Airships: The Comeback We've Been Waiting For?
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- Опубликовано: 14 май 2024
- Airships: The Comeback We've Been Waiting For? Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code UNDECIDED at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: incogni.com/undecided An Airship: the number one sign that you’re in an alternate universe, or a Miyazaki movie. While they may seem like a bad idea, because they’re not as fast as planes or as powerful as freighters, airships actually sit in a goldilocks zone in between them. There are some interesting benefits that innovators are trying to tap into by applying new technology to these old machines. Are these giants from a bygone era really ready to make a comeback and impact our lives? Are Zeppelins the first step in the Stairway to Heaven? Or is this just another billionaires pipe dream?
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I don't know....
Can we get electric generators, generating electricity first?
😆
Batteries will wipe out what little payload capacity this vehicle has.
The attack on the airship industry was an obvious op, you & i would each have our own private floating condominium with outdoor smoke deck included to view penguin’s in Antarctica 🇦🇶 if not for the commie sneaking that bomb to destroy the “Knot 🪢 sea’s” Hindenburg, notice how they added over dramatized rhetoric after the fact which most people still believe was during the event 🙄 we’ve all been robbed of many things & airships was just one but nothing about it was organic.
Since the US privatized the helium reserve (The US had been storing helium for decades) the price has increased significantly. There are more helium wells (Helium is MINED from the same places that natural gas is, it's all alpha particles from radioactive decay in the crust) in the world that remain untapped, but the concentration is lower than existing sources. After that, there is no helium on Earth. It takes billions of years of radioactive decay to produce helium on Earth. Now, if we could go to Saturn to mine gas ...
One of the biggest issues with Airlander type aircrafts is controlling their bouyencies. One possible way is to change the volume of the hellium in them but it needs to be done very quickly which is not easy.
However the British developed an engine that used a type colling system using hellium by passing it through a radiator type piping. Tha Sabre engine seems to have disappeared after it was soled to U.S. as British engineering inventions usually do.
It is probably sitting is area 51 or some other DARPA secret warehouse because it was initially designed for a space plane that would used ramjet to burn hydrogen while lfying within atmosphere and then liquid oxigen it leaves the atmosphere.
I think the same system could be used to swallow huge amount of hellium/hydrogen out of the aircrsft very quickly.
So, ballasts are not the only solution if you can convince the U.S security appartus to let you use the propriority Sabre engine.
It is probably just lying there doing nothing now.
"Are zeppelins the first step in the stairway to heaven?" - okay, before the rest of the video plays, gotta start by saying that this was a great opening.
I came to the comments for this quote 😂👍
“Here too, the song remains the same”. There must be more….
‘Instead of Rambling On…’
to me it works on three levels: The zeppelin's actual ability to fly you up, the Led Zeppelin song pun, and also the metaphor that zeppelins could very likely kill you and take you right away to heaven
Yeah, Matt has really raised the number of dad jokes/puns to a whole new level.
I remember when blimps were popular for a little while when I was a kid. It was a goodyear.
Every football game.
Those were the days. 😂
What a tire-d pun!
(I kid.)
@@MonkeyJedi99 He certain wore some rubber on that one.
"same old story, boy meets girl, they fall in love, girl dies in tragic blimp accident", "Goodyear?"... the worst..
I’m about to undertake a 22hr total flight back home to Australia from Canada. If I had the option to take, say a 3-5 day airship voyage that let me walk around, have a cabin with a bed, eat in a restaurant at a table and generally have more comfort at a slower speed (but faster than a ship) I’d seriously consider it if it was somewhere in the price range of say premium economy/business class/cruise ship range.
dream on, that would be expensive af
I could imagine doing something like that across a continent, or on something like a cruise, but spending 3-4 days over open water, with nothing to see but the vast, deep, dark expanse of inhospitable ocean doesn't sound better then a "quick" 22 hour flight.
Presumably these things are intended for shorter trips - but apart from tourist flights I can't think of a case where I'd be willing to trade the time & convenience offered by a short haul jetliner for one of these things. So unless it was a very short hop (the 90 odd miles from Scotland to NI for instance) or across the Cook Strait in NZ - essentially the kind of things that we use short passenger ferries for now who is going to use it? Whats the use (except for very specific situations) of a vehicle that is slower than a car? Even the cargo versions would seem to have little utility other than for specialist large loads.
Amen
Have you priced up business or first class trans pacific flights lately or North America to Australia cruises? They are pretty costly too. If you have the money for them then this could be an alternative. It may not work out but I’m just saying if they could price it in that sort of range and comfort level then it might be possible.
They've been singing the Airship song for 30 years, and they are just like fusion energy, always right around the corner. I hope they finally make that turn into reality.
Nothing changes the fundamental problems of airships. They need to be large to lift anything and they need to be light and strong. Large light strong structures cannot exist. That's why the biggest bird is an albatross.
In the same way that “solid state battery has just been discovered” and “there’s only enough crude oil in earths crust for another 50 years.” It’s been decades and the numbers are never changing
The issue is that with airships people are just barking at the wrong tree.
Instead of making large safe human transporting zeppelin, they should have made them small, remote controlled and cargo only.
This will utilize all advantages of airships without taking the risks.
In worst case scenario just release the balloon and activate parachutes.
Even if statistically you will have 1 airship failure per year out of a 10.000 unit fleet, with a proper safety system nothing bad will happen.
I'm born in 1960 and there were always airship concepts coming out.
@@leosmith848 just have thrusters push the airship down when it drops off cargo and then throttle them down to ascend
I have a letter by one of moms 1st cousins, Lane, who was under the Hindenburg when it went down ... it exploded and they were trained to run upwind .. the guy in front of him fell and began running on all fours, Lane was astounded that he couldnt pass a guy running on his hands and feet.
