When the Hindenburg Was the Height of Luxe In-Flight Dining
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Firstly, speed doesn't matter as much as it did, particularly for tourists - if I can take two days crossing the Atlantic in luxury rather than crammed into a tiny seat, at a not-huge price differential, I'm game.
Secondly, communications. Easy enough (albeit still pricey) to use the likes of iridium for internet everywhere. No longer so important to reach your destination fast.
Thirdly, technology. No longer does the thing need to be stuffed with hydrogen - rather helium. Give it a little while and we can stuff it with vacuum in spun carbon vessels. In place of the fossil driven air-screws, make the entire thing a fat flying wing, cover the top in PV, use electric propulsion.
Finally, given the ever increasing popularity of cruises, I can see people paying serious money for an inland cruise over the alps etc.
Additionally, even the Hindenburg was arguably safer than a modern airliner. If the latter catches fire or crashes, the likelihood is 100% mortality for the souls aboard - whereas an airship allows for slow ditching or even emergency parachute pods.
Please, somebody, tell me why this is a bad idea.
1. https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-an-airline-t...
The cost for crew is about $100/ticket. So if you figure $500/ticket (cost from NYC to London a few months out, coach), then you have about $400/ticket to cover food, fuel, maintenance, etc.
So if fuel is cheaper, I'm not convinced it's actually (that much) more expensive.
If the airships can be run like transit in Switzerland then the costs of traveling through airports can be removed.
<rant> Adding six or more hours, or more days in expensive hotels if the dates and times are bad which they usually are, to air travel and all of the new hassles is less and less worth the bother. Having to arrive 3 hours early, lining up early to check-in, possibly paying for and trusting the airport with larger baggage, lining up again and going through security, lining up again to board the plane. Queuing again out to the runway. Do all of that again when you land. All of this with the possibilities of flight delay, cancellation and other changes that airlines will foist upon paying clients. I think travel should be like riding the bus, you show up, you swipe your phone / ticket / pass and go. </rant>
If done right and at low cost, I would like to see airships displace jets.
What you described is the American TSA hell, this is not normal everywhere in the world.
Luggage drop-off is usually until 45min before departure, same as in the US.
Would love to see some data that quantifies that and recommends when to be at the airport depending on which terminal/gate, status (e.g. priority or TSA Pre), checked in or not, luggage drop-off or not, etc.).
But now check-in is mostly through web/apps. Some airlines also have RFID bag tags that you get when you reach the first loyalty tier so you just check in on your phone, scan it at the bag drop and then head through security (which is still relatively reasonable - worse than I think it needs to be, but so much nicer than in the US!).
I think they're rolling out self check-in at the international terminal in my city now too.
Anyway, I love traveling by train.
We had 1st class tickets, so it was nice having a private compartment, real beds to sleep in, a shower, and decent food to eat. The dining car was nice and comfortable. But we had two mechanical breakdowns, and then had to make an emergency stop when a car was stalled on a grade crossing. After about an hour delay we then had to proceed very slowly (I'd guess 30mph) to the next station for an inspection.
We ended up being over 48 hours late to our destination. No refunds, no compensation.
Never again. I'd rather drive.
This is a somewhat meaningless hypothetical with Amtrak, though. I love to travel Amtrak, but it is pointless to speculate about what it would be like if your long trip arrived on time, because it won't. It might not break down—I've only once (as far as I know) been on a train that experienced significant mechanical issues—but it will be delayed by freight. 48 hours late is extreme (though not at all unprecedented), but 5–9 hours late for a 24-hour trip is just what to expect, at least in my experience.
Like an air version of the Orient Express? That sounds amazing, and they could open up places existing tours find it hard to reach (go inland into countries with shitty infrastructure but nice geography).
https://twitter.com/jetsettersflyin/status/59614209824131072...
It could totally work for that market. Heck, just attach a blimp to a cruise ship for multi-day inland outings.
Materials science has improved, but not that much.
Talk about "places existing tours find it hard to reach"!
