Everyone wears a stormtrooper helmet at the airport which is then attached to a tube hanging from the ceiling above your seat There's an airship factory being opened in Finland. It's for airship drones.. but you could just scale it up and use helium instead of hydrogen. Zeppelins were supposed to use helium but they couldn't buy it if I recall correctly. Then the flight tickets would cost a fraction of today's cost or be roughly the same but the travel time would be a few weeks.
Helium is a non-renewable (without some very very specific pseudo-nuclear... or straight up nuclear... reactions) resource. It also has less lift per volume which is why they went with hydrogen. Most of the helium in the world is extracted from natural gas. Biggest problem with helium being it's nearly impossible to completely contain, if there's a pinhole? It'll find it (this is why helium is so useful in tracing damage in pressurized systems). Being unable to fully contain it means you're going to have to refill periodically, and this goes back to the first problem, once we've used it all up, it's gone. Hydrogen is quite literally -everywhere- you can't take a piss without it. XD... I've done some research into the use of helium for dirigibles and the like, It's not to say that it could not be done, but the cost can be quite prohibitive and you have to balance the cost of the gas against the cost of a ticket. Basically it comes down to the problem of weight, people vary in weight quite a bit and in order to lift them you've got to have quite a lot of helium. We ain't talking just a few balloons a head, neither. By average balloon size you'd need almost six thousand balloons per person (on average). That's just the person though, not including the dirigible, equipment, amenities, etc... Of course the difference between helium and hydrogen lift is only about 10% so make your zeppelin 10% bigger and it should be able to carry the same payload. Another idea that might be more reasonable is a helium assisted aircraft, basically a vtol with a swim bladder. Doesn't need nearly as much thrust to get off the ground so the vtol engines can be significantly smaller to the payload. Another thing I've attempted to research but have not seen any significant information on, was heated helium. Theoretically hot helium should expand and increase it's lift similar to hot air, of course this would also make the molecules that much more difficult to contain, but that's already an issue. Helium has very little reactivity change to heat however, so you could potentially increase the lift limited only by the area of expansion and your ability to generate heat.
I thought the export of helium was restricted to Germany at the time but could be wrong. But yea, airships are a joke. They don't really do anything well, except floating and that's with the cost of massive bulk.
I mean, There's something to the idea, unfortunately the scale of something required to turn a profit begins to dwarf the infrastructure necessary to support it. However, if you were able to reliably generate a significant amount of lift by helium it might be entirely possible to have fuel-less satellite deployment. At the very least you could do it with a very minute amount of actual fuel cost. In fact if your propulsion was electrical and you carried solar arrays you might be able to remain airborn indefinitely and could even potentially fly at altitudes at which weather considerations might be altogether irrelevant. I know helium itself can break orbit but I'm not sure about a craft flying by it, might want to be careful about the upper limits XD
No craft can make it to orbit with any floatation device. Orbit is not altitude, it is speed. This is why it's retarded that ships 'fall out of orbit' when their main engines get hit in scifi. Helium is not the only thing that can bounce into space, many of the lighter particles can and even water can escape over time this way. For small particles it's a game of 3D pool and statistically enough particles will get knocked around by others in such ways that they will break orbit - but in this they are also aided by the solar wind which really knocks them away from the planet as they are hopping about 'too high'. You could however build a skyhook using massive balloons, methinks. You'd pull it down as it swung you to low orbit from high altitude but the lift of the balloons would restore it to it's original height.
