[HN Gopher] The U.S.S. Akron and U.S.S. Macon, America's "flying...
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The U.S.S. Akron and U.S.S. Macon, America's "flying aircraft
carriers"
Author : ilamont
Score : 198 points
Date : 2022-04-21 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.airships.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.airships.net)
| AaronM wrote:
| Those are making a comeback.
|
| In January, DARPA successfully launched a Dynetics' X-61A Gremlin
| UAV from the bay of a Lockheed Martin C-130A cargo aircraft. The
| program is aiming to demonstrate the efficacy of low-cost combat-
| capable drones that can be both deployed and recovered from cargo
| planes. DARPA envisions using cargo planes like the C-130 to
| deploy these drones while still outside of enemy air defenses;
| allowing the drones to go on and engage targets before returning
| to the airspace around the "mother ship" to be recaptured and
| carried home for service or repairs.
|
| https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/flying-aircraft-carriers-are-to...
| Someone wrote:
| I would like to see the economics of that compared to
| disposable, single-mission drones. Those wouldn't have to
| return to the "mother ship", so would be able to penetrate
| deeper into enemy territory, or carry more weapons, or be
| cheaper to produce.
|
| Also, with single-use drones, the C-130 could return
| immediately to fetch another load of drones.
|
| = I think this would only make sense for relatively expensive
| drones (but then, the US Air Force likely has a different idea
| about what is "low cost". For example,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder costs over $200k
| apiece)
| hervature wrote:
| This is a little tongue-in-cheek but also kind of serious.
| But isn't a single use drone also known as a missile? More
| seriously, the operational domain between reusable drone and
| missile must be very small no? Like maybe something that can
| fly into a building before blowing up.
| stirfish wrote:
| Specifically, a cruise missile. Those can look at terrain
| and follow landmarks, among other things.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There's a whole spectrum: UAV, loiter munition, missile.
| It's pretty cool!
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Have a look at the aerostats used in Afghanistan. Just pour
| concrete, tether the balloon high enough they can't shoot
| it.
|
| https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-
| us/news/features/history/p...
| [deleted]
| Someone wrote:
| "Missile" is an extremely broad concept (Wikipedia calls it
| "a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled
| flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor"), but I
| think most people think of a missile as something without
| wings (but quite possibly fins) where the target is known
| at launch time, life expectancy is calculated in, at most,
| hours, and that doesn't cooperate with other missiles.
|
| I wouldn't see a dozen airplane- or (especially)
| helicopter-like drones that get launched with, say, the
| goal of preventing a piece of road to be used by the enemy,
| and that distribute themselves over the to be protected
| area and, Hang around for weeks as missiles.
|
| Because they aren't weapons, I also wouldn't think of
| reconnaissance drones as missiles, even if they are rockets
| that follow a pre-planned trajectory and then crash. That's
| getting close to an edge case, though.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Any military hardware not coming back needs to be
| destroyed so it doesn't fall into enemy hands. If they
| aren't missiles they are at least bombs.
| [deleted]
| Swizec wrote:
| > Those are making a comeback.
|
| With modern missile technology one could argue that fighter
| jets are primarily drone launch vehicles. Sure the drone
| explodes instead of coming back, but still. Flies and navigates
| on its own, launched in air from a mothership ...
|
| Soon they'll start landing back too I'm sure. Reconnaissance
| drones launched from a slower aircraft come to mind as a good
| use case. Or as command and control platforms for swarms of
| drones doing the work.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| That could save a lot of money that goes into navigation tech
| in missiles.
| godelski wrote:
| The recovery thing could potentially resolve another
| K-13/AIM-9B incident, but I'm not sure this will be
| worthwhile. If you have fuel to return you have fuel to chase
| the target longer and to go faster. Personally I only see
| recovery as a useful feature if your weapons are really
| expensive or you want to create air mines. Which the latter
| is really a terrifying thought. It wouldn't be hard to have a
| bunch of drones with explosives create a screen/wall and take
| out anything that comes close enough. Returning things with
| explosives on it is also rather dangerous. You arm them when
| sending them out and if there's a bug they may still be armed
| when returning.
| Swizec wrote:
| Surely there's going to eventually be drones that don't go
| boom? Those would be nice to retrieve
|
| A wall of floating drones that go boom if you come too
| close sounds like a terrifying likely future. Especially if
| they're too small to properly show up on radar
| UberFly wrote:
| Aren't black, radar-resistant zeppelins rumored to be the
| source of silent nighttime UFO sightings?