It looked spectacular but was a fairly slow motion explosion . Some wouldn't call it an explosion even . There appears to have been survivors .
@@Biggles732 there were tons of survivors, it had a 64% survival rate for those onboard.
@@Biggles732 It wasn't an explosion, they coated the outside skin with what became the base for rocket fuel for the purpose of dealing with the static charge on the outside skin. When it failed to dispel the charge, the skin caught on fire and the airship burned.
Hydrogen is lighter than air and wouldn't cause the sort of fire you see on the Hindenburg.
First, the ground-level wind issue wasn't discussed. A key airship metric is the amount of headwind and side wind it can overcome, including the base wind as well as gusts. Associated with this is the amount of prepared ground support needed at the destination. Is a dedicated tower needed? Can impromptu anchors be deployed? Each method must not overload the airship structure while simultaneously keeping the ship safe during higher ground winds.
Second, physical compression isn't the only way to reduce gas volume. Condensing it to a liquid is also possible. While this is highly energy-intensive, the actual equipment needed is relatively compact, including the insulated liquid storage tank. Physical compressors with high-pressure storage tanks may need less energy, but lightweight COPVs may have more risks than smaller cryogenic dewars.
Third, ballast can be minimized by using bags of rocks and soil for dead weight. These can be readily gathered at a most drop-off sites, then cleanly substituted for the cargo by exchanging places while the cargo lift is lowered. The cargo and dead weight together can also serve as anchors, the combined weight tethering the airship during cargo operations.
Finally, the hydrogen vs. helium issue isn't an either-or situation. Helium can be "extended" using small amounts of hydrogen (perhaps in separate ballonets). While this complicates gas handling, it can eliminate the need to carry helium reserves, instead using hydrogen as a replacement lifting gas as helium slowly leaks away. Alternatively, a dual-gas system is possible, where helium is used to make the hydrogen less flammable near the ground, then stored away (to prevent loss) at higher altitudes, where hydrogen may be safer to use. One advantage of helium is it can be heated to permit less gas to do more lifting, a key reserve capability hydrogen alone may lack.
Clearly, it seems clear that airships will be energy-intensive vehicles, but the ability to cover their upper surfaces with thin and lightweight solar cells could go a long way toward mitigating that issue, along with a small "range extender" fossil-fuel electric generator aboard for backup and augmentation. The key optimization will be to minimize battery weight (size isn't a problem).
Given all the above, there is certainly hope for airships, but they will be extremely complex systems in order to be both safe and efficient while also being competitive.
Wow, this was by far one of the most helpful comments I've ever read
To be honest I really like the idea of the hybrid helium-hydrogen airship. With most of lift coming from the hydrogen, in, potentially, collapsible/soft ballonettes, that are inside of helium ones. Thus in case of a leak, hydrogen will go into inert helium envinronment and won't interact with oxygen. Also, potentially, helium can be heated by the sun for a little bit of free lift.
As for ballast, why not just consume H2 from the ballonettes?
The idea is to have a hybrid electric propulsion with hydrogen fuel cells. When flying, it would use comressed hydrogen from the COPVs or even cryogenic dewars, but just before landing/offloading cargo would switch to hydrogen from ballonettes to reduce the bojancy, while preserving the fuel. The water from the reaction can be used as an additional (small) ballast, and later expelled on the liftoff.
And for lifting the possible added weight, hydrogen from huel tanks can be released into ballonettes.
I mean: instead of trying to comress an expensive gas, why not have a cheap one, already compressed, and also use it as a fuel?
The advantages of such an airship would be:
1. much less helium requirement
2. higher safety than pure hydrogen blimps
3. unification of both ballast and fuel management as lifting gas can be used as a fuel
4. zero emissions as an added bonus
P.S. Also, potentially, maybe, fuel cells could be used to remove hydrogen that may have leaked into helium by pumping helium through the fuel cells, in this case, H2 molecules will react, and exit on the cathode side as water, and purified helium will just return back to ballonettes. This would remove the potential fire hazard of accumulating hydrogen in the outer (helium) layer, and then contacting with air (as it is incredibly hard to securely contain H2).
Really, all i see is complaining, nothing you just said can't be solved. Just the load exchange problem and the lifting gas problem have been solved numerous times. The only thing that really could worry engineers is the the ground wind. But even that has been solved, you simply monitor the weather and link the airship on a tower. Why ? I hear you say, simple, the airship can rotate into the wind and thereby decrease the strain on the hull greatly.
Using airships properly is not even close in complexity to running a nuclear power plant, flying an aircraft or rocket.
People nowadays just seem to be to dumb to think for themselfs and quickly jump on a bandwagon when it's convenient. That's basically the problem right there, ... people are just dumb and easily manipulated.
@@mandernachluca3774 If you're responding to OP then you seem to have read their comment quite different to how I read it. They listed complications that need to be addressed and ended by saying that there's hope but the systems will be fairly complex (which isn't all that damning considering all the other super complex tech we use).
@solarissv777 The solar heating aspect is a good point. I just recently watched a video by NightHawkInLight that talked about solar fliers. The one he built was basically a large bag with soot and air, he used a wood burning fire to fill the bag initially and the soot helps it absorb heat, the bags still had lift even after the heat dissipated meaning they were absorbing heat from the sun (and they lost height when during overcast). Using a mostly transparent outer layer with a dark inner layer could provide quite a bit of lift and be augmented by electric heat sources (or by burning hydrogen). In this way something closer to a hot air balloon might actually be feasible.
What I'd really love to see is a vacuum based design but from my understanding making the outside durable and rigid enough currently requires super heavy materials that completely offset the lift (I imagine with the square cube law there's got to be some point where the lift is greater but perhaps those sizes just aren't feasible).
