Joe Katzman say they're part of the Air Force's future. With civilian applications. I'd love to see dirigibles come back, with modern materials, as aerial cruiseships. I think there'd be a big market for them.

Good grief, I've been reading and hearing about the come back of blimps and dirigibles for 25 years and it hasn't happened yet. The simple reason is that they are death machines; no matter how you make them, one strong wind at the wrong time and you're dead.

...they are death machines; no matter how you make them, one strong wind at the wrong time and you're dead.

Really? What's Goodyear's death toll?

For a hybrid airship/aircraft see www.dynalifter.com

Interesting concept.

I recall watching a test in Oregon of the CycloCrane - very interesting concept. The bag rotated around it's long axis providing the operator with control needed to pick up cargo.

They went out of business, sadly.

Picture and partial story here - http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi311.htm

Well, I see two problems coming from the higher cross-section area and lower density of an airship. First, it's harder to control in heavy wind than a heavier-than-air vehicle. Second, it has higher drag. Doesn't that mean a lower maximum speed?

OTOH, it has the capability to hover and move slowly. And it doesn't burn fuel merely to stay in the air. Seems like a more fuel efficient choice unless you're traveling at a significant portion of the speed of sound.

Hmmm this is interesting... you bash on gov't designed, built, and operated behemoth launchers yet lament the return of dirigibles that at one time where gov't designed, built, and operated behemoth aircraft.

You state to get rid of large launchers because they need such an extensive infrastructure and lack proper economies of scale due to low flight rate. Yet call for the return of a aircraft that requires large facilities, and has such strict flight criteria that restricts it to low flight rates.

You can park several aircraft of comparible passenger capacity within the same hanger space of a single dirigible. A single airplane pilot can taxi out at a whim and take off from an uncontrolled airport if they so wish. A dirigible needs ground spotters and not to mention the takeoff/landing is a slow and cumbersome process.

I can easily recall a few NFL games this season where they had to use airplanes because bad weather grounded the blimps. Yet I'm certain somebody somewhere was still having to pay for the operating costs of that blimp. I mean why on Earth would somebody continue to pay for an airship that didn't fly because its "flawed" design couldn't handle certain aspects of its flight environment.

I think this proves that there will always be a place for large launchers, if not even for pure nostalgic reasons.

(Sorry to rabbit punch you on this one but I couldn't miss the oppurtunity.)

My understanding is that the most energy efficient method of transporting stuff is horse-drawn barge. Why? Because it's low velocity and low drag. Ships in general blow aircraft away logistically for the same reason.

Depending on whether or not you believe in ground effect aircraft, dirigibles may be the way to go for mass-logistics that's faster than ships. Full-scale US military buildups take months even with ships that burn their engines out to get everything there in the shortest time.

I think this proves that there will always be a place for large launchers, if not even for pure nostalgic reasons.

Sorry, but this is an absurd comparison, as a result of the grossly different development/operational costs, not to mention the fact that the large aircraft are fully reusable, and not thrown away after each trip.

I'm certainly not proposing that anyone build dirigibles to satisfy my needs for nostalgia, let alone that the federal government do so. I'm assuming that there is a commmercial market for them, something that simply doesn't exist for heavy lifters, or at least any that NASA has on the drawing boards.

> I think this proves that there will always be a place for large launchers,
> if not even for pure nostalgic reasons.

> Sorry, but this is an absurd comparison, as a result of the grossly different
> development/operational costs,

All the arguments for heavy-lift have one thing in common.

A complete lack of actual financial calculations.

For whatever it may be worth gentlemen:

The Company

Some Recent MSM Press Coverage

It had occurred to me that T/Space ought to use a dirigible to launch their spacecraft. Does anyone know if they have considered that idea?

Perhaps when the suborbital flights begin, someone will get the bright idea to take people up to 100,000 feet in a dirigible for a very similar view for far less money.

100,000 feet in a dirigible for a very similar view for far less money.

While that might indeed be a viable business (though getting a dirigible to that altitude would be problematic), it wouldn't be a substitute. There's a big difference in view between a hundred thousand and three hundred thousand feet.

100,000 feet in a dirigible for a very similar view for far less money.

It's not the 'view' that is the selling point. It's the experience and the knowledge you are in space in a fer real spaceship. Blimps are cool and all but they're not rockets.

"It's not the 'view' that is the selling point. It's the experience and the knowledge you are in space in a fer real spaceship. Blimps are cool and all but they're not rockets."

