Airlander 10: Maiden flight at last for longest aircraft | Hacker News Reader

Airlander 10: Maiden flight at last for longest aircraft

bbc.co.uk

82 pointsrwmj67 comments

This is a lot like the Lockheed hybrid airship, the P791 [1]. Looks like it. The Skunk Works built that prototype for DARPA in 2007. Works fine, but DoD didn't have a use case for it. Lockheed offers a version for sale.[2] Straightline Aviation bought $480 million worth, for delivery in 2018.

Lockheed's Skunk Works finally solved the landing problem. Landing large airships has been a huge problem as long as there have been airships. The P791's big "feet" work like hovercraft. They land the thing on a runway and taxi to the hangar. In windy conditions, they can run the fans in vacuum mode, suck the craft down to the runway, and keep it there.

With enough steerable fans and computer control, airship maneuverability today is reasonably good. The Zeppelin NT was the first airship to have this, and it could be landed without a ground crew hauling on lines. They just needed a big field and a heavy truck with a mooring tower. But it still had to be towed into the hangar.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3n5cUaG5fg [2] http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/HybridAirship.html

Oh damn the SPIDER is really cool. It checks the bag quality of the airship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86EAzvXrESg It's like a cross between a roomba and those magnetic scrubby brushes you use for fishtanks.

Oh man when it showed multiple spiders operating on the ship, it went from cool to _freaky_ and cool.

Straight line doesn't have $480m or even $4.8m. It is all vaporware and marketing hype for services so far. Options to purchase are not wire transfers.

For a little historical context, this craft is 92m (301ft) long, the Graff zeppelin was 236.53m (776ft) and maxed out at 128km/h with 60 people on board.

Obviously these very different beasts with different goals, but the sheer scale of the old zeppelins never fails to make me happy.

Does anyone else here find the idea of using an airship for surveillance ridiculous?

It is very hard for me to countenance any military use for a giant, slow, fragile aircraft in the era of microsatellites and UAVs. The risk / reward for both engineering and personal seems way too high.

Personally, I'd love to use this to tour around the rocky mountains, but it seems more of a novelty.

I don't find it ridiculous, but recognize that the military chose a different direction (hence this became an orphan project).

Airships are very well suited for surveillance over uncontested and nominally "friendly" skies. Places like cities and towns at home. The DARPA (now unfortunately named) "ISIS" project was just that. Persistent long duration surveillance allows you to identify changes in a neighborhood or area which are nominally invisible without a history of the place. It works like this, you record the ingress and egress of people from a common place, over time you have people who are there again and again, and people who are "new". The longer you do that the more you can see which people are there for the first time and which people have been there before. Now when an "event" happens somewhere, you can identify the "new" people who aren't regular users of say, the train station, and focus your attention on them, perhaps quickly identifying fleeing perpetrators.

The overall scheme is called the "mosaic effect" according to someone in the intelligence community that attended a MacAfee hosted briefing I attended. By eliminating the periodic things that are always there, the outliers stand out.

[1] http://www.darpa.mil/program/integrated-sensor-is-structure

Most US military campaigns these days are against guerrilla insurgencies, so uncontested skies. I posted this article in response to the parent article, which describes the use of aerostats in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan during the height of the US presence there:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/world/asia/in-afghanistan-...

Syria continues to be an interesting case.

Well, particularly with aerostats (tethered to the ground) you really need to be on the ground, not just engaged in an aerial bombing campaign like in Syria. Though I am surprised the Syrian government doesn't use these - I suspect the electronics and software might be a limiting factor.

RadioLab has a great story [1] about a private offering in this space, from a company called Persistent Surveillance Solutions [2].

"Our goal at PSS is to provide the tools that help make our families and our neighborhoods safe places to live and work."

[1] http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/ [2] http://www.pss-1.com/

Airships are deceptively tough. They don't move very fast and it takes a long time for the lifting gas to leak out unless they've taken catastrophic damage. In WW I the German airship L-33 was hit by an anti-aircraft shell that exploded inside the envelope during a bombing raid on London, was attacked by an airplane as it descended, and still the crew walked away.

http://horseformer.blogspot.com/2013/12/achtung-zeppelin-vii...

