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I think a big problem is that helium is a very scarce Resource and which we get only from fossil fuels. Much helium has been wasted in the past couple of decades and prices of it will only go up as its scarcity increases. It's really highly needed for medical equipment and other things and I can't see it being used in bulk for this purpose.

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

Hot air is also completely viable and in many ways simpler to work with, though you need very high temperature or the volume gets extreme. However the most reasonable option is probably multiple layers with hydrogen inside a nitrogen envelope which makes small leaks a non issue.

The numbers don't work for hot air. You just can't get the lift.

It's altitude and temperature dependent. 100 °C Which is normal hot air balloon temperature. If the outside temp is 27c that's 1-(300/370) or 19% lighter than air vs heliums 1-1/14 = 93% lighter than air. But you lift increases significantly with temperature. The downside is you end up spending fuel to add heat. But hot air balloons also have terrible insulation.

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.

But you don't actually expend the helium. You lose a tiny bit through leakage. In airship companies today, the helium is the least of the problems.

I'm not sure that's true. While abundant in the universe, there's a fairly finite amount of helium here on Earth, and once it escapes, it leaves into space for good. The US even has a strategic helium reserve. The shortage of helium was reported back in 2012 [1] We really need that helium for things like MRIs and chip lithography processes.

[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4046/why-is-...

We still use helium for children's balloons. It's cheap enough that most companies don't even bother to distill it out of natural gas.

I refer you to this article by a chemistry professor: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/helium-in-crisis/3007...

This might be true, that you don't lose much, but every day they'd need recharging a bit, and even without dirigibles, we have barely a century of supply. That is not much. The market rate is criminally low. https://priceonomics.com/the-increasing-scarcity-of-helium/

Well, I agree Congress's elimination of the Strategic Helium Reserve was criminally stupid. I was addressing the cost point, though. Helium is still reasonably cheap, so it's lost in the noise, financially speaking.

Because of staff salaries and operating costs that will need to be covered with 10-20% the number of tickets sold, because the thing is many times slower. It might make 150 flights one-way per year vs ~700 for a jet. So the ticket will be much, much more expensive.

I don't know that this logic holds up if fuel costs are lower. It might work if the blimp is significantly cheaper than a plane (likely), and fuel is cheaper (or can use, eg, solar).

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.

The big cost is helium. I met the CEO of Airship Ventures, the company that used to have a big sightseeing Zeppelin II based at Moffett Field in Mountain View. The price of helium doubled, and that killed the business. Fuel cost was minor.

Not just on airships, but running transports without zero on board staff might have added benefits and efficiencies. I know that in Vancouver the Sky Trains ran without on board staff.

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.

Well, down here in Europe this works exactly like this. You arrive to the airport, scan your printed boarding pass once, go through gate and pass your bags through xray (no taking off shoes), then go to boarding and scan pass again. No arriving 3 hours early, usually no lines, no extensive security checks. It is normal to arrive 40 minutes before takeoff if i have to check in or 25 minutes if i am already checked in (i have a VIP pass at the airport so i never stand in lines, but that's cheap). About half of the time nobody even asks for my passport, at least when i fly within Schengen.

What you described is the American TSA hell, this is not normal everywhere in the world.

No lines is not true (I visited more than 5 major European airports in the last month), but they're very bearable - usually less than 5 minutes of waiting. While it's true nobody asks you for passport, I don't believe nobody asks you for any documents. It's generally recommended to arrive an hour before take off if you've checked in online.

It heavily depends on the airport. E.g. TXL is horrible (depending on the terminal) and even an hour before at peak times isn't enough. Time of the day (e.g. mornings are usually peak times) matter as well.

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.).

It's surprising how fast queuing for check-in disappeared in big airports in Australia too (for domestic travel at least). First it was the self check-in terminals that printed your boarding pass (and bag tag if you're checking in luggage), and then you just scan at an automated bag drop that takes your bag.

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.

Trains are displacing jets in China. You can go Shanghai to Beijing by train in 4 hours and 55 minutes for 550 RMB. The same transit by jet takes 2 hours and 25 minutes and costs 615 RMB (which is the cheapest ticket, the average is more like 800). The checking process for trains in China is amazing. You arrive at least 5 minutes early. Walk through a huge metal detector and luggage scanner. Then you are in a huge room. When your train is ready you board. Usually they have at least 5 ticket checking stations, and then the train will have at ten or twenty doors for fast efficient parallel boarding.

Anyway, I love traveling by train.

No need for pilots. Air ships should be even more ripe for autonomous/remote control than air planes.