| satronaut wrote:
| this is the first i've heard of this. links? not trying to be
| a jerk at all; i just like learning more about far out rumors
| like this.
| kombucha13 wrote:
| I couldn't find what he was talking but found this
| interesting pdf that's more or less related to the topic.
| Clearly something close to what he's talking about is being
| considered and researched, at least as early as 2005. https
| ://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports...
| ask_b123 wrote:
| This was a very interesting read. Thanks!
| mizzao wrote:
| (in Protoss voice) Carrier has arrived. (?)
| boringg wrote:
| Sounds like the carrier class from Starcraft
| divbzero wrote:
| There is also the long storied history of the Helicarrier:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicarrier
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Why can't we have cool things like this? Fuel?
| boringg wrote:
| Right? Would be cool. That things feels like its the
| equivalent of the Yamato of the air eventually just being
| one giant target to expensive to operate (https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato).
| EL_Loco wrote:
| One of my favorite cartoons growing up was the japanese
| series "Space Battleship Yamato", where in the future the
| Yamato was rebuilt as a spaceship. Good memories! (I
| wonder, though, if I would still enjoy it, were I to re-
| watch the series)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato_(19
| 77_...
| klyrs wrote:
| Only militaries could afford such a monstrosity. What
| operational advantage would it actually provide? "Looks
| cool" doesn't really cut it.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| What the US Space Force might be actually planning if they
| had unlimited budget, would be a permanent space station with
| unmanned drones and missiles in several sub-carrier types
| permanently hovering over a hostile country.
|
| You control the sea, air, land, and finally space. You would
| have complete dominance that would render ICBM's moot.
| kipchak wrote:
| There's also the arsenal bird's from Ace Combat which loiters
| with 80 of what's more or less the X-47B's strapped to it's
| bottom.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Those are making a comeback.
|
| Various projects have been trying to bring them back for
| something like 2 decades.
|
| So far there have mostly been cancellations, and "slippage"
| (e.g. Lockheed's LMH-1, originally planned to float out in
| 2017, is still nowhere to be seen 5 years later; Airlander is
| supposed to start shipping in 2025 but the last news is they're
| trying to find a new location to build a facility).
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Lockheed's LMH-1, originally planned to float out in 2017,
| is still nowhere to be seen 5 years later
|
| I mean, it looks like a giant floating butt. Maybe they are
| embarrassed to release it.
| AaronM wrote:
| I should have been more clear, the idea of launching flying
| things out of other flying things is making a comeback, not
| necessarily zeppelins in general
| Pxtl wrote:
| Good video on the subject, including the intermediate step that
| never left the drawing board - a 747 crammed full of
| "microfighters" as a flying aircraft carrier for _manned_
| fighters.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drnxZlS9gyw
| UberFly wrote:
| I was first introduced to the fact that zeppelins launched
| aircraft when Indiana Jones and his father escaped in one in the
| Last Crusade. :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm6pFf9XX64
| gourabmi wrote:
| If you find yourself in the SF Bay Area, do visit
| https://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/ . Their docents are actual
| air force veterans with tons of stories. They are so happy to
| chat. I had a great experience.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Lived in the Bay Area for 26 years and only just now figured
| out Moffett Field is named for "Admiral William A. Moffett,
| killed in the crash of U.S.S. Akron".
|
| I knew however that the dirigible hangars off 101 were for the
| Navy's airship fleet.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Designed and built without digital computers.
| mech987 wrote:
| It's a bit tangential, but the role of small disposable drones in
| warfare will only increase in the coming years. They're one of
| the more terrifying (non-WMD) weapons in terms of capabilities in
| my mind.
| pault wrote:
| I believe weaponized drone swarms should be categorized with
| chemical weapons, cluster munitions, etc. A few thousand drones
| carrying shrapnel explosives and trained to recognize humans is
| basically a mobile minefield. It's terrifying, really. I expect
| they will be used heavily if WW3 comes around, with devastating
| effect. Much like horse mounted cavalry encountering machine
| guns for the first time at the beginning of WW1. I'm not a
| weapons expert, so I could be wrong, but it seems so cheap and
| practical I can't think of a scenario where it doesn't happen
| eventually.
| simonw wrote:
| If you're in the Bay Area I can thoroughly recommend a trip to
| the Moffett Field Historical Society museum, which has all sorts
| of fascinating things relating to the history of the USS Macon
| which used to operate out of Hangar One right behind the museum.