[1] http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05.4
[2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/14589121@N00/sets/721576128280...
How much of a while? This is nowhere near being a reality. Helium is expensive and getting more and more scarce.
Airliners are pretty safe. Safer even than walking, when measured by passenger miles.
I'm sure therr is a market for airships (similar to train travel), but I don't see how it would be arguably better than fossil-driven air screws.
Now using hydrogen has been mooted, using newer technologies to keep it safer. I love this idea mentioned in this thread of a vacuum glimpse as well
Further volume has great scaling if you save 93% with hydrogen having 4x the volume means being ~20% lighter than air provides the same lift.
Now yes scaling the airframe adds weight and drag as does the fuel to provide all that hot air. But you can also significantly past 100c before you encounter massive issues.
[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4046/why-is-...
Do you count business class as being crammed into a tiny seat?
Airships have two great weaknesses. One is that they are just really expensive to build and operate. Today that's a little less of a problem because of the availability of financing and improvements in technology reducing the labor and cost of materials for constructing an airship. The other major weakness is the double combo of airships being highly susceptible to weather and also fairly fragile.
An airplane can take off and land in a thunderstorm, travel at 600 mph across the country, and then turn around at the destination very rapidly and keep going. This is why airplanes, particularly jet aircraft, won the air travel competition, they have a much higher duty cycle and are much more reliable than many alternatives.
Technology has greatly improved our ability to spot and predict adverse weather and has also improved construction materials, designs, control systems, etc. all of which can make operating airships much more predictable and safer. But they will never be competitive with airplanes for travel, they serve a niche.
Also, in regards to safety it's just blatantly untrue. Airships crashed, a lot, airplanes crash almost never (it's so rare that any time it does happen it's newsworthy, often on a global scale), any other hypothetical advantage of airships is mooted by that basic fact.
You also have to maintain the neutral buoyancy as you burn fuel. Zeppelins could use diesel but the preference was for 'blau gas' which had a density close to air, and didn't cause the airship to lighten as it was burned. Maintaining buoyancy also complicates using an airship as a freighter; an offsetting load is needed when making a delivery, otherwise you end up venting your lifting gas.
All that said, if I had the money I'd totally blow it building a Zeppelin-style (and size) airship.
> I believe that the Hindenburg required a ground crew of ~200 to control the airship during landing and mooring.
A solution might be to never land. Have a helipad on top of the airship, and have passengers arrive/depart via helicopter (as well as resupply via containers slung under a helicopter).
The ground handling problems have been solved. You either use directional thrust like Zeppelin NT, or you make the airship a lifting body that's slightly heavier than air, landing it on a runway like an airplane like Airlander 10. Both work.
One of your mitigations, though I agree in principle, may not be as strong it appears in practice. When you think of comms on a airship crossing the Atlantic, you shouldn't think of having a reliable Iridium connection, you should think of: You're in a slowly-moving hotel, using their WiFi, with really "indifferent" attendance to its coverage and speed, with no possibility of using 3G or LTE as a backup. I mainly picture the scenario of crossing the sea, but I think this would apply to an airship at cruising altitude as well.
Source: my last vacation was on a cruise ship and I'm glad it was a vacation and not a business trip where I had to be in touch the whole time.
The real problem is planes benefit from a huge existing market plus military utility. The first passenger airplanes were essentially WW II bombers with seats where the bomb bays had been. When Boeing or Airbus builds a new jet, they amortize the cost over hundreds of civilian air frames, plus potentially hundreds more military tanker and transport versions.
If you were to build an airship the size of Hindenburg, you'd build, what, three or four at the most? The unit cost would be about a billion dollars by the time everything was done and you had passenger certification. You'd need a lot of high-priced tourists to fill the gap.
You can go to Friedrichshafen and ride an existing airship. It costs about $250 for a half hour, and I'm not convinced they actually make money.
