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posted by janrinok on Saturday March 01 2014, @05:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the Not-so-heavy-metal dept.

Wakaranai writes:

"BBC News has a video report that a UK company, Hybrid Air Vehicles, is developing helium-filled hybrid airships for passengers and cargo.

The first prototype was 91 m long, and was built for the US Army. However, the military project was scrapped due to budget cuts, and the airship was returned to the UK. A larger vehicle is on the drawing board.

One of the companies shareholders is... err.. Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden!"

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by evilviper on Saturday March 01 2014, @10:58AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Saturday March 01 2014, @10:58AM (#9051) Homepage Journal

    I don't see why a brutally slow and historically very dangerous airship maker would ever bother with passengers. Passengers want to travel QUICKLY, and carrying them adds obscene amounts of regulations, inspections and government oversight.

    Airships are ideally suited for one single task... Heavy, expensive, long-distance cargo lift. Look at all the diamond mines and oil derecks up in the artic circle, not acessible by land most of the year... They need huge and heavy equipment that can't be brought in by ships or normal sized aircraft.

    Or look at all the expense and hassle gone through to make a road to the south pole, necessary because flying-in fuel actually burns-up 1/3rd of it's weight in fuel for the aircraft.

    And when you've only got a couple squishy humans on-board, you don't need to worry about buying expensive helium. Just fill the bugger with hydrogen, or even methane, give the crew parachutes, and to hell with safety.

    --
    Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bucc5062 on Saturday March 01 2014, @01:18PM

    by bucc5062 (699) on Saturday March 01 2014, @01:18PM (#9089)

    The crew of the airship thanks you for your concern. Dude, that is some tough love.

    --
    The more things change, the more they look the same
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Saturday March 01 2014, @03:10PM

      by TheRaven (270) on Saturday March 01 2014, @03:10PM (#9130) Journal
      What makes you think they'd be crewed? Fill them up, fly them on autopilot to their destination, land them by remote control, or automatically in a suitable large field. Nice cheap way of transporting cargo long distances (especially if you can put solar panels on the top and use them to drive the propellers). Having to keep a crew (plus all of the food that they'd eat) on board would take up valuable cargo space.
      --
      sudo mod me up
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Saturday March 01 2014, @03:34PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Saturday March 01 2014, @03:34PM (#9138) Journal
        To add some concrete numbers, the total cargo capacity for this prototype is 1225kg for a 21-day flight (or 5000kg for a shorter one - it's not explained why, possibly due to helium leaking out over time and reducing maximum lift, or needing to carry compressed helium to reinflate the balloons).

        The fuel numbers are interesting: 3100 liters/day, 80 knots, 1225kg of cargo. That means that, per day, it travels at most 1920 nautical miles, so uses about 1.3l of fuel per nautical mile per ton. To put that in perspective, a 747-8F (new freight variant of the 747) has a 140,000kg cargo payload, has a fuel capacity of 230,630l and a range of 4,390 nmi. That means that it uses about 0.38l of fuel per nautical mile per ton. The airship just about beats that if you assume the 5 ton load.

        Being able to vertically take off and land in a field is an advantage in the kind of disaster relief role that they are apparently aiming for, but I find it a bit hard to understand how they manage such poor fuel efficiency. I'd guess that it's because keeping a modern aeroplane aloft doesn't actually use much energy and the fat shape of the dirigible means that it suffers a lot more from drag.

        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 03 2014, @07:07PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 03 2014, @07:07PM (#10159)

          "I find it a bit hard to understand how they manage such poor fuel efficiency."

          The smaller the engine the lower the efficiency. I imagine the little weed whacker engines on the blimp are not terribly efficient compared to the giant 747 engines.

          Also the 747 flys extremely high altitude, lower air resistance.

          Finally I imagine there's a huge fudge factor to account for wind, and its going to be brutally expensive pushing that blimp into headwinds.

      • (Score: 1) by Ryuugami on Saturday March 01 2014, @04:28PM

        by Ryuugami (2925) on Saturday March 01 2014, @04:28PM (#9152)

        Seems like a nice retirement plan for military drone controllers :)

        --
        If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
    • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday March 01 2014, @05:18PM

      by evilviper (1760) on Saturday March 01 2014, @05:18PM (#9165) Homepage Journal

      The crew of the airship thanks you for your concern.

      The cargo they're carrying on every trip is going to be worth many times more money than they'd earn in their lifetime (assuming a small crew). Financial concerns will ensure work goes into making the ship reliable and survivable.

      The issue of flammable gas in the balloon is just one of psychology. A huge fire looks bad and scary, and the Hindenburg disaster is burned into everyone's minds. But even with a huge fire and no safety measures, most people survived the Hindenburg, and quite a few people died in helium-filled airships. Even WWI British pilots had a hell of a difficult time shooting down hydrogen-filled zeppelins that were bombing their cities.

      Heck, the low air-speed should make it far easier to bail-out of a failing airship than any other aircraft, so accident survival is likely quite high.

      --
      Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.