|
| I wrote it up for my website the other day: https://www.niche-
| museums.com/105
| antattack wrote:
| I saw old footage, posted on yt, with three sailors lifted of the
| ground when Akron was landing, tragically, two could not hold on.
| I recall that, because I though to myself that today's news would
| not have shown all the gruesome details, specially with such
| sensational commentary.
|
| EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jshHDM93PSE
| bombcar wrote:
| Today's news wouldn't - but news back then was more akin to the
| wild-west of YouTube.
| a4isms wrote:
| If flying aircraft carriers of this vintage interest you, "The
| War in the Air"--written by H.G. Wells in 1907 and published in
| 1908--is chock full of them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_in_the_Air
|
| > It is (like many of Wells's works) notable for its prophetic
| ideas, images, and concepts--particularly the use of aircraft for
| the purpose of warfare--as well as conceptualizing and
| anticipating events related to World War I.
| jotm wrote:
| Would've been great as party ships
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLJKjYUF1vI
| kbrannigan wrote:
| Remember those Alien invasion movies, where you have a huge
| mothership that releases a swarm of smaller attack vessels.
|
| Like a hive releasing bees.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Or https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Carrier
|
| This was always my favorite way to play, just get 100 carriers
| and watch all the drones buzzing around.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hours and hours of my childhood were spend amassing Carriers
| in Starcraft 1, on moneymaps. My friends and I would build
| massive defenses (because moneymaps favor that sort of
| thing), then stomp the computers, inevitably betray each
| other, and have to try and wear down each others' defenses
| with wave after wave of carriers, battlecruisers, guardians,
| etc... Never learned to play the game properly, but it was
| great fun to throw around massive resources like that.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > then stomp the computers, inevitably betray each other
|
| Are you my friends?
| ajuhasz wrote:
| The Black Box Down podcast has a great episode on the crash of
| the Akron[1]
|
| [1] https://roosterteeth.com/watch/black-box-down-2020-5-28
| tinybrotosaurus wrote:
| As long as hydrogen is (ignorantly) banned, airships will never
| make a comeback. LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, using hydrogen as lifting
| gas, flew 1.7 million km safely. [1]. Built in the 20's, without
| polymers or hydrogen sensors or electronics of any kind. The real
| problem, however, is not the lifting gas. It never was. Airships
| biggest nemesis is the wind. Luckily we have it solved today with
| radar and satellite imagery.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin
| singingboyo wrote:
| I'm not sure wind and weather are solved. Planes, ships, and to
| a lesser extent cars/trains are still lost to weather quite
| frequently. Yes, we can track it better, but people still have
| to go about their lives in inclement weather. Knowing where it
| is does not mean we never have to deal with it.
|
| Also, as others have noted elsewhere, hydrogen is still an
| absolute pain to work with. It's better than it was, but that
| doesn't make it safe. In-flight fires are still a nightmare on
| planes - it'd be much worse if the only thing keeping you in
| the air is a massive hydrogen balloon.
|
| All this is apart from airships being slow, unwieldy,
| relatively low altitude, etc.
| marcodiego wrote:
| https://youtu.be/AkCF0m2IKP8?t=249 Working safety was a joke at
| the time. I wonder how many people died building this thing.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| From a systems point-of-view the main problem is that there is no
| redundancy in a single balloon. Once materials are designed that
| are lightweight, strong and cheap enough to design one of these
| with many small balloons, they would be less vulnerable,
| especially in warfare.
| outworlder wrote:
| > there is no redundancy in a single balloon
|
| But there is? Balloons like this were made out of a bunch of
| bladders. What you see externally is just the skin.
| yosito wrote:
| It seems to me that with enough bladders made of some kind of
| lightweight fireproof material that prevented the explosion
| of one from exploding the others, blimps could still be
| useful as floating aircraft carriers for drones or other
| types of aircraft. And equipped with modern laser anti-
| aircraft weapons I bet they would be less vulnerable to
| attack in certain military applications as well.
| jandrese wrote:
| The caveat is that volume and surface area have a cube
| square relationship, so the smaller you make each lifting
| bladder the more weight you spend on material vs. what you
| get in buoyancy. Lots of small balloons are less efficient
| than one large balloon.
|
| Also, it turns out that it's actually pretty hard to shoot
| down airships. They don't "pop" like rubber balloon,
| bullets tend to pass right through the thin skin. Missiles
| don't detonate because they don't meet enough resistance,
| etc... you get slow leaks that might eventually doom the
| airship, but only after its lifting gas reserves are
| depleted.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| But it's difficult to carry fighter planes with much smaller
| balloons.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Honestly, we are probably there if some crazy billionaire
| wanted to fund it.
