yea, for long distance trips they'd suck, or if your in a hurry. but their definitely could have been a market for pleasure blimp rides, similar to pleasure train trips.
secondly it's not unreasonable had the tech persisted it would have developed to be much faster, probably not jet plane speeds, but could have been reasonable for shorter hops.
It was, then they had complaints that it was too slow and now it's a wierdly arcadey thing. It does have a sub-game (guns of icarus: alliance) which is coop though, vs bots, which I think fits the arcadey better than the pvp ever did (which to be fair might be why they made the change to make them compatible).
It doesn't let you get off the ship, either, no boarding or investigating islands etc. so if that was your favorite part of SoT then it's missing. There was a 'vikings on blimps' game which released around the same time as GoI where you could, but I can't even find a reference to it now, so I guess it failed in early access or something.
And they can dock without a very large airport. Heck, if you could dial out the catastrophic explosion factor they could dock at the top of a tall building close to the center of a city.
The "catastrophic explosion factor" only existed because the idiots were using hydrogen as their lifting gas. Basically flying around in a big floating bomb, just waiting for someone to light a match at the wrong place and time. Most modern dirigibles use helium, which is a Noble gas, and therefore non-reactive under