Imagine Eco-tours over the Amazon, a slow passage the length of the Grand canyon, endless choices.
exactly
My only concern is the high use of really precious Helium, which already is really expensive and rare and needed for many medical applications.
Enter moon mining
So precious that we fill balloons with them for birthday parties so kids can pop them! What a wonderfully idiotic time we're living in.
Helium is everywhere... its just bonded to other stuff and expensive to release. It isn't that we will ever run out of helium... just a question of the cost to get at it. Because humans have this weird fascination of remaining alive, I don't think we will ever see the amounts needed for medical uses be in danger at any cost.
@@CaedenV you are very confused about something
@@CaedenVhelium is a noble gas who's only current source is byproduct from oil mines, and there's limited reserves that are sold every year.
The helium supply issue is what's holding back the revival of airships. If they can crack the safety issue with the use of hydrogen gas, airships could really make a comeback.
NASA is the biggest consumer of helium.
Agreed. Helium isn't exactly abundant on Earth. In order for airships to truly make a comeback we need to make a system based on hydrogen safe. With modern technology I'm sure there is a way to do this somehow that just hasn't been discovered yet. Either that order we figure out a way to efficiently produce helium.
Yes! Bring on the nonexplody hydrogen! 🙄
Helium is being produced constantly as alpha particles in nuclear decay throughout the mass of the earth. The principle sources are naturally occurring uranium and thorium and their decay products. This helium then transits through the earth and may collect in natural gas deposits. It then passes through the atmosphere and into space.
We temporarily use some of this helium as it passes through...
So, helium is already being naturally manufactured, and for free...
not really, not helping, but the main issue is that helium is barely providing enough lift. even hydrogen not providing much. so it must be huge and still carry almost nothing.
I've been reading "Are Airships Making a Comeback?" stories since the 70s.
They are not period
On the cover of Popular Mechanics about once per year back then, even an article August of last year.
its mostly government restrictions that is holding it back.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 nope it’s science
@@matthiuskoenig3378 Ah yes, the ever-nebulous "government restrictions" boogeyman. Exactly which restrictions of whose government, though? We're never told. They're just _there,_ don'cha know!
that cost for helium is amazing, never realized just how much it takes to float one Goodyear blimp
so we have to get away from using Helium.
hydrogen would be one option
H2O would be an other it has 2 disadvantages against Helium and Hydrogen but also one giant advantage.
@@MusikCassette I do prefer my airships to be non-flammable, though
@@jaesaces does that mean you want to know about how to use H2O air ships. And you are not interested into how to make hydrogen air ships safe?
@@MusikCassette I mean even hydrogen would certainly be safer now than in the past
@@jaesaces absolutely. We can use non flammable material for the hull. we can build it in a way that even with a leek there is no place for hydrogen to accumulate. we can have sensors. that detect a leek. And protocols ready in case there are leeks. We could even do a double hull and fill the inbetween wit nitrogen. you just need to avoid mixing the hydrogen with the oxygen.
Here in Germany, I had the possibility to go on a 45min flight with an airship, because my grandpa wanted to do this and asked me. For one person, this flight costed 470€. This is not suitable for any travel use. The price of the air ship there was about 17 Mio. € if I remember it correctly.
Furthermore it is very much affected by the weather. The wind speeds on the ground AND in the height have to be below a value, that especially in coast like environment is not given most times. The pilots at my flight had a hard time controling the airship so we could enter. Another big influence is the temperature. The hotter it gets, the less of a load you can take with you.
To not just list downsides: the ride was very enjoying (for touristic purpuses) and smooth, but I see it very far away from helping solve any near future logistic problems.
those airships (I'm guessing those flying over lake Konstanz) are not like those presented in this video, which have more lift capacity and ability to operate in windy / changing environments. That is also why there is a need for R&I.
That said, airships may have more use cases in places less prone to storms, such as inland rural areas. Those areas often have very dispersed economies, and therefore lacking the road and rail infrastructure. Airships definitely could solve logistical problems there.
The price will come down with economies of scale. But the wind issue will def affect usability, I didn't know about that.
The airship you’re talking about, the Zeppelin NT, costs about as much as a small charter plane of a similar passenger capacity.
Chartering private aircraft flights is expensive, full stop, and the Zeppelin NT is a fairly small airship, thus more expensive and limited in passenger capacity.
That's not entirely true if you want to travel short distance between island.
Logically speaking, ferry would be a logical choices. Until you realises that you actually need to travel by land vehicles to the closest port that could handle a ferry ship, and then spending lots of time on a slow ships, and then drive from the nearest arrival port to your final destinations. This process could take up to half a day. Airplane is expensive and you have restrictions on payload that you could carry with you. So no heavy bags or you would be paying hundreds of dollars for checked in bags.
This is the goldilocks zone for Air ship. Faster than boats, slightly slower but way cheaper than typical plane.
It would work on the British isle. Hawaii, Indonesia, Philippines, Caribbean, etc.
@@Jjames763 But small planes are faster, often have longer range and require much less space and smaller (cheaper) hangars and maintenance.
10:48 Load exchange problem. -
* Use anchors, They always had anchors.
* Load new cargo for new destination. while unloading cargo.
* If there is no cargo and they need to return to the home port. It will be the fastest way up.
All aircraft weight must be very accurately monitored, just as is the case with conventional aircraft. Weight differences and adjustments could be accommodated by use of water ballast systems. It is also possible to recover water ballast, weight, while underway. I don't recall if the Akron had ballast recovery. But the Macon did (1 gal water to 1.4 gal. diesel, per engine). Water/atmosphere condenser tech. now exists which would easily allow for weight-gain (adding water ballast) while underway, and probably still have a surplus for utility and passenger use. Early 20th century large rigid airships flew heavy for stability.