|
| We've come a long way in terms of lightweight and strong
| materials from the 1930s when these were constructed.
| brimble wrote:
| Zeppelins look so surreal. So much work put into a now-totally-
| dead technology, making these huge, incredible machines, that
| were only favored for a very brief span of time.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Zeppelins still fly out of Friedrichshafen, their original
| home!
|
| Those of you who lived on the SF Peninsula 10-15 years ago may
| remember seeing the Airship Ventures Zeppelin NT. That company
| eventually went out of business and the Zeppelin was dismantled
| and taken back to Friedrichshafen, but I got to ride on one of
| their last Bay Area flights. It was the coolest thing ever.
|
| I posted a couple of comments here in recent years with more
| information and links to my photos from the Airship Ventures
| flight and information about their current operations in
| Friedrichshafen:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21662645
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18897492
|
| Airships.net also has an article about the Zeppelin NT used in
| the Airship Ventures and Friedrichshafen flights:
|
| https://www.airships.net/zeppelin-nt/
| bombcar wrote:
| Today I learned that the Goodyear Blimps are now Goodyear
| Zeppelins, at least in some cases.
| mNovak wrote:
| If we're pining for lost technologies, I still vote for the
| large ekranoplan (ground effect plane). It just seems so
| unreasonably effective.
| RangerScience wrote:
| A fun observation that strongly relates to this:
|
| In fiction, alternative universes always have more zeppelins.
|
| (It's actually one of the most common ways to visually signal
| "alternate timeline").
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Definitely! There's a fun YA trilogy by Kenneth Oppel called
| Airborne that takes place in an alternate-history midcentury
| where heavier-than-air flight has never been invented and
| people cross the ocean in giant airships.
|
| He also invents some other stuff like the gas "hydrium" (non-
| flammable, much more bouyant than hydrogen) as a plot
| element, and that also helps sell the overall practicality of
| airship travel. But yeah, it's a good read-aloud to kids or
| even just a quick one for yourself, similar to something like
| the Hunger Games.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Now I'm imagining some sort of steampunk multiverse tour
| guide character popping into our universe with a bunch of
| customers, like "And here we see the local-minimum zeppelin
| universe. Notice how, due to the fact that their flying
| vehicles are heavier than air, they've isolated them to areas
| outside their cities for safety! They call these 'air-ports.'
| Yes, like a regular port, but for the air!"
| Aperocky wrote:
| > isolated them to areas outside their cities for safety
|
| I'd imagine massive balloons are no more safe over the city
| than current aircrafts.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I dunno, in a hypothetical world where massive balloons
| had had as much R&D put into them as a modern aircraft,
| they maybe they can use the loitering advantage to make
| skyscraper landings possible. Anyway, these travelers
| come from a steampunk universe, so theirs are probably
| unrealistically capable.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Fun fact: The builders of the Empire State Building aimed
| for this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-
| magazine/docking-on...
| jacobolus wrote:
| Cars/trucks, diesel-electric or electrified freight trains,
| diesel ships, jet planes, electrical wires, and pipelines,
| (and tracked vehicles, helicopters, nuclear subs, rockets,
| cable railways, etc. in niche roles), are practical means of
| transportation given our particular available resources,
| history of infrastructure investment, etc., but they are
| familiar and boring to make a speculative fiction story
| about.
|
| Coming up with an alternative set of constraints where other
| kinds of transportation (zeppelins, space elevators,
| pneumatic tubes, conveyor belts, ornithopters, futuristic
| sailboats, teleporters, ...) are economically/physically
| viable is fun for authors and readers.
| Sharlin wrote:
| If only Earth had, say, 1.5x the atmospheric pressure and two
| thirds the gravity. Lighter-than-air vehicles could be super
| feasible (but so would heavier-than-air ones!)
|
| Zeppelins could be absurdly useful on Titan as well as the
| upper atmospheres of Venus and even the gas giants.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Actually wouldn't it be the other way around with gravity?
| Higher gravity would make planes _less_ practical while
| airships don 't care because their lift comes from buoyancy
| that scales with gravity.
|
| That said, thicker air would also mean more lift from
| wings, wouldn't it? And more drag for the massive cross-
| section of an airship.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Two thirds the gravity, so thicker air and less gravity
| is what I meant. Gravity doesn't affect buoyancy, but it
| does affect the weight of the payload. Lower gravity
| means you lift more stuff with the same buoyant mass,
| right? And yeah, thicker air would mean more drag, but
| also more thrust from the engines.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| But they're so cool. Maybe with advances in materials science
| this kind of design could be viable again.