Of course they were lucky because the lifting gas they were using was hydrogen, something we wouldn't use today. But they took damage that would easily have destroyed a plane, and the airship was in good enough shape upon landing the captain felt the need to set it alight with flare guns.

A modern air-to-air missile, with its 25 pound warhead and assuming it could lock on at all, probably wouldn't do much to an airship. SAMs are a different story, of course, but you wouldn't take something like this near a SAM site.

I would feel much safer in an airship than, say, a cargo plane.

Specialized warheads might do well against them. Airships are a rare target these days, but if they're more common, new tools will emerge.

These come immediately to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-rod_warhead

Continuous rod warheads are pretty standard for air-to-air missiles. At least they were when I was in the business.

But I doubt they'd be more effective than straight shrapnel against an airship.

One of the lessons from this is that if you want to be able to do damage to a target with a directed energy weapon (and ballistic and explosive projectiles are forms of same), you've got to be able to _interact_ with the target.

It's a general problem of energy interactions -- if an energy form and material don't interact, it's as if the energy wasn't there. Glass and visible light (to a close approximation), neutrinos and matter, magnetism and non-ferro- or -para-magnetic substances. Cannonballs and tissuepaper.

At a biological level, transmitters and receptors, which generally require specific molecular properties to interact -- this is how transmitter blockers work, but stopping up the receptors. Carbon monoxide, similarly, binds strongly to hemoglobin and doesn't let go, preventing oxygen and CO2 transport.

Punching holes through an airship canopy ... makes it settle faster. The airframe itself is sufficiently large that terminal velocity is pretty slow as well -- large surface area, small mass.

You'd need either very-well-timed explosive charges, or cutter-type materials, or a thermal weapon which could melt the envelope -- the Airlander looks as if it would probably melt with sufficient applied heat.

Yeah, that might do it. Probably have to design the guidance system specifically for that kind of target, though.

Also, I wonder what kind of radar return you get off of mylar. You might have trouble hitting it if they put some effort into minimizing the return from the gondola.

It depends a lot on whether or not it's aluminised. I suspect not much though -- looks a lot like fog or something.

Which would limit a lot of missile targeting systems, though heat-seekers might still find the powerplants.

From images shown, the gondola itself might well be largely non-metallic. If that were made of composites, including framing, it should also have a pretty small radar signal.

Lidar, properly tuned, could probably pick up something.

There are quite a few jobs where you need someone close by, but don't expect them to be in direct danger. Watching swaths of coastline for smuggling and other illegal activity, helping rebuild communications and handling logistics after a natural disaster, etc. Having a loiter time of days means that you can keep eyes on post a lot easier than traditional aircraft which tend to only be able to loiter for several hours at most.

Both the US and Israel uses surveillance blimps all the time, these aren't used over battlefields they are used to collect intelligence over the border or over the horizon (they can reach pretty high altitudes).

Unlike drones they do not require fuel, and they can stay in the air for weeks and even months if they are tethered to the ground as you can easily provide power (and a secure uplink/downlink which cannot be intercepted).

And even untethered ones can operate for weeks especially in on demand visual surveillance and passive SIGINT collection modes since you do not need to spend power to keep them in the air and lithium batteries can provide enough power to sensors for a very long time.

They can reach altitudes high enough that you can't see them with the naked eye, and even if they are visible so what? surveillance/observation towers and CCTV cameras are also usually visible but it doesn't make them any less viable.

They're actually very commonly used, particularly in Afghanistan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/world/asia/in-afghanistan-...

The motivation is twofold. First, they don't require fuel to loiter - or, in the case of a hybrid like this, they only need to keep going at a very low speed to get enough lift to stay aloft.

Second, as long as the filler gas isn't flammable and you have a half-way-decent self-sealing liner, it's actually quite hard to bring one down - rifles and most cannons poke pretty small holes in a balloon, so the rate of loss of buoyant gas would be quite low, and a flexible balloon deals with the overpressure wave of high explosives better than a rigid structure. (See the last part of that news article, where they mention the balloons coming down for periodic servicing with hundreds of bullet holes in them, yet still perfectly functional.)

Lighter-than-air craft can linger over an area for long periods with very low fuel expenditure, can reach higher altitudes than are possible with heavier-than-air craft, and could in theory carry much heavier cargo. They are also quite hard to shoot down with guns, but that might not hold true with surface-to-air missiles.