The main advantage of hydrogen being cheaper to release when dropping a load matters less for passenger airships. You could have helium passenger airships and hydrogen cargo airships.
there is however hardly a use for passenger airships. passengers mostly want to get fast to their destination. and if you move fast aerodynamic lift is the better option. the real niche (and it is not a small niche) for airships, is to bring cargo to places you ohterwise just could not.
for the load offset problem, why not just use a ground anchor? just auger a big spike into the ground where the airship is going to be loading and unloading, and then connect it to the airship with a cable. You can then use the tension in the anchor line to control the buoyancy adjustment, using whatever method you like (ballast, compressor, etc). The benefit is that the buoyancy adjustment no longer has to be perfectly real time as you load and unload; the anchor is holding the difference between the new load and the current buoyancy while it's adjusted, making the process a lot more flexible.
got to let go of the anchor at some point right?
@@WayneJohnsonZastil Yes, after your compressor/ballast has neutralized the load.
@@trikepilot101 i see your point but that would need again additional infrastructure which you probably dont have in a natural disaster region, somewhere in the forrests or while building wind turbines.
@@SuperBiologe For those instances, spikes connected to chains/cables could be shot into the ground, e.g. using railguns. With enough of them it should hold.
@@Zahlenteufel1 Why tf would you use specifically rail guns for that?
Thank you for returning to this topic. I first came across your channel watching the 2021 video.
The only thing missing from the Airlander is a sign that says 'Thunderbird 2' on the side.
Would love to see one in Olive Green!
There was some noise a couple years ago about building a home-grown airship here in Manitoba, mainly because of such high demand for alternate forms of transportation to the remote communities in northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, and the northern territories. Right now, freight is either flown in or trucked in on ice roads, or during the summer, floated in by boat courtesy of SeaLift, who doesn't seem to be able to move freight into the coastal communities if someone's spilled a drink with more than two ice cubes in it on the beach, let alone into the harbor. Several of the Indigenous groups here were trying to partner up with several companies, including Airlander and I think HAV, to build them in Winnipeg to serve that remote community market, but I haven't heard anything past about 2021 on that partnership.
Several other comments are about it "always being right around the corner" so I will just add to your Manitoba specific mention. I am now into my 60s and recall that this "conversation" for the exact reasons you list was being held just after graduating high school, so in nearly 45 years right next to nothing has actually been done/accomplished. I remember thinking it seemed like the perfect solution, needless to say I am glad I did not hold my breath. IMO, ditch the "green" part of the idea (it will only add another unnecessary layer) and have two separate streams, one for passenger craft and one for freight.
The Canadian North feels like an excellent market for airships. They'd be great for bringing in mining equipment, building infrastructure, and supplying the people that live up there.
Quebec signed a Memorandum of Understanding with FLying Whatles, and kicked in 50$ million (not sure if that's CAD or Euros) in 2022, with a rider that anything used in Quebec would be built in Quebec. Canadian North, the Inuit-owned airline that services (wait for it) the North, also signed an MoU with Flying Whales, in 2023, that agreed to exchange knowledge about actual needs and conditions. I expect that both those agreements won't have any further news until Flying Whales starts actually building something.
I hadn't heard about the Airlander deal, but it's probably in a similar position - waiting for the commecial projects to reach the point where Airlander is ready and able to expand.
Had to comment, great videos I get a lot out of them. The music references, priceless. ;)
Hi Matt, I was thinking about airships and their obvious advantages just 1 day ago. Given the right weather which is most predictable these days, that machine has to be ideal for so many apps.
Sure, you talk about the Hindenburg before mentioning the Goodyear Blimps. Why not mention the safety record of their blimps?
Somehow the Goodyear blimps have a worse safety record than the Hindenburg-class airships.
@@criticalevent
What? No they don’t. Where are you getting your numbers? The 154 blimps Goodyear built for the Navy during World War II only had a fatal accident rate of 1.3 per 100,000 flight hours, which is just as good as a modern helicopter.
@@Jjames763 Uh, only one Hindenburg Class airship ever crashed, Goodyear blimps that have crashed or been destroyed by weather:
Wingfoot Air Express (1919)
Mayflower (1978)
Columbia (1990)
Spirit of Akron (1999)
Stars and Stripes (2005)
Spitirt of Safety (2011)
ALL of the US Navy's rigid airships were destroyed by weather.
The US Navy only had ONE airship enter action in WWII and it was shot down by a U-boat, so spare me your bullshit statistic.
A critical thinker would ask himself why there's not a single one of them left.
@@criticalevent
Again, _where_ are you getting this info? It’s complete and total nonsense.
>“Uh, only one Hindenburg Class airship ever crashed, Goodyear blimps that have crashed or been destroyed by weather”…
When talking about a _rate,_ such as the number of accidents per 100,000 flight hours, it matters that there’s only been TWO _Hindenburg_ class airships, whereas Goodyear has built and operated more than 300 airships in its history.
>”ALL of the US Navy's rigid airships were destroyed by weather.”
Tell that to the ZMC-2 or the USS _Los Angeles,_ both of which were decommissioned due to age, not lost in weather accidents.
>”The US Navy only had ONE airship enter action in WWIl and it was shot down by a U-boat, so spare me your bullshit statistic.”
What are you even talking about? America went into World War II with 10 airships, and built a further 154 during the course of the war. You’re talking about the _only one_ of those airships conformed to be lost to enemy action.
>“A critical thinker would ask himself why there's not a single one of them left.”
A critical thinker would do even a modicum of research before begging the question. Goodyear alone operates three airships today. Right now. Not counting other airships and operators.