|
| Probably not likely with the looming helium shortage, lack of
| replacement gasses (?), etc. But I want my sweet 1920s art deco
| retrofuturist reality :(
| jakear wrote:
| Could some combination of a partial vacuum and hot air
| substitute for helium? Of course you'd need some ultra light
| superstructure to maintain the giant vacuum, but that's
| "just" engineering.
| masklinn wrote:
| > hot air
|
| Air at 175C has about 40% the lifting power as the same
| volume of helium (or hydrogen). That is very hot, and
| requires a lot of energy to sustain. Lower temperatures
| will reduce the lifting power.
|
| That's why thermal airships
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_airship) are very
| uncommon, the lift inefficiency means the structural weight
| doesn't scale, and the cross-section makes them very hard
| drive and control.
| jandrese wrote:
| I guess because airships were already out of fashion by
| the time the atomic age came, but a thermal airship where
| the heater is just a radioactive pile seems like a super
| simple design.
|
| The enormous bulk of the airship is an advantage in this
| case, you can reduce the amount of shielding you need by
| keeping the radioactive stuff way off on one side of the
| vehicle and the people on the other. Of course it would
| still be a nasty cleanup effort if your airship crashes,
| and you have to deal with radioactive materials when
| landed or when doing maintenance. From a practical
| standpoint there are issues, but in theory the concept
| works.
| robonerd wrote:
| A reactor powered thermal airship is a fascinating idea!
| I'm skeptical that it could work though. Some quick web
| searching suggests that 3 MW burners for hot air balloons
| is fairly typical. I'm not sure how light and powerful a
| reactor could be made, but wikipedia says the Convair
| NB-36H had a 1 MW air-cooled reactor weighing 16,000kg.
| That reactor definitely wouldn't work then, too heavy by
| far and not enough power output. But that was a prototype
| reactor in the 50s.
|
| Also, shielding seems like a big concern even if the
| reactor can be built light. To stop neutron radiation you
| need light nuclei like hydrogen, making water or concrete
| (containing water) popular choices. These are heavy and
| bulky though, not conducive to airships.
| jandrese wrote:
| That's why my consideration for shielding was mostly just
| distance. Certainly a concept for a time when people were
| more cavalier about radiation safety.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| The revival will truly come when we accept running them on
| hydrogen for lifting gas.
|
| It can likely be done quite safely, as the gasbag of the
| Hindenburg was very flammable and could have burned even if
| full of helium.
|
| And hydrogen is basically free.
| Someone wrote:
| Possibly better: don't use gas, but enclose an aerogel such
| as aerographene
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerographene) in a strong
| enough, airtight shell and pump out most of the air.
|
| One of the engineering challenges will be to make this
| strong enough to withstand the air pressure without getting
| too heavy. That may require finding new aerogels. You
| probably also want an aerogel that doesn't burn easily.
| robonerd wrote:
| More airships crashed due to poor weather than fires,
| including the Akron (which was the deadliest of the airship
| crashes.) Or consider the USS Shenandoah, a helium airship
| that was torn apart by the weather. It didn't burn though,
| and most of the crew survived (29 of 43).
|
| Perhaps with modern weather forecasting this threat could
| be effectively mitigated, but I have doubts.
| bombcar wrote:
| We lost a decent number of planes to weather before we
| understood the dangers, and now we're pretty effective at
| avoiding them.
|
| Not sure all can be mitigated, however.
| robonerd wrote:
| Planes have numerous advantages, particularly in the
| early days when mass adoption was still in question:
| Foremost, they're smaller. This means when one crashes,
| fewer people die (remember, I'm talking about the early
| days; Tenerife doesn't count.) Because they're smaller,
| they cost less. That means fewer investors get hosed when
| there's an accident, and it's relatively easy for
| innovators to find funding for new airplanes despite the
| crashes. Because airplanes were so much smaller and
| cheaper, it was even practical for a one or two man team
| to fund and construct their own in their garage; an
| airship is a much more demanding undertaking. Because
| they're smaller, they're easier to store inside during
| bad weather. They're also faster, which makes it easier
| to evade bad weather and also means you don't have to
| anticipate bad weather so far in advance. They can land
| almost anywhere, even in some farmers field, but airships
| can only be moored in a prearranged locations. That gives
| an airplane many more options for dealing with
| emergencies, which contributes to a perception of
| relative safety.
