…of airships. Are they all blimps, or are dirigibles coming back as well?
18 thoughts on “The New Age”
Rand, all blimps are dirigibles. “Dirigible” is simply “a steerable airship,” from the French diriger, meaning “to conduct.”
I thought dirigibles had a rigid frame.
A common misapprehension. The 2nd and 3rd syllables are a false friend in this case.
The amusing part is calling the airships the Germans built by a French name. That must have been Gauling.
Actually, it wasn’t the second and third syllables that fooled me. I had never thought about it, actually. I just thought that dirigibles had a rigibd frame. So what word do you use to distinguish them?
I personally favor the adjective, “rigid-framed” but perhaps a new term needs to be coined. “Skeletal” perhaps?
So your claim is that all blimps are dirigibles? But not all dirigibles are blimps? So we’re talking about a non-blimp dirigible? Or are there other non-blimp dirigibles that don’t have skeletons?
Yes. All blimps are dirigibles. I suppose that among the dirigibles that are not blimps, you could define two sub-categories – those with internal frames (like a mammal), and those with hard external shells (like a bug). I don’t think anyone has built the latter sort, but I don’t suppose there’s any reason you couldn’t. I’m just not sure why you’d want to.
Riffing on the idea a little, I suppose filling an internal shell would let you off the hook for having to overpressurize to stabilize the structure, which is a modest design inefficiency for blimps.
During Test Pilot School I had a chance to fly the Goodyear Blimp in Carson, and found it a lot noisier than I expected. I would love going for a cruise over the Serengeti at a hundred feet AGL, sipping drinks brought by white-coated waiters and gazing at the herds of elephants and rhinos and whatever.
Right. Dirigibles are the class of all lighter-than-air, powered, steerable, flying vehicles. They are classified in three groups: rigid, which have full frames; semi-rigid, which have a keel but no other rigid structure; and non-rigid, which maintain envelope shape entirely through gas pressure. Non-rigids are also called blimps. There have also been metal-clad airships, in which the entire envelope
is a thin, rigid metal shell.
Historically, rigid airship have had great range and lifting capacity, but tended to be underpowered and, usually, had structural flaws because the size of the vehicles outran the understanding of structural and material issues in the flight environment at the time. Governments did things like adding extra hull segments when they didn’t have enough lift, (e.g., Shenandoah and R-101) not appreciating how much the extra length changed things. (Thank God we’re smarter than that now — we’d never do anything like that today.) So they were very vulnerable to weather and operational accidents. They were also expensive to build, expensive to crew because of their crew sizes, and expensive to operate, needing large ground crews to land and take off. So few were built and most countries never flew enough hours in them to acquire the art of handling them. The Germans did, and they developed rules of thumb that helped them operate more successfully than anybody else.
Non-rigids had far fewer problems, and the US was particularly successful in operating them; they were great ASW platforms in WWII. But they are inherently slow, because aerodynamic pressure on the bow causes it to lose shape at any great speed.
Most of the problems with rigids are theoretically solvable today, and there are all sorts of efforts to develop new types. I hope they work, but the barriers to entrepreneurial activity from certification requirements and liability insurance costs are high.
I like the part where is appears to roll back to the left, almost crushing several of the techs. The forklift maneuver seemed rather improv…
Mitch, there was a fairly successful experiment with metal-clad airships in the 1930s in Michigan:
The barrage balloons often seen in movies or documentaries about the London blitz are non-dirigible blimps, tethered to a spot on the ground and unmanned; their purpose is to hold the cable tethers up as a deterrent to German planes trying to get in low enough for bombing/strafing accuracy.
Common usage of the word “blimp” to mean all dirigibles is undoubtedly because it’s a shorter word, and also perhaps because Goodyear didn’t insist on calling their advertising airship a dirigible.
…I also think it’s unfortunate the video title refers to the thing getting “blown up.”
…is capable of going 80 mph.
…and a lot faster if in a jet stream!
This blog having a special interest in space, I have to point out the “airship to orbit” concept which I think looks pretty interesting. Sounds kind of crazy but also like it might work. Check out jpaerospace.com.
I’m not any kind of expert, but it sure seems like taking heavy things in big balloons to really high altitude is a cheap (and probably reusable) way to get a great deal of (gravitational) potential energy.
To add to the terminology stew, all Zeppelins are rigid airships, but not all rigid airships are Zeppelins.
I’ve been hearing about the imminent comeback of airships for as long as I can remember, at least 30 years or so.
Governments did things like adding extra hull segments when they didn’t have enough lift, (e.g., Shenandoah and R-101) not appreciating how much the extra length changed things. (Thank God we’re smarter than that now — we’d never do anything like that today.)
Do I detect a touch of sarcasm there? 🙂
I wasn’t that impressed; like Cecil I’ve been hearing about an imminent comeback for decades.
The new craft has features similar to the Zeppelin NT. Note that the cruising speed is 35mph, and current cargo capacity a whopping 2,000 pounds. You can carry more and go faster with a rented panel truck.
