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wardedVibe

While they are extremely cool, what tangible benefit do they have over airplanes?

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Efficiency, cost and low carbon seem the obvious ones:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28278515

That links to a YC company building small cargo blimps introducing themselves and providing some good detail:

> We build small unmanned cargo airships and use them to move air freight at half the cost per mile of a small plane.

What a marketing BS. It's also probably like 1/10th of the speed (in the best case) and whatnot else.

If you hang fruit low enough, anybody can pick them.

They go into reasonable detail about where this trade-off makes sense (e.g. deliveries to intermediate warehouses in Alaska), they're not suggesting to replace all other transport with blimps.

> half the cost per mile of a small plane.

Half the cost of the most expensive mode of transportation.

They have many disadvantages compared to planes, like they are slower, can't take a lot of passengers and need special infrastructures.

But there is a niche for advertisement, aerial photography, observation platforms, heavy weight transportation and of course tourism.

See for example the seven Zeppelin NT, witch seem to have find some usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT

Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei has been going for 21 years now. It's the one bright light in the sea of airship projects. They're not exactly aiming to take over the world of aviation, though.

> heavy weight transportation

Airships are absolute garbage at heavy lifting.

The lifting power of hydrogen or helium is about 1kg/m^3. This means as you scale weight up the size of your envelope grows quickly which greatly hinders manoeuvrability. And obviously the increase in envelope size means you need more structure and systems (propulsion & al) which are heavier and reduce your useful payload.

I got to ride on a Zeppelin NT when Airship Ventures was operating flights on the SF Peninsula. It was pretty great.

Here's a previous comment with some links and photos of my flight:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21662645

actually when now I start to think self flying zeppelin moving cargo containers slowly using electricity would be pretty cool. First you could start with windmill blade transportation and then move to other stuff.

> But there is a niche for advertisement

… great more pollution

I’m gonna guess that they can loiter for a long time?

Also if I read it right their cargo capacity is about double that of a 747-400F.

Edit: nope, it’s 1/5th the cargo weight of a 747.

Yeah, you can maximally lift the weight of the air you're displacing, right? That plane can carry 124000kg. Air is about 1kg/m3 at sea level, so that requires a balloon of 124000m3 (assuming the balloon and gas weigh nothing). That's a cube of 50x50x50 meters under optimal assumptions.

“Hi, we heard you needed help, so we sent the Borg”

Is the comparison with a 747 the most relevant?

The niche use case I see for large airships (aside from pleasure rides) is deliveries in remote area with no infrastructure. For example delivering a big generator in Alaska.

In such use case, the comparison should maybe be against large transport helicopters.

From the article:

> LTA's goal is to build huge airships to provide humanitarian aid in places where conventional transportation can't reach, such as in the aftermath of a disaster. (...) "We believe that lighter-than-air technology has the potential to revolutionize humanitarian relief efforts with its ability to reach remote locations that have little or no infrastructure," Weston said.

I don't really understand how these are meant to help - they are extremely slow and can't carry very much weight. Surely airdrops from conventional planes would be more effective even if there is no infrastructure for them to land?

I'm trying to think of a scenario where this would actually be more beneficial than other means of transport.

Agreed. In the humanitarian scenario in a war zone, an airship just looks like a very big, very visible target. I don't understand this use case, except if you consider that humanitarian corridors are always respected in warfare but then it's just being naive.

I was thinking more along the lines of earth quakes, hurricanes, mud slide in the mountains, tsunamis.

Again from article

> Pathfinder 3 (...) is designed to carry about 20 tons and be able to traverse as many as 10,000 miles using electric-only, zero-emission propulsion.

A quick search tells me that an Mi-26, the largest cargo helicopter can carry approximately the same weight.

But the article doesn't say how fast it can travel, which is extremely important in reaching disaster zones. Even if you're travelling from, say, Miami to Haiti is 1000km, so I guess it would take 30 hours? But providing aid to Tonga after the recent volcano seems unlikely with this airship.

Sergey Brin also has a ship that provides aid: https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/sergey-brin-secre... - so I don't know what advantage he sees in this airship.

Yeah, I'd take an osprey or helicopter for that use case. People w/out infrastructure usually need things fast. Or maybe https://flyzipline.com/ which uses drones

Sounds like they could re-use whatever they had from Google Balloons or whatever it was called.

Maybe he influenced the decision to open source all the data?

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/alphabet-gives-some-loon-p...

Efficency, especially when covered with solar panels.

You could basically fly without fuel.

Planes on the other hand are indeed much faster etc. but they only are because they burn lots of kerosine.

But all in all, as long as kerosine remains so cheap, airships cannot compete, except in niches.

If we’d account correctly for airplanes and boats for the enormous emissions they have, than I think a full electric slow floating airship like this would be tremendously beneficial. However, for it to be economically feasible it also oughtta have similar subsidies like planes and ships have with their zero emission taxes.

Container ships are hard to beat for efficiency.

And new sail-assisted container ships will improve things further in terms of environmental efficiency... if they ever become an actual thing.

Or nuclear cargo ships.

but you cannot use container ships in Nevada.

Trains are the land equivalent of container ships. If they work for Switzerland, they can work anywhere

I wonder if there are still any military applications for airships in modern warfare.

There are ideas for drone carriers and communication hubs.

How is that better than a truck?

Moreover, is there a design of an airship that doesn’t create a radar blimp the size of medium-sized asteroid?

Trucks cannot move over hard terrain for instance and communication works way better with direct line of sight.

But yes, they are not easy to hide, are vulnerable and cannot be not deployed on the frontlines because of this, but rather in the back.

But they can stay up for eternity.

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