| masklinn wrote:
| The reality is that airships are kinda crap:
|
| 1. they get "free lift" but you need a lot of gas to lift a
| lot of mass, which quickly makes them _extremely_ unwieldy
| as it leads to gigantic cross sections (and sheer stuff to
| move, positioning a lift bag the size of a sports stadium
| is not exactly great, and requires humongous engines)
|
| 2. they're so damn slow
|
| 3. even ignoring the tendency to get on fire, hydrogen is a
| pain in the ass, it absolutely refuses staying put and
| embrittles structural metals leading to accelerated fatigue
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| They're also completely at the mercy of weather to a
| degree almost no other aircraft is.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > even ignoring the tendency to get on fire
|
| We fly in aluminum balloons filled with jet fuel all the
| time.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMZk-cHU6Zk&t=121s
|
| We figure out why they catch fire, and fix it. The
| Hindenburg disaster has straightforward engineering
| fixes.
| masklinn wrote:
| > We fly in aluminum balloons filled with jet fuel all
| the time.
|
| Hydrogen ignites significantly more readily than jet fuel
| does, and protecting the gigantic volume of an airship's
| envelope (which is multiple times that of the payload) is
| a lot harder than protecting a plane's fuel tanks.
|
| Not to mention the airship still need fuel tanks to move
| around, it's not a captive balloon.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Take a look again at the video I linked to and try and
| explain how jet fuel doesn't really catch fire and isn't
| much of a problem if it does.
|
| Preventing an onboard fire is probably the #1 concern of
| jet designers.
|
| Experience has gotten them pretty good at it. Damned
| good. Amazingly good. But never forget that jet fuel is
| not safe. It burns. It burns hot. It'll melt everything
| on an airplane it touches. It'll burn your wing off in
| seconds. The whole point of jet fuel is it stores a _LOT_
| of energy in a very small amount of weight.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Airplanes are safe in part because we've already made all
| the mistakes and learned from them. How many (deadly,
| expensive) mistakes would it take to get lighter-than-air
| craft to the same point?
| WalterBright wrote:
| I agree, we should never try anything new. Too risky.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| It embrittles steel, but not aluminum at the
| temperature/pressure it would be used at for this sort of
| application.
| outworlder wrote:
| For passengers sure, they are slow. They could instead
| transport cargo.
|
| I think the biggest problem with them is mooring. It's a
| complex process, much more so than landing a plane, and
| requires lots of ground crew. It would have to be
| automated first.
| masklinn wrote:
| > For passengers sure, they are slow. They could instead
| transport cargo.
|
| (1) applies triple for cargo, cargo which is fine with
| slow tends to be heavy. For reference, the Hindenburg had
| under 20 tonnes of useful lift, the ship itself weighted
| around 200 tonnes dry.
|
| If you're happy with your cargo going under 200km/h,
| you're probably fine slapping it on a truck or five, or
| on a train with some point-to-point trucking.
|
| It's hard to fathom how _incapable_ airships are, they
| really aren 't very good as you scale up, the use cases
| where they have any sort of superiority are extremely
| limited, leading to a very small market.
|
| They're super ultra cool looking and everything, but
| their reality is absolutely dreary.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, for cargo they're absolutely insane - _maybe_ in
| some rare cases they could replace cargo /heavy lift
| helicopters - but otherwise they don't have much in the
| way of advantages.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Basically the only scenario I've heard where they _might_
| be economical is the arctic, which is frequently
| impassible for everything but planes.
|
| There are few other places where roads or boats have
| effectiveness reduced to the point where an airship
| becomes an option.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| For large airships, unless stored indoors (which is of
| course hard because of the size of the structure
| required) they are essentially permanently in flight. The
| Goodyear blimps, for example, are followed as they travel
| by portable (truck-mounted) mooring towers but must have
| pilots on board 24/7 even when moored, because a modest
| wind can easily blow the mooring tower over if pilots
| don't maneuver the ship "on the ground." In high winds
| mooring is simply impossible and the airships must remain
| aloft. The logistics of this operation are very complex,
| and the airship must be able to swing 360 degrees while
| moored to allow for maneuvering, which requires a huge
| area. The result is that the Goodyear blimps rely on a
| pretty limited set of mostly small municipal airports
| that they have experience with. Closed air force bases
| are popular since they're most likely to have a far
| corner of the tarmac that the trucks can easily drive out
| to but that has no structures or other aircraft use that
| the airship would interfere with. The Goodyear website
| has a picture that gives you a good idea of what this
| looks like: https://www.goodyearblimp.com/behind-the-
| scenes/img/emeablim...