Apparently there is a Canadian company researching and advocating cargo airships for colder climates. So stuff (I think primarily food) is cheaper/more accessible in the winter. Technology Development Buoyant aircraft technology is not as obvious as it appears; or, as one industry insider describes it, “deceptively sophisticated.” The principal operators of BASI have over 70 years of combined study in buoyant aircraft technology, this sophistication is well understood by our team. Giant Zeppelins flew successfully over 80 years ago without any of the advantages that current engineers have to work with. Advances in materials and methods allow the production of modern airships to be safer and more efficient. BASI’s research team has four major projects Design of a rigid buoyant aircraft capable of carrying 30 metric tons. An airship-truck ground-handling and transshipment system. Design and development of thin-walled gas-containing structures. Understanding the economics of a buoyant aircraft transportation system. Buoyant Aircraft Systems International Airship technology for a northern future
Finnish Kelluu Airship Factory makes transparent airship drones for long flight duration missions such as long term surveillance, monitoring and for example inspecting power lines - identifying trees that grow too close etc. That's the primary advantage, the buoancy is 'canceling' gravity, all drones spend over 95% of their energy fighting against gravity which typically reduces flight times to ~20-40 minutes and flight speed and height are similarly exponentially limiting the flight time, nevermind payloads. For instance long term monitoring and things like small packages don't involve much payload and can be efficiently done considering they are not time critical but more fuel critical processes. For something like local or short range cruises or even some long range cruises I could well imagine air ships to be very practical for.
I said potentially. Certainly there are other things that escape the atmosphere, but most of them are easily replenished. Helium is not. Also I never stated that you would not need to have any kind of engine, even if that engine is something relatively simple. Really you wouldn't want your balloon to escape the atmosphere even were it possible. Though launching from a balloon might not be worth the effort as the highest altitude of unmanned balloon was 53km and LEO is ~2000km, so you get about 2% closer. Of course there's a lot of numbers to crunch in the actual value, it's much more difficult to lift something from sea level than the top of a mountain (energy wise, not logistics) but I expect it wouldn't be practical for very large payloads etc... as the craft has to lift the rocket, payload and everything else up to the launching altitude. I suspect the most efficient use would be hauling of things and cruises though. Low energy transportation is extremely green and if you can be reasonably safe and reliable then it'd be much more pragmatic than the big tankers etc... the cost might quickly be offset by the savings. I realize the effect is mostly for cinematic purposes in most sci-fi, but while Star Wars isn't by any means a good science side fiction, they don't always actually establish 'orbit' since their propulsion systems can quite frequently ignore such obstacles it's quite possible that they simply aren't actually orbiting the planet and as their engines fail, so too does their ability to remain aloft. Add to that the enormous explosions frequently accompanying these ships' destruction and you can assume that any intentional orientation is likely spoiled by erratic masses of matter thrust into space from various vectors. Though in that instance they may fall out of orbit, unless a significant portion of the explosive force happened to be directing the ship towards the planet, it would likely not happen within a cinematic timeframe.
I'm sure it's for cinematic effect but they do seem to have ships fall from orbit far faster than they should and not really seem to travel laterally (still orbit) as they fall. At the speeds they travel (even the capital ships) shouldn't they still orbit a few times before entering the atmosphere (assuming they are not sitting fairly still) instead of plummeting straight down? Even in geosynchronous orbit I don't think they would land where they were stationed above even if not moving at all. I like the idea of airships as a low cost/green method of cargo transport. It would probably be bulk goods mostly. Rarely replace trains or cargo ships.
Even as a last leg of low-priority delivery such as picking up shit from a train station and dropping it off to homes and other destinations when 1-2 days delay is acceptable. @Damion, yea, those are very good points. They just casually have a Star Destroyer here or there sitting above a city, no big deal.
Well it is a millennia old spacefaring civilization, and with the exception of during the clone wars, most of the people who make use of the Star Destroyer etc... ships aren't exactly overly concerned with civilian casualties. You kinda gotta be over such trivialities when you decide your targets are planetary in scale. We're also talking a civilization where a jump capable starship is basically the intergalactic equivalent of an ultralight aircraft. Sure not everyone's gonna have one, mostly because of need/experience, but it's not so terribly cost prohibitive that a middle class family couldn't pick one up for a hobby if they were willing to cut some other corners a bit. They also have loads of star destroyers we never really get a scope for. Take into account they're not just fighting the rebellion 24/7 with no other concerns at all, they've got to keep a presence on every world they control enough that rebellion doesn't spring up there, as well. Keeping a Star Destroyer at key points is a very visual reminder that 'we're watching' and there's several different sizes of that design. Given how they all share the same general shape, unless they're side by side to really garner scale it's difficult to even tell which Star Destroyers are actually present in each event, though there are of course ways to distinguish them. The average however would probably have a difficult time telling the difference between a First Order Star Destroyer and an Imperial version.