@@criticalevent
Pretty much everything you’ve just said is completely wrong. The Navy didn’t lost the rigid airships ZMC-2 or the _Los Angeles,_ it had 164 blimps during World War II, not one, and Goodyear alone is operating three airships today, not zero. Where are you even getting this misinformation?
1:43 sails still exist and they still function, yes the ship needs to be designed to handle them but you dont have fuel costs other than the backup engine.
Having owned a couple of sailboats (and I do love sailing) I don't think its any less expensive than just buying fuel. Sails are expensive and need constant maintenance, repair, and replacement.
@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus you must be putting your boat through the wringer because sail replacements are not supposed to be frequent.
Sails work on boats because the boat is getting it's stability and footing (for lack of a better word) from the water. Thus when the wind blows, the boat takes advantage of the velocity difference between the water and wind to move. An airship, on the other hand, is the same density as the air in which it floats. This means that it is entirely at the mercy of the air around it. The only thing sails would do on an airship is help it change velocity faster in gusty conditions. In steady wind, the airship would effectively be a part of the body of air.
@@jamesburleson1916 never said they would be on a airship, the context is cargo ships hence the timestamp.
@@deltacx1059 I'm sailing almost constantly (liveaboard cruiser), sails last me about 5 years, some more, some less.
Dear Matt, thank you for the well-done video. I have been following airship development for the last 15 years, because of understand AIRSHIPS to be part of LOGISTICS (I do educate innovations). The war stopped the development of the biggest airship in Russia and in China.
I would like to mention one new project which you have not mentioned and this is the transportation Gass with Airhips, where the gas is not just the "fuel, but the cargo as well
It's one of my bucket list vehicles to go on atleast once.
Went on a submarine recently and that was one
Personally I think that we need to develop away from Helium for things like this because that is going to be a massive cost for the operation of airships and will severely limit their adoption.
I also dont really think that solar electric will work nearly as well in commercial operation as people hope, I think that with modern safety and storage standards Hydrogen is the way to go, better lift with same volume, abundant and relatively cheap to produce, can be vented if needed, can also be burned to create electricity meaning you can use your lift producing gas as your fuel as well simplifying storage.
If used with a hybrid airship and a "home base" initial loading you could teather and load when you have your highest volume of gas (and thus most lift) load your cargo and fly where you need to drop the cargo burning some of your fuel on the way reducing your total lift but being able to rely on aerodynamic lift from the craft itself then when you drop off the cargo you vent what you need to to equalize (if needed you could potentially rely on the propellers for lift while static so you would potentially need less lift since while at speed you could rely on aerodynamic lift) then fly back, Hydrogen airships would be perfect for the cargo market.
Theres public perception to deal with for the travel market but realistically the cargo market is what needs to be captured to actually make it viable and make money.
I am pretty sure we an build a safe hydrogen air ship.
we can have sensors, that can detect a leak before a dangerous mixture builds up.
we can have a double hull with Nitrogen in between.
and we can just do proper engineering and use the right materials.
However, have you ever thought about using H2O as a lifting gas?
PV = NkT. You don't necessarily need to compress the gas. Deflating the airship for off-loading could be done by onboard solar-powered heat-pumps to just drastically cool the helium. A multi-10's of tons (btu's) heat pump is far lighter than even a basic high-volume/high-pressure compressor. The compressor also needs massive cooling itself.
Would be a hell of a Phd dissertation to compare practical airship buoyancy control via compression vs cooling.
I really like this idea.
Another possibility I thought of is to use a ballonet and an air compressor. Filling the ballonet with regular air should have the effect of compressing helium a bit while filling the gap with regular air which is of course the same weight as regular air. So long as the outer shell can handle the force without breaking or expanding then that combined with the weight of other components may or may not be enough to get the airship all the way down but if it isn't then you could also use a crane to lower a small crew and equipment to setup a temporary anchor (assuming you aren't at a hub that has permanent anchors).
Thank you sir, I enjoyed the video as always!
Great video 👍 It’s interesting to see companies try to breathe life into old technology with new technology to hopefully establish something that’s better in the long term
Using helium seems really impractical overall. When sustainable technologies depend on unsustainable resources they come back around to being unsustainable.
true, we should get away from Helium
the alternatives are
H2 and H2O
H2O has the disadvantages that it has only about half the lifting power of helium and hydrogen and that you have to keep the interior of the lifting body above 100°C
But it would be inherently save*, and solve the ballast exchange problem
* not that hydrogen could not be save.
Rigid Vacuum zeppelins are possible in theory, needing no gas. New materials are needed though.
Then you could ballast really easily by just letting air in then pumping it back out when you need more lift!
But those rigid structures would entail greater weight .
But those rigid structures would entail greater weight .
@@Biggles732 carbon nano tubes weight nothing as an example.
@@Biggles732 Yes, that is why the OP specifically said, "New materials are needed though."
Cool topic! Thank you.
You are a blessed man and you are a blessing to me. Thank you.
It seems like liquid hydrogen could be easily stored in a dewar, and it doesn't hurt that the fuel could be used as buoyancy if it was legal to do so. Also at liquid hydrogen temperatures, superconducting electric motors become a possibility.
that is one option
an other one would be to use H2O as lifting gas.
Airships covered with solar panels! Can you mix hydrogen with helium and it's less explosive? Eh no, probably not much. But helium is super expensive these days, the price has quadrupled in the last 2 decades
A solar airship is a good idea, especially if it will be using hydrogen in its balloon, since you can add a hydrogen cell and hydrogen generator combo to convert water and hydrogen between each other for managing buoyancy. And with a large surface area you will be producing more than enough power for the rotors.
First, I want to thank and applaud your commitment to the pun.
Second, I love the idea of airship freight or travel. I worry about the expense/efficiency for general use and some of the logistic issues (helium loss, cargo transfer, and crashes from strong winds).