|
| Not pictured is the truck of helium cylinders that
| accompanies the blimp for top-ups, which are required as
| I understand it mostly due to leakage, as the pilots
| carefully avoid venting helium due to the high cost (it's
| an option for emergencies).
|
| Airships are huge and hard to manage.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, they'd likely be best used as "cruise ships in the
| sky" where they can take advantage of large swaths of
| empty space (you could have ballrooms in a zeppelin
| pretty easily as they wouldn't weigh much) and the speed
| wouldn't be a huge issue.
|
| And you'd likely have to make them out of something other
| than metal, and it would vent hydrogen most of time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'd love to take a low and slow tour.
| samizdis wrote:
| Not sure how the company is doing atm, but the Airlander
| project by Hybrid Air Vehicles seemed quite promising:
|
| https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/
| darknavi wrote:
| I really enjoyed the first few books of The Long Earth[0] series
| in which characters heavily utilize air ships similar to
| zeppelins.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Earth
| masklinn wrote:
| For other fictional aircraft carrier airships, there was also
| the excellent Crimson Skies arcade flight sim, with Pandora.
|
| And didn't Riverworld have aircraft carrier airships? Or maybe
| just slaved / sibling airships? It's been decades since I last
| read that series.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Cool! A Terry Pratchett series I hadn't heard of.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It was co-written by Stephen Baxter, and if you're familiar
| with either his or Pratchett's writing then sometimes it's a
| bit too obvious who wrote which parts, which for me at least
| led to a certain amount of immersion breaking dissonance.
| Additionally I would say that the series goes steadily
| downhill after the first book, but is still pretty good
| overall.
| hoseja wrote:
| Wow, that reminded me of the old game Crimson Skies, a
| dogfighting game where you play as zeppelin-based air pirate.
| brimble wrote:
| The cartoon Talespin, too.
| outworlder wrote:
| More recently, Fallout 4 with the Brotherhood of Steel airship.
| Deploys Osprey-like aircraft too.
| [deleted]
| ortusdux wrote:
| This reminds me of Amazon's patent # 9,305,280 for flying
| warehouses. IIRC, they were working on using them as mobile drone
| delivery hubs. I think there was talk of using them at sporting
| events and the like.
| pm90 wrote:
| Kirov Reporting
| Aperocky wrote:
| Maneuver Props Engaged.
| ilamont wrote:
| Biplane Launch From Airship USS Akron (ZRS-4):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTGBFY82Gik&feature=youtu.be
| Vladimof wrote:
| That's what Amazon should do... "flying warehouses"
| jleyank wrote:
| Err, it would be pretty easy to shoot down as it would have a
| radar or visual cross-section that would be pretty big. And if
| anything flammable is used for lift, it's already an FAE bomb
| waiting for an igniter.
|
| Zeppelins because way less interesting once AA cannons were
| developed or fighters could climb quickly. And that was 100 years
| ago.
| cronix wrote:
| I miss seeing "the goodyear blimp" at the Portland air show. When
| I was a kid in the 80's and 90's, they'd always have the blimp
| come out and fly around the metro area for a week. It was so cool
| to see this absolutely huge thing floating around the sky, over
| your house, etc., with the deep droning mrrrrrrr of the multiple
| props. It was almost like an alien space ship (to us kids)
| because you never saw anything in the skies except birds and
| planes. Everyone would run outside pointing up at the sky when it
| was passing overhead.
|
| Edit: It looks like the Goodyear Blimp is still a thing! It's
| going to be in PA/SC/LA this month. Here's the schedule:
| https://www.goodyearblimp.com/news-and-events/schedule.html
| yosito wrote:
| As someone who grew up in Akron, Ohio, the Goodyear blimp is
| still a regular sight around here. I grew up in the 90s
| thinking blimps were normal everywhere, and it was only as I
| got older that I realized that it's really an Akron thing.
| myself248 wrote:
| Yeah, but it's not a Goodyear-designed craft anymore. The one
| they're flying now is a Zeppelin NT. The last Goodyear was
| retired in 2017:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsb3g99x2Ss
| Pxtl wrote:
| Fun fact: there are only 25 about "blimps" in existence right
| now (note this does not count rigid airships, but I don't know
| if there are _any_ of those left).