Include me in the “I thought ‘dirigible’ meant “rigid-frame airship” group. Live & learn.
Rand, all blimps are dirigibles. “Dirigible” is simply “a steerable airship,” from the French diriger, meaning “to conduct.”
I thought dirigibles had a rigid frame.
A common misapprehension. The 2nd and 3rd syllables are a false friend in this case.
The amusing part is calling the airships the Germans built by a French name. That must have been Gauling.
Actually, it wasn’t the second and third syllables that fooled me. I had never thought about it, actually. I just thought that dirigibles had a rigi
bd frame. So what word do you use to distinguish them?I personally favor the adjective, “rigid-framed” but perhaps a new term needs to be coined. “Skeletal” perhaps?
So your claim is that all blimps are dirigibles? But not all dirigibles are blimps? So we’re talking about a non-blimp dirigible? Or are there other non-blimp dirigibles that don’t have skeletons?
Yes. All blimps are dirigibles. I suppose that among the dirigibles that are not blimps, you could define two sub-categories – those with internal frames (like a mammal), and those with hard external shells (like a bug). I don’t think anyone has built the latter sort, but I don’t suppose there’s any reason you couldn’t. I’m just not sure why you’d want to.
Riffing on the idea a little, I suppose filling an internal shell would let you off the hook for having to overpressurize to stabilize the structure, which is a modest design inefficiency for blimps.
During Test Pilot School I had a chance to fly the Goodyear Blimp in Carson, and found it a lot noisier than I expected. I would love going for a cruise over the Serengeti at a hundred feet AGL, sipping drinks brought by white-coated waiters and gazing at the herds of elephants and rhinos and whatever.
Right. Dirigibles are the class of all lighter-than-air, powered, steerable, flying vehicles. They are classified in three groups: rigid, which have full frames; semi-rigid, which have a keel but no other rigid structure; and non-rigid, which maintain envelope shape entirely through gas pressure. Non-rigids are also called blimps. There have also been metal-clad airships, in which the entire envelope
is a thin, rigid metal shell.
Historically, rigid airship have had great range and lifting capacity, but tended to be underpowered and, usually, had structural flaws because the size of the vehicles outran the understanding of structural and material issues in the flight environment at the time. Governments did things like adding extra hull segments when they didn’t have enough lift, (e.g., Shenandoah and R-101) not appreciating how much the extra length changed things. (Thank God we’re smarter than that now — we’d never do anything like that today.) So they were very vulnerable to weather and operational accidents. They were also expensive to build, expensive to crew because of their crew sizes, and expensive to operate, needing large ground crews to land and take off. So few were built and most countries never flew enough hours in them to acquire the art of handling them. The Germans did, and they developed rules of thumb that helped them operate more successfully than anybody else.
Non-rigids had far fewer problems, and the US was particularly successful in operating them; they were great ASW platforms in WWII. But they are inherently slow, because aerodynamic pressure on the bow causes it to lose shape at any great speed.
Most of the problems with rigids are theoretically solvable today, and there are all sorts of efforts to develop new types. I hope they work, but the barriers to entrepreneurial activity from certification requirements and liability insurance costs are high.
I like the part where is appears to roll back to the left, almost crushing several of the techs. The forklift maneuver seemed rather improv…
Mitch, there was a fairly successful experiment with metal-clad airships in the 1930s in Michigan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMC-2
The barrage balloons often seen in movies or documentaries about the London blitz are non-dirigible blimps, tethered to a spot on the ground and unmanned; their purpose is to hold the cable tethers up as a deterrent to German planes trying to get in low enough for bombing/strafing accuracy.
Common usage of the word “blimp” to mean all dirigibles is undoubtedly because it’s a shorter word, and also perhaps because Goodyear didn’t insist on calling their advertising airship a dirigible.
…I also think it’s unfortunate the video title refers to the thing getting “blown up.”
…is capable of going 80 mph.
…and a lot faster if in a jet stream!
This blog having a special interest in space, I have to point out the “airship to orbit” concept which I think looks pretty interesting. Sounds kind of crazy but also like it might work. Check out jpaerospace.com.
I’m not any kind of expert, but it sure seems like taking heavy things in big balloons to really high altitude is a cheap (and probably reusable) way to get a great deal of (gravitational) potential energy.
To add to the terminology stew, all Zeppelins are rigid airships, but not all rigid airships are Zeppelins.
I’ve been hearing about the imminent comeback of airships for as long as I can remember, at least 30 years or so.
Do I detect a touch of sarcasm there? 🙂
I wasn’t that impressed; like Cecil I’ve been hearing about an imminent comeback for decades.
The new craft has features similar to the Zeppelin NT. Note that the cruising speed is 35mph, and current cargo capacity a whopping 2,000 pounds. You can carry more and go faster with a rented panel truck.
Include me in the “I thought ‘dirigible’ meant “rigid-frame airship” group. Live & learn.