I did a costing on airships about 15 years ago, which I still think is valid.
Here, you raise some valid points regarding the economic feasibility challenges facing airships for commercial freight transportation; however, you did not discuss many commercial problems, and for airships, these are the major headaches. Although the technical issues are big, I think they are solvable. The commercial, I doubt.
The big competitors to an airship for most proposed routes are not planes and ships, as you state, but conventional trucks. If I want to transport something quickly, I use a plane; if I can wait, I will use a truck.
Firstly, airships entail much higher capital expenditures to develop and construct the aircraft. Operational costs such as fuel, maintenance of airship infrastructure like hangars, and crew salaries contribute substantially to total outlays. In contrast, trucks benefit from lower fixed costs; they require only simple garaging and are cheap to fix and use the existing global road network.
Plus, the trucking industry is a well-established mode of transportation that serves many short- and medium-haul freight routes that airships might target. It is likely difficult for airships to capture enough market share from the entrenched trucking sector.
Secondly, the longer trip durations typical of airship voyages mean crew salaries, comparable to planes, comprise a significant proportion of per-trip expenses. Maintaining highly-trained airship personnel and facilities to house them long-term would prove quite expensive.
Because of the longer trip duration, I calculate that planes are often cheaper, too.
Finally, regarding the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, the evidence indicates the hydrogen gas escaped rapidly and did not primarily fuel the ensuing fire. Instead, the combustion of the airship's metal infrastructure and other combustible materials onboard is now understood to have been the primary factor. Therefore, the use of helium may not have prevented the tragedy.
In summary, there are meaningful economic challenges for airships to viably compete directly with existing truck and air transport systems for widespread commercial freight duties over most routes due to unfavourable cost comparisons.
Niche military, emergency or remote applications where truck access is impractical may present airships' most promising use cases. Substantial cost reductions are necessary for broader commercial freight viability.
In the medium term, say 20 to 30 years, I doubt that technological advances could help address these hurdles.
As an ignorant layman, just wondering... the whole part about helium and ballast and the airshup shooting up into the air and needing compressors, etc. Could they create a 'dock' for the airship that pumps the helium out before unloading the ship? Or would landing itself be a problem? I kinda imagine that (as a totally ignorant person) that this would mean you wouldn't need to carry compressors around, etc. Just have them as part of a docking system?
I think thats a pretty solid idea, but that basically limits logistics to places/ships that are already equipped to receive them, and thus loses some of the big advantages of the airship being able to reach locations that can't be reached by most other forms of transportation. It works pretty well for a logistics center though, plus they could also exchange cargo that equals close to the weight of whatever was being dropped off.
@@JNArnold Yeah. If you're using them to import goods to a city, or between cities it might work. But taking cargo to or from remote areas needs another solution.
@@JNArnold Makes sense. Guess you would need different types for different usages. The vast majority could be dockable and for remote areas have a few that have compressors on them. OR create a docking system that isn't hard to buiild in remotre areas. I dont know how big compressors are or how big they would need to be.
if your goal is to provide cargo capacity to or from a remote place needing that much infrastructure on the ground kind of defeats the purpose.
If we used H2O as a lifting gas we could just use surrounding air as ballast.
I wished you had expounded more on the humanitarian/emergency services that airships can provide in times of natural disasters. You mentioned their ability to ferry supplies and people both into and out of remote and dangerous locations. What you didn't say is could these airships be used in similar ways US Coast Guard uses helicopters in rescues. The advantages should include that airships can be bigger and include more services than just "a flying ambulance". By their design, they might be more stable and create less turbulence over helicopters. (I'm guessing here.) If you have a ship that's sinking, something like the Flying Butt would be advantageous, as it can stay over the ship longer lifting people up because it doesn't need to head over to it's support ship to offload people as often as helicopters do. Likewise, outfitting them with all sorts of sensors would allow them to fly over large swaths of land for extended periods of time in search and rescue missions.
An airship with solar panels could stay in air infinitely. Even one without them could stay afloat a lot longer than helicopter, since an airship only uses power/fuel to move itself and maybe counter winds. It does not need power to stay afloat.
So in theory you could even make a flying hospital that will stay in air for days helping people.
Unfortunately, we already know how this goes. The US Navy and Coast Guard had many airships, nearly all of them crashed. Unless the disaster is an earthquake on a calm day, they are more trouble than they are worth.
@@criticalevent I'm not surprised. If the weather is bad enough to cause shipwrecks, I definitely wouldn't like to be out in an airship!
Sounds very cool. This can easily be used to reach otherwise hard to reach places like a town on a mountain.
Maybe its also useful to replace boats/trucks/trains.
This reminds me of Cargo Lifter.
Founded 1996 to ship 160tons of cargo.
Bankrupt in 2002.
Their massive shipyard hall in Berlin is now a tropical resort style waterpark.
could be useful in reducing noise pollution in the oceans plus I imagine birds would have an easier time dodging a blimp than a marine animal a freighter
huh? Basically every marine animal is faster and more agile then a modern freighter.
thanks for the clarification.@@Jacob-W-5570
Also airships would be flying in a different altitude than planes, so it adds an extra layer of traffic zones instead of congesting existing ones.
true@@hubertnnn
@@Jacob-W-5570 And still whales are getting hit and killed by freighters (and other ships). I guess nobody taught them to look both ways before crossing the ocean.
zeppelins for moving around turbine blades is a cool idea. i hope they make it happen.
I would love to see zepelins move prefabricated building components or even work on building sites instead of cranes.
Zeppelin and turbine blades are mutually exclusive. One doesn't like wind the others need it.
@@ReadersOfTheApocalypse Wind turbines are also don't like when there is too much wind, cause they are also can be damaged by too strong winds.