It’s not that ridiculous. We had an airship in Athens during the 2004 summer Olympics [1] which was specifically used for surveillance reasons. Of course there were no UAVs back then.

[1] http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/blimp-plays-big-brother-at-the-o...

> Of course there were no UAVs back then.

Oh, there were - just not in the public consciousness. Rotomotion was selling them for one, and they led the Autopilot open source project to create a platform for single rotor craft.

I thought perhaps it would have superior cargo capacity, but at 10,000kg [1] it's just a bit over half of the lowest capacity listed on Wikipedia's page for cargo aircraft. [2] Currently available aircraft have 5, 10, or even 25 times the mass capacity for cargo.

I can't find data on volumetric cargo capacity, so I'm not sure how that compares.

Maybe the 5 days of continuous flight is a significant feature? Fuel cost savings?

[1] https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/downloads/Airlander-21.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_aircraft

The one feature is the lack of significant runway needed for landing. You can use this to bring equipment and supplies to remote areas of the world that don't have a runway to support a cargo plane.

The C-130 says hi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiyNx0KoU0c

It can take off from even shorter "runways" with the rocket boosters, and it doesn't even need a runway just a very small clearing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwSfD4Pnkd8).

You also don't need land at all, touchdown-takeoff payload delivery is a pretty common thing, you pretty much touch the ground release the cargo which rides on a drag chute sled and you take off again, the entire process takes only a few seconds.

Anyone who's ridden in something like an air balloon knows that the landing has a pretty big drift, any unpowered flight has a pretty long horizontal landing since you drift with the wind. It's unlikely that the clearing needed for these blimps would be smaller than the dirt patch you need to land a C-130 in, based on it's size and just how much it can drift due to wind and the fact that it doesn't have enough trust to compensate for the drift it would probably be bigger.

I was going to say, "Yes, but can it take off in the same distance afterwards?" but then I saw the most terrifying aircraft video ever made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKCl3lfAx1Q

I said rocket boosters :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAPRWMkuv8 takeoff is even shorter than landing unless its captured landing, the c130 landed on a carrier before :P

I'll warrant the Airlander's landing patch can be significantly rougher than what you'd land a wheeled, fixed-wing, heavier-than-air craft on.

Or much softer -- snow or marsh, say.

Field size is only one property.

You can land a C130 on snow and sand dunes.

You aren't going to be landing anything in a marsh lighter than air aircraft need still a proper landing zone.

That's great, but no C-130 is delivering field equipment to Exxon/Shell/BP in the Arctic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acI6bGYH0Ns

I think you're missing my point that C-130's won't be doing private cargo transfer's. These are, for all intents and purposes, military only aircraft.

No, there are a C130s in civilian service.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lockheed_C-130_Hercu...

Lockheed also makes a civilian version of the C130 called L-100.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-100_Hercules

And they've announced a new civilian version based on the C130 Super Hercules called the LM-100j.

I hadn't considered that, but I can indeed see the potential huge benefits there. Especially considering that their next iteration is the Airlander 50, with a 50,000kg capacity, which would put it at a fair middle ground of current cargo plane mass capacities.

C-17 also supports a slightly longer runway than the C-130 at 3500 ft. Both capable aircraft, and you can add short-fire rockets as mentioned in the C-130 post.

Who says they are for military use? You could totally use them for surveillance on home turf.

It was the military who were buying it (until it wasn't).

Lockheed-Martin have ... some interesting customers.

They're also not sworn to tell the truth (whole, complete, or otherwise).

Disagree. Most surveillance planes used by military are big/fat/slow. Most are either prop driven and/or Boeing 737 in size.

The Boeing E-3 is based on the 707.

The British Hawker Nimrod is based on the de Haviland Comet. (Whoo.)

Well things like the U-2 still exist because they can fly stupid far for a stupid long time at stupid high altitudes and can respond quickly, securely, and quietly to intelligence needs. It's hard to fly a UAV deep into enemy territory because they can be more easily seen, more easily shot out of the sky, and require potentially fragile uplinks to operate.

That's no longer true. The Global Hawk UAV has capabilities similar to a U-2.

"Factors such as cost per flight hour (CPFH), information gathering rates, mission readiness, adverse weather operational capability, distance to targets, and onboard power still favored the U-2."