Got all excited about my 4x space strategy again. You know what, I should just wrap up a playable version of that game someday. It's all about going from those different perspectives of "uh, it's expensive to send a probe to Alpha Centauri" to later "if I do this action the lush tropical world will be reduced to a desert world but once the war is over we have plenty of time to restore the planetary climate".
would love to see a sci-fi game that doesn't reduce a planet to it's majority biome. At least the habitable ones, Star Wars is one of the worst criminals in this, while desert planets and ice planets are surely commonplace (habitable ones maybe notsomuch, considering we kinda need the oxygen/CO2 conversion dynamic or inevitably the air would become unbreathable) a 'forest planet' seems a bit farfetched, I mean sure a planet could be heavily populated with dense vegetation but odds are you're going to have dead zones, ice caps, oceans etc... It's an oversimplification of a planets terrain. Technically even desert planet and ice planet is oversimplified, what kind of desert, what is the ice composed of? How much of the planet is primarily desert and how does the biome function? Would also love to see a cold desert for once, movies often will play to the stereotypical hot during the day cold at night desert but there are plenty of deserts that are just cold and I wouldn't be shocked to find a desert out there where the sand isn't primarily silica and might retain heat better, like Phoenix. XD (Note: the sand in Phoenix is still silica based, it's the blacktop people built that makes it retain heat) Wait, what was the topic again? Oh yeah, airships. Honestly one of my dream ventures would be a luxury steampunk style dirigible cruiseliner. I mean, anyone can take a cruise on the ocean, how many can take a cruise in the sky? ^.^
Yea, something like 500-1000 meters high is already "wow!" and would be so cool. Nevermind actually having faux-retro steampunk styled craft with the staff dressed appropriately! Our neighbor city Vasa actually has a steampunk bar..
Right? Have a steampunk style live action theater with mechanized participants, tesla weapons, etc... XD. Could rig it up to have a boarding action by sky pirates... could be incredible ^.^ (of course security would need to be on the ball too, wouldn't do to have actual sky piracy )
Have you guys not heard of Guns of Icarus? It's steampunk. Airships. Combat. Repair. Just no sky boarding actions.
Modern vikings, paint the air long ship with red and white stripes and go raiding. Might make a quick stop at the Baltics only to discover they're even poorer than we are, try Finland only to discover that those guys are nuts and then split up with part of the group raiding British Isles and another going east along Volga. Make Vikings Great Again!
I thought of remaking Air Power with better flight model and some novel ideas. Things like artillery pieces on the airships, like a couple of guns at the lower part of the internal structure and as turrets on the main condola. Things like the airships able to bombard a city or fortress from high altitude with mobility and superior range while staying out of reach of defensive guns. And lots and lots of biplanes and triplanes launched from airfields and airship carriers!
I mean, really hang gliders with guns would be pretty devastating in the amounts you could carry from one of those, considering you're already aloft they simply drop and fly. Put a little engine that doesn't take much fuel (on the gliders), hell for very short engagements even battery powered might be sufficient and you've got a flying airfield. Maybe ultralights, really you can save so much on space and hardware when you don't need to travel 1000 miles to get to the battle. Bombing from a zeppelin always seemed to be a bit backwards, your main consideration in a dirigible is weight so you're going to load it up with thousands of pounds of bombs? Now drones on the other hand, this'd be one of those circumstances where swarm drones would be more useful than missiles. Terrifying maybe, but more practical. Then again what could be more demoralizing than seeing that creeping dark cloud of drones approaching your town XD, better fire up the EMP!