On other hand, problem is that wind turbines are in places with mostly constant winds...
@@ReadersOfTheApocalypse Airships are fine in the wind, so long as the speed and direction aren't changing too quickly. This also applies to standard cranes, which are currently used to construct wind turbines.
@@ReadersOfTheApocalypse if you can do something literally no other solution can, waiting for the right whether conditions to do it is not a deal breaker.
Interesting and well done. These airship expectations have remained about the same going bsck to the 1960s.
I fully expect more and more puns with your future videos ❤
Matt, you're subtle punnage is literally killing me. Keep it up.
I made the same comment on Veritasium's video. Part of that French company's pitch is that they can use the air ships to access old growth forest that has previously been inaccessible. It makes no sense for that company to pitch their product as a climate solution while planning to cut down old growth forests.
Source?
Are they cutting the trees down, or harvesting fallen trees??
@@growtocycle6992fallen trees are a part of the a forest ecosystem. They are important habitats for animals and their decay return nutrients used by the forest.
shocked to see this kind of episode from you, Matt. Wow.
Interesting video! I’d love to see more development on these alternatives.
I have a piece of the Shenandoah’ fabric, and my grandfather had part of a spar. The crash site was just a few miles from his home.
The Hindenburg burned so bad because of a mostly wood interior and more importantly the outer shell was coated in rocket fuel. The outer coating was basically a variation on the formula used for the propellent in the Solid rocket boosters used with the Shuttle.
Yeah painting your canvas with thermite is not really a great idea unless you want fire that is.
@@leonmusk1040 Doping the skin with thermite would also add countless tons to the overall weight -which is why they didn't do it, in addition to the fact that it standard aluminum dope would work better for tightening the skin than thermite ever would.
@@leonmusk1040 IIRC the goal of the coating was to prevent solar heating from over expanding the gas resulting in to much/uncontrolled lift. They apparently didn't count on their being a strong enough electrical spark to ignite it. The mixture doesn't ignite without some effort to set it off, it's even possible they tested it with common sources of flame at the time and failed to ignite it and decided it was safe.
Either way once a strong enough spark from the charge build up during flight occurred and set it off, it burned hot and fast.
Yeah already knew that but nice of you to point it out for others cheers :)
@@kaseyboles30
Aluminium dope was mixed with a ferous additive to give it its colour to lower heat absorption I.E. thermite @@dgthe3
11 seconds damn
Great video Matt, keep up the great job!
I do find it odd that it will cost the same to travel on an airship as it does to go to space with Virgin Galactic
Was the line about airships and being in an alternate universe a reference to "Fringe” TV series? Haha, I loved that show! 😉
Hey, I thought they fixed the problem of dumping helium with a big tank. They just sucked the helium into the tank and then release it back into the balloon when they need more buoyancy.
that would require a compressor powerful enough and fast enough to work on a practical schedule while also not adding too much weight to the aircraft. eventually that will probably be the solution
Yeah... Helium is hard to compress and manipulate.
Thus the section about the compressors. It is a solved problem... just too heavy and expensive to be worth doing yet. It is a solved problem today, but wont be practical for another 5-10 years.
Another consideration is the speed at which those compressors need to operate. If you are dropping a multi-ton log, how quickly do you need to suck in multiple tons of helium to absorb the weight difference? Yes, having vertical props can absorb some of this change more quickly... but why not use or design larger helicopters at that point, which can deal with dynamic load changes much more quickly than a compressor sucking in or releasing a gas?
Good question.
I remember seeing a video or two about some billionaire that’s building a big airship and has already got the helium compressors all sorted out and installed. It’s here on RUclips somewhere.
You never mentioned they are making Zeppelins again and they have been flying for several years. One flew over Texas, AZ and Calif. about 10 years ago!
awesome overview
Heat or cool the helium / hydrogen to change the lift. You can also compress the gas back in cylinders to decrease buoyancy and release back into the bladder(s) to increase it again. Further you can use propellors to compensate for shits in lift.
Love airships! Would be cool to have one and go on a world tour!
I absolutely love the Flying Whales. Being from France, where the band Gojira is from, which have a song with that title. The multiple layers to that name are fantastic lol
Thanks Matt.
Air Shipwright. what an excellent job title/description. Cool.
in addition to the ballast problem - also wonder how well they'd deal with wind, especially for some of these cargo-drop ideas. They are essentially huge balloons, I'd imagine it takes a decent amount of thrust to hold position well
Thank you and good morning!
Solar punk is an amazing genre and I want to see more of it.
Real smooth bit of flub-dubbing on that one. ;)
I hope so!
My father was working on financing and sorting out the construction plant and storage of airships in Germany over 20 years ago. The project seemed promising but sadly did not make it.
I have been hearing this since the 80s. I keep hoping the numbers and tech will be economical.
I hope this time we get them.
it wont, as long as we are stuck with using Helium
I enjoyed spotting all the Led Zeppelin song titles. Nice work.
the song remains the same quote didn't make it past me...well done 👏
One partial solution to the balast exchange problem is probably properly anchoring the airship before dropping anything off. That makes the timing of possible balast exchange less critical.
Hydrogen + no passengers and highly automated with limited/no crew feels like the sweet spot for airship practicality.
Compression seems interesting as a way to “squish” the helium but I wonder if these companies are looking at cryo-pumps to condense/make into a liquid. It would definitely enable the ability to icrease lift and decrease lift within a given bladder/section of the air ship. The only repercussion would be the high amounts of energy it would take. Definitely a great video Matt!!
I was in Florida a few years ago and I saw a large airship floating that was a solid color when I was on the Keys. I did some research and it was tethered and part of the Tethered Aerostat Radar System. There are several of them. Some of them are 186 ft long and the other size is 208 ft long. Being so high they increase the radar range and have been in use since 1979 - 1980 different sources list either one of the years.