The experience is definitely different:

A Blimp at 100,000ft gives you the sensation of ... wait for it ... 1g! Just the same as a blimp tied to the ground. A suborbital rocket, on the other hand, gives you some weightlessness to go with your great view.

-S

Not to mention the high gees going up and coming down between which the weightlessness occurs.

Feb 2006 issue of Popular Science, page 64... the flying luxury hotel/cruise ship. Nice article. I'm with Rand... believe there's a market for vehicles.

The problem is the Hindenburg is still with us (my stepdad was 7 years old when his father took him to see the landing in which 36 people were soon to die.) I've often wondered if a 747 or similar aircraft could be made justifiably more fuel effecient by including some helium bladders in it's design?

I wonder how difficult it would be to get a house-blimp...

The DOD is hoping that there's a good civilian market for these; it wants to use CRAF to leverage them. Makes sense to me.

I do think that there's a place for them--bulk goods that fall in between air freight and ocean liners, for starters. I would also expect UPS to go absolutely nuts over them as a hub-hub shipping backbone.

Note that there is one major advantage other than the speed/cargo angle--the point-point intercontinental VTOL capability. That's huge for its military potential.

I'm going to stay out of the HLV angle except to note that a 747 doesn't fly 1-2 times a year with a fixed staff of thousands. There is a point at which marginal flights reach diminishing returns in cost reduction. It ain't 1/vehicle/year.

I think that t/space should definitely be looking at this concept. It might or might not be a clean fit, though. For starters, the Walrus is years away and we don't even have a firm design (gasbag? carbon-composite hollow lifting body? heck, nanotubes in a polymer matrix?) yet. Scaled can have a 747-sized WK a lot faster. Also, Walrus is designed for max cargo/speed, not altitude--I've seen 10K' as a possible ceiling.

A quick search found that there have been several accidents involving the Goodyear blimps. I could not confirm any deaths. However, it is clear that the operators have learned the lessons of history and fly only when conditions are extremely favorable.

Also note that the Goodyear blimps are totally impractical for passenger use.

This history of deaths and disasters with dirigibles, even beyond the Hindenburg, are fairly well documented.

The deaths and accidents resulting from hot air balloons are legion.

But, by all means, keep your head in the sand. Let's waste more money on stupid ideas.

1) Odds are, we're talking about some sort of hard-shelled composite skin that holds its shape sitting on the ground empty. That's a little bit different. Heck, it won't necessarily even be positively buoyant (heavier-than-air is explicitly listed as an option by DOD, although that would seem to negate VTOL options).

2) I bet it won't be painted with rocket fuel or use hydrogen.

3) I bet that I can find more stories about plane crashes from the same timeframe (yes, I'm being slightly facetious with a fallacy, but you get the idea).

But, by all means, keep your head in the sand. Let's waste more money on stupid ideas.

That isn't proper evidence. After all, things were a lot less safe back in those days than now. Second, was the accident rate that bad? My take is that airplanes of that time were pretty dangerous as well, perhaps even more so than dirgibles if one measures by fatalities per passenger-mile.

Second, hot air balloons aren't commercial vehicles like a passenger jet. And the operator of a hot air balloon doesn't have a lot of control over the system. It makes no sense to compare hobbyist hot air balloons to a hypothetical commercial dirgible service.

Ultimately, I think dirgibles have never been deployed because there's no infrastructure for them nor a good market. I don't see an inherent reason why dirgibles are less safe than airplanes. They may be less manueverable than aircraft in strong winds, but losing motive power in a dirgible is much less dire than it is in an aircraft.

I think the ballons will ultimately go back to hydrogen once the computer control of landing, navigation and refuelling are perfected and the safety variables better understood.

As I recall the Time-Life volume on airships, one critical flaw of dirigibles was that they were so long, one end could literally be in a different weather system than the other. In cases of extreme differences between wind speeds and directions, this could be enough to tear a dirigible apart, which is basically what happened to the Shenandoah. (I just did a search on the Shenandoah and the website mike.whybark.com in particular has a good write-up on the disaster.) I don't know if the problem could be overcome by modern materials or more rigid construction, but it may put an upper limit on blimp size well short of the aerial behemoths of yore.

--Dwight

The HAA is supposed to cruise at altitude for quite some time, thus giving it many options for when to come down and be serviced.

The key to flying these things is to be able to be patient. I've been involved in one USAF airship project and that is where we were heading.

I'm reminded of the Ben Bova story (written just after the SST program was mercifully killed) in which an engineer points out there are shapes that do not produce sonic booms, but unfortunately they don't provide lift. And so is born the SSD project -- the Supersonic Dirigible. Much hilarity ensues.