The U-2 apparently has a higher payload, higher service ceiling, higher mission success rate, and a lower cost per flight hour (maybe).

http://aviationweek.com/awin/global-hawk-u-2-duel-resumes-15...

> It's hard to fly a UAV deep into enemy territory because they can be more easily seen, more easily shot out of the sky, and require potentially fragile uplinks to operate

What about an UAV inherently makes them not as good as a U2?

I'd wager nothing really... heck, I'm sure U2's have been flown remotely before.

"It is very hard for me to countenance any military use for a giant, slow, fragile aircraft in the era of microsatellites and UAVs."

Are you familiar with the AWACS? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-3_Sentry)

AWACS is BVR. It's a little different when the asset can loiter 50 or 100 miles away from the battle.

Absolutely not.

You have a protest that goes for 10 hours how do you get a team with equipment directly above it for the entire time?

It seems perfect, absolutely perfect in fact.

Now, you could do a complex argument that hiring multiple teams of people and multiple sets of equipment on helicopters is cheaper and be right, but that's not 'ridiculous'

Reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter

They went bankrupt witout a having built single aircraft but the huge hangar is a tropical theme park now.

Looks interesting. Wikipedia says that its cruising speed is "148 km/h (92 mph; 80 kn)" - certainly faster than a car when coupled with a straighter flight path.

I wonder what the relative costs of operation for this are? If it ever becomes viable for passenger use, I could maybe see it being used for short commuter flights.

"Its cost of operation is apparently between 10 and 20 percent of that for a helicopter, and it only loses 10 percent of its helium per year." [0]

Not bad, especially if you consider there's 100 paying customers on it.

[0] http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/8/5880061/airlander-10-photo-...

Only losing 10% of the helium per year is a big improvement over the Zeppelin NT. Airship Ventures, which used to fly sightseeing trips from Moffett Field, had to quit when the price of helium doubled.

It seems like the ideal bus to go from Marin to San Francisco or San Jose

Or just from one end of SF to the other. The commute from Ocean Beach (north of the park, without rail) is over 40 minutes on the rapid and usually over 30 minutes on the express. The 31-Balboa takes almost 1 and 1/2 hours to go the same 5 miles, longer than taking a shuttle bus or car for the 50 miles straight to San Jose, even during rush hour.

Pro tip: Don't move to SF for the commute unless you'll live within walking distance of your workplace. I suppose you could bike, but the streets seem pretty lethal, especially considering how heavy the traffic has grown.

longest currently existing aircraft maybe. 20th century zeppelins regularly reached nearly triple that length.

Indeed, it's not even the largest non-rigid. That goes to the US Navy's five ZPG-3W of the late 1950s, at 404 feet long and 1.5 million cubic feet volume.

In comparison the Airlander is 302 feet and 1.34 million.

Anybody intrieged by the idea of taking a train like overland voyage in one of these that wouldn't explode? The airship travel ideal has always facinated me.

Wouldn't be wise to put lightweight solar panels on top of that? Seems like there is enough space to generate quite a good amount of electricity...

Can we make a cruise airship out of it?

what this is missing is a top deck, imagine people travelling from one inland city to another and sunbathing along the way there and then doing some shopping then coming back with the view of a sunset.

getting the benefits of a holiday while travelling.

Well, you have to take in account that exteral temperature decreases with altitude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate

What is the current envisioned use for this aircraft?

Imagine a group of trucks, that could cross seas and oceans, forests without roads, deserts of high dunes and rock, and reach anywhere in the world.

The price to operate and the capacity is similar to having a few trucks at hand. Except this can do 90mph in a straight line to anywhere on Earth.

Things that are too large/heavy for a helicopter where there isn't a runway, or things that are too large/heavy for an aeroplane. At one point I remember them talking about transporting a turbine for a power station with it.

From what I've read, it can be used to deliver equipment and supplies to areas without an adequate runway (disaster zone, Arctic, remote areas etc)

> The company hopes to be building 10 Airlanders a year by 2021.

And I hope to wake up tomorrow morning as starting QB for the Dallas Cowboys.

Do you have millions of dollars already invested in your goal towards this, with a large number of people working towards it and a number of technological waypoints already met? Or are you all talk?

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