Technology, yes, but Hydrogen has almost nothing to do with it. The Hindenburg was only one of many great airship disasters of the early 20th century, and several of those ships were filled with Helium.

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.

I think they almost lost the Graf Zeppelin when four of the five engines failed and it could no longer fly upwind. They had to fly down wind and hook the only mooring tower between then and Atlantic.

To be fair, at the time, airplanes also crashed a lot.

For transit it probably wouldn't work for reasons listed in other comments. But as a cruise...

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).

Just did a Google for "cruise blimp" and got some interesting hits; e.g.

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.

I doubt you could put swimming pools on a craft that size and still have it be lighter than air. Look at how small of a livable space there was on hindenberg-class airship: http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/interiors/

Materials science has improved, but not that much.

Ya, we need some gas with more lift, or, well, a way around gravity. It might work on a planet with a really desnse atmosphere, like Jupiter.

> It might work on a planet with a really desnse atmosphere, like Jupiter.

Talk about "places existing tours find it hard to reach"!

Certainly roomier than a train, and some of the train cars are gorgeous. I had a chance to ride in the Georgia 300 [1][2] and man, that's the only way to travel.

[1] http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05.4

[2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/14589121@N00/sets/721576128280...

Airships, particularly rigid airships (Zeppelins), are massive and it's the mass that becomes a problem. The airship is inflated to a state of neutral buoyancy so it floats and can hang in the sky (cool!) but the mass has to be dealt with when you want to start, stop, or change direction. I believe that the Hindenburg required a ground crew of ~200 to control the airship during landing and mooring. It's also a problem in flying in the vicinity of strong storms.

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.

If they could get the fare down to the equivalent of a business class airline ticket, I'd do it. Even if food + beverages were extra-cost.

> 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).

>I believe that the Hindenburg required a ground crew of ~200 to control the airship during landing and mooring. It's also a problem in flying in the vicinity of strong storms.

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 advantage of getting to the destination quickly is that the vessel can get new paying customers onboard. If the trip takes 48 rather than 6 hours, operation needs to be eight times cheaper to keep the same ticket price.

Sure - or you aim principally for the cruise market and charge a commensurately premium price. I was recently on a trip to the Antarctic that some folks had paid $30,000 a head for the experience - so the market certainly exists.

You could have more of them in flight (8x) to get the same volume of passengers.

If this Quora post[1] is to be believed it takes 10 years for an airline to break even on a 747. Assuming similar costs for the blimp that 8x turns into 80 years.

1. https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-an-airline-t...

You're right about everything except the Hindenburg being safer - hydrogen can never be made that safe because of the way it migrates through just about anything. We'd have to use helium.

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.

Zeppelins have problems with severe weather. Only one of the Zeppelin accidents was due to fire.

> Please, somebody, tell me why this is a bad idea.

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.

If global internet was a reality I could see working remotely on an airship as being quite attractive as well, just go wherever slowly in your flying apartment, stopping to pick up food & supplies once a week or so, and occasionally mooring in places you enjoy for more extended stays...

For the same price, I think I would rather have an extra day and a half of vacation.

The idea is though, that the airship travel itself is so nice it can be counted as part of the vacation.

That's the sort of thinking that had me take Amtrak on a cross-country trip back in the 1990s. Never again.

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.

If your train had not broken down, you might have enjoyed the trip?

> If your train had not broken down, you might have enjoyed the trip?

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.

Concur. On my one round trip with Amtrack [1] the train back was a few hours late. As my friend (who I traveled back with and is a train aficionado) said: "At best, a train is on time."

[1] http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05.1

> if I can take two days crossing the Atlantic in luxury rather than crammed into a tiny seat

Do you count business class as being crammed into a tiny seat?

Doesn't look like it's survived into 2017 looking at its press releases, but Aeros was supposed to be building airships with the main advantage of not requiring a runway for delivering cargo:

http://aeroscraft.com/press-releases/4591577189

Meh, we could use hydrogen if we really wanted to. If you separate the lift from the people/propulsion there is little chance of a strongly rising gas leak causing a fire. Heck, you can even do electronics in an explosive hydrogen atmosphere (I've personally done it). It just takes a lot of care and as a result is expensive to design.

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.

Interestingly enough, there is a startup that is working on this:

https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/aircraft/airlander-10

I think staffing costs would make this difficult if it's even possible.

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!

> No longer does the thing need to be stuffed with hydrogen.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg-class_airship

>>Give it a little while and we can stuff it with vacuum in spun carbon vessels.

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.

Helium is much more expensive than hydrogen and lifts less.