There's a Well There's Your Problem episode about the Hindenberg and airships in general that goes into some of the problems inherent in big balloons that aren't addressed here
i've been hearing about this airship revolution for perhaps a decade now...still waiting for it. I live not too far from the Akron home of the Goodyear blimp, see it a couple of times a year fly over my house coming/going to cover a steelers game. Big, low, slow (ish). Impressive. Would love to see bigger ones put to work!
Thank you for a fair and load-balanced examination of modern airship technology. I really like the way you explained the load-exchange problem. That, and the ever present issues that come from different choices of lifting gas, seem to be the biggest obstacles for airship development.
This is probably just sci-fi thinking, but I've always wondered if it would be possible to use hot air as a lifting gas, essentially combining the airship with a hot air balloon. Another more out there idea is to use vacuum instead of a lifting gas. That is, have a giant void with no air. That would be cheaper to maintain (just pump air out of the void instead of paying for gas that has to be pumped in) and free of potential safety problems. But it comes up against the limitations of modern materials technology. Vacuum airships would need to be made from something very strong and very cheap.
Great green idea. I really hope I’ll see them in the sky sometime soon. They won’t replace ships or planes, they will make a huge contribution to greener (maybe cheaper eventually) transportation.
Loved the video and the topic. Interesting stuff, although scaling things up for shipping won't probably work. A similiar-sized footprint of a cargo ship can carry a LOT more than a similar-sized airship, so I think these would probably be better suited for edge cases (like the delivery of large parts to remote wind farms). And OH MY GOD the puns. Even more than one Led Zeppelin reference, I wonder how many people besides myself and Sean got those.
Love that for all our tech, we're coming back to blimps and sail ships
I think they are bloody cool for holiday and spectate
I always had a love for airships ever since I first saw Indiana Jones and the last crusade
Regarding the ballast an option that I am not certain would work but might work well. Having a bio methane chamber in the centre of the main balloon surrounded and shielded by the component helium balloons. Since methane is less likely to leak and less likely to combust then hydrogen and if shielded by a wall of helium balloons it should be considerably safer. Once the freight has been dropped off the methane can be burnt bellow the main cabin far away from the main balloon and the rest of the methane, additionally this would produce additional electricity. This also has the advantage that the ballast can be easily made in biogas reactors, you could even fill additional bio methane chambers to counter act any minor helium loss as well.
Hey, I'm watching it in Spanish. It was a big shock, I hope this helps you to reach out more people
Hi! I was quite surprised that I couldn't find you on Nebula. Have you though about posting there? Anyway, great videos! Cheers :)
Thanks so much! And yes, I have been interested in Nebula and need to reach out to them.
Gee Matt you certainly have a "whole lot of love" for this issue.....:)
A 60/40 mix of helium/hydrogen remains non flamable but is much cheaper. Also the Airlander's hybrid lift design means it is less vulnerable to the off-loading problems.
One of the only happy parts in the novel 'The Ministry for the Future' by Kim Stanley Robinson [the first chapter alone will make you ugly cry] was the broad use of airships (dirigibles) for air travel. Thanks for following up on this important and exciting tech.
Airships have a lot of potential and if done right could replace a significant portion of large sea ships, airliners, and helicopters. The currently public developments are underwhelming as the engineers are merely replicating and tweaking earlier designs to play it safe with the financial investment required. Of course there's no telling what is being worked on privately. In my opinion it will take a complete redesign from the ground up for airships to be a better option than the alternatives.
As long as governments are against hydrogen and citizens are afraid of Hindenburg 2.0 progress will be very slow.
Ships are superior in their lifting capacity, for which there is no match in airships.
The audio AI is mind blowing... Its became easy to understands you even for our childs that doesnt speak english.
the rotary compressor tech from Just Have A Think is promising for speeding up AND miniaturizing compressors for airships
@UndecidedMF look up "lynch skyliners" and "aerogel vacuum lighter-than-air craft". lockheed martin used up all the worlds helium making aerostats and military recon blimps. they have to make aerogel vacuum balloons now (no helium/hydrogen required)
Just securely anchor the airships to a building or ground while unloading until new load can be loaded up.
Or, the helium compressors can be installed on the ground, at places where the airship will load or unload cargo. This way, excess helium can be transferred via a flexible conduit to the ground storage as the unloading is done. More helium can then be refilled depending on load requirements.
I saw one of these a few weeks back. It looked so high tech and shiny, many would've gone UFO!!
The company I work for has been working on a liquid Hydrogen dewar for the eventual switch to electric propulsion for this type of airship
The "Skytanic" Episode in Season 1 of Archer actually made me want to take a trip on one. My favourite episode of the entire show.
I've been looking for someone making an Archer reference!
I think the best way of dealing with on-the-ground handling of modern large rigid airships would be to not do on-the-ground handling. But instead do as the British had intended to do with their planned airship handling, by using tall mooring masts, so the ship can remain aloft. Water ballast systems can manage airship weight, at the mast and while underway. Those stocky looking tower-masts worked for the R-100!!, to Canada and back, along with a few excursions.
Thank you for using a such easy word as octuple at 6:00
I was not ironic, I meant what I wrote. Gen Z would say that it was an advanced word, because they looked at Vine and TikTok instead of listening to the teacher
Matt, you do ramble on!
yes, this is the way. i am very passionate about this change. personal flight for all is the goal.
2:20 this. hybrid. electric-turbine thrust and gas buoyancy lift.
5:59 ah, new word "aerostatic." thanks, matt ferrell.
ROFL: Just as you said "Rotisserie Chicken Style" I was opening another webpage about RCS with a huge "RCS" logo (Rich Communications System). Warped serendipity.