There's a chance we could see the return of airships, but the only way it's going to happen is an enormous increase in the price of fossil fuels. Even then, though, they'll never be as efficient as ocean or rail travel, so it's likely airships would be the mode of transport for the rich and politically connected. The rest of use would be back in steerage.
It didn't need to be then - the helium constraint was artificial due to the US not allowing Germany to import the gas. Link at bottom. Nowadays it's a rather rare and precious gas though.
How many staff run a modern airline on a cross-Atlantic trip, maybe 10?
With an 8 hour trip time, that's 80 hours of staff time for about 300 passengers. Or about 1/4 hour per passenger.
The Hindenburg had 61 staff and a 60 hour journey for around 3600 hours of staff time for 36 passengers. Or about 100 hours per passenger.
400x staffing costs is a yawning gap and it seems like you couldn't bridge it without selling an entirely different service. Which is too bad because it sounds awesome!
What you can't do is have random people inside the outer envelope that also contains the gas bags. Anything that is going to be light enough to fly is going to leak a lot of hydrogen.
We regularly fly in airplanes full of fuel, and if they catch fire in flight the odds of any survivors is extremely poor.
Hot air balloons, with no hydrogen, catch fire now and then and everyone dies.
Planes have big engines and can generate a great deal of lift. That means their fuel can be housed inside safe tanks of metal.
An airship needs to have thin lining around its lifting gas in order to fly. One can make the argument that recent progress in materials engineering makes it possible to have material that is thin but strong -- and I know next to nothing about the state of materials engineering -- but that does not change the fact that for the past few decades, a hydrogen airship would have introduced a great deal of risk for no good reason.
I think the point is moot: at a typical speed where airline accidents happen, these metal tanks will be punctured and catch fire.
TWA800 likely exploded due to a short circuit that ignited fuel-air vapor inside the fuel tank.
Fuel burns. That's why so much effort is expended in airplanes to try and stop that from happening. The designers learn from experience.
A helium Zeppelin isn't safe from fire, either. Once the canvas catches fire, it's going down in flames. Frankly I doubt whether having hydrogen in it or not makes any real difference. I've seen the clips on the news where hot air balloons, with no hydrogen, catch fire and what happens (everybody dies).
There's no reason to believe that hydrogen Zeppelins could not go through a similar learning process as aircraft that would make them just as safe as airliners are today.
There's no reason this cannot apply to Zeppelins.
Their conclusion: combination of the doping (paint) and hydrogen.
The reasoning: the burn without hydrogen took twice as long, indicating that it wasn't solely the doping's "fault".
And David Brin (no relation) talks about using them in his books Earth (1989) and Existence (2012)
I read, somewhere, about theoretical floating cities being possible on Venus I believe due to the denser atmosphere and I thought it was brilliant. I just wish we could do it somewhere, where the surface was hospitable instead of instant death (not that either is much closer to being reality right now than the other).
When you shoot a Hydrogen filled Zeppelin nothing happens. The Hydrogen slowly leaks out, decreasing lift, but that can be compensated for with dropping ballast. Remember that fire requires those three key ingredients: fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source. An ordinary bullet does not provide an ignition source, and it only just barely helps fuel and oxygen mix.
The RAF developed incendiary rounds and, far more importantly, explosive rounds to take down Zeppelins. Having a round explode on the surface of the gas envelope opens up a large hole, causes prompt mixing of hydrogen and oxygen, and provides an ignition source. Most folks aren't going to have such weapons, it would be just as easy for them to acquire an RPG or MANPAD which could take down any aircraft, so the threat isn't exactly increased.
More importantly, Africa is a huge place, and at any given time most of it does not experience ongoing warfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzW4258oIyg
It turns out the airship gasbags were made of cow-guts. Lots and lots of cow-guts.
(Or if we don't phase out oil, Africa has much bigger problems)
I'm not saying it's impossible but its a big hindrance.
Fun Fact: In the late 90s a german startup named Cargolifter tried this idea. They build a small prototype and one the biggest airship hangar in the world. Then they ran out of money. The hangar today is a tropical indoor water park.