's a different thing. Lighter-than-air ships structured with duralumin may carry you later.

 

7075 alloy with zinc has almost completely replace the copper bearing 2024 as the allow of choice for aircraft.

Until WWII and the capture of a complete example of the Mitsubishi A6M2 fighter, better known as the Zero, superduralumin, developed by Sumitomo in 1936 was a military secret in Japan. The ultralight alloy allowed the Zero to outperform nearly all fighter aircraft that the Western countries flew.

 

My first thought:

The Golden Compass movie.

Bob Wilson

 

Yep....
Until you started knocking holes in it.

The A6M got its nickname from the Japanese calendar.
It was adopted in the year 2600 (1940) and became the Navy Type 00 Carrier-Based Fighter.
It was, absolutely THE BEST carrier based fighter in the world bar none, BUT(!!!!) there are always trade-offs.
The A6M was light, unarmoured, and the fuel tanks were not self-sealing, and in just a few years it was being outclassed by superior aircraft AS WELL AS being outfought by inferior aircraft using superior tactics.

 

When I was I little girl, I met my dad's old friend who was in the navy during WWII in the Pacific. He told us that the Japanese Zero was easily signed that reveal that it was approaching because its engine sounded like a washing machine.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_Machine_Charlie
This is because in rural America, which is where many Americans still lived in at the time washing machines were often gas powered.
Washing machines sometimes sounded like Ford Trucks and Tractors because that's how they were powered.

"Washing Machine Charlies" had several reprises during Whiskey Whiskey Deuce after Guadalcanal in part because they were effective, and in part because the IJN lacked RADAR for targeting and shot spotting.
Our enemy would send cruiser launched float planes into hostile air at night dropping flares over airfields, and looking for enemy ships.
They DID have the world's best optical gun targeting systems, and they were masters of the integrated nighttime naval engagement - for a short while.

 

How fast are they compared to planes?

 

Powered by a combination of electricity and helium, the aircraft promises zero-emissions flights by 2030.

 

I'll be curious to learn the loading logistics.

The classic problem with airships for cargo is that they can change weight very suddenly (lifting or dropping a pallet or container) but they can't necessarily counter the buoyancy change as quickly as the materials transfer. So there are lulls between transfers.

This has always been the functional rate limit for airships in logistics links.

 

With comfortable distance from this subject, I wonder why airships do not release water ballast to balance rates of cargo loading.