|
| https://www.rd.com/article/why-you-dont-see-blimps-anymore/
| anikan_vader wrote:
| It's easy to forget the role that airships played in the US
| military. These two were fielded as aircraft carriers during the
| interwar period. Non-rigid airships were mass-produced during WW2
| as anti-submarine vessels to escort convoys (including the one
| that brought FDR/Churchill to Yalta). They were quite effective
| in this escort role, and I believe only one was lost in combat.
|
| Then after the war the US tried dropping nukes [1] from airships:
|
| >> The tests were to "determine the response characteristics of
| the model ZSG-3 airship when subject to a nuclear detonation in
| order to establish criteria for safe escape distances after
| airship delivery of antisubmarine warfare special weapons."[10]
| According to the Navy, the "airship operations were conducted
| with extreme difficulty.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-class_blimp#Nuclear_weapon_e...
| guyzero wrote:
| "I believe only one was lost in combat."
|
| I think that means that we lost more to weather than combat,
| which was their downfall.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| I'm not as sure about that. From everything I can find, fewer
| than 10 of 134 were lost in weather. New variants of the
| K-class were fielded after WW2, and the navy didn't retire
| the class until 1959. This was one year after air-to-air
| missiles saw their combat debut in the Second Taiwan Strait
| Crisis.
|
| Airships continued to see active surface until the entrance
| of anti-air missiles. It's hard to see at that point how they
| could compete with heavier-than-air aircraft which were much
| smaller and faster.
| duxup wrote:
| Airships seem really neat but it seems like nobody has been
| able to make the comeback with those.
|
| For some reason the whole concept of an airship where it keeps
| itself in the air with creatively little effort seems like you
| should be able to something with that but they never seem to
| make it into a commercially viable product. Well outside some
| very specific uses.
| giantrobot wrote:
| An airship's lighter than air nature is one of their biggest
| drawbacks. An airship needs a large volume in order to make
| all of its heavier than air components lighter than air in
| aggregate. This makes for a huge sail area. So even modest
| winds make it difficult to control an airship near the
| ground.
|
| When an airship is near the ground it doesn't really land, it
| moors. Even if it compresses or vents lifting gas to control
| buoyancy it's still a giant sail very close to the ground. A
| gust of wind can seriously damage the airship or mooring or
| cause it to spill cargo or passengers.
|
| I love the idea of airships but they have a huge number of
| practical concerns.
| BWStearns wrote:
| I've always wondered if we can have void ships (rigid vacuum
| bladders) with enough advances in materials science. Skip the
| helium shortage, dodge the hydrogen debate and have lift scale
| favorably with size.
| Linda703 wrote:
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Fun fact: they have started reskinning Hangar 1 at Moffett Field.
| dmurray wrote:
| > The deep-ring design also accommodated a Navy requirement that
| all areas of the structure be accessible during flight; the
| 8-foot deep rings were large enough for a man to climb their
| entire circumference.
|
| How did this work? Weren't they meant to be sealed and filled
| with helium?
|
| Even if you could open a hatch on the bottom without too much
| leakage, was the plan for mechanics to operate inside the
| envelope wearing some kind of breathing apparatus?
| jbay808 wrote:
| Rigid airships are not full of helium (or hydrogen). The outer
| skin is for aerodynamics, not to seal the gas.
|
| Inside, they have a series of gas bags affixed to the rigid
| structure that can expand or contract according to the pressure
| at altitude. At full altitude, those gas bags would expand to
| their full size and take up most of the volume in the airship,
| but there was still a lot of space around them (and inside the
| trusses) for storage, maintenance access, walkways, and so on.
| mandevil wrote:
| The helium was in bladders (big balloons) inside the structure
| and the outer skin covering. There were many bladders together
| inside the metal and the outer skin.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Is there a reason airships end up being round? I would think more
| of a saucer shape would be easier to move through the air and
| less subject to crosswind whims.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| They aren't negligibly slow. Hindenburg had a cruise speed of
| 120kph, certainly a speed where you optimise the aero design
| for going forwards.
|
| Some new designs of airships shape the hull as an airfoil, so
| it generates lift, supplementing the lighter-than-air-ness.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Thanks for the info, looks like I have more reading to do!
| mftb wrote:
| That airships.net is a cool site, ty. My old man, was a huge,
| zeppelin, dirigible, nut. I never got the story out of him, why,
| but he would have loved that site. The entry on the "flying
| aircraft carriers" in particular was cool. The audacity of
| launching/recovering planes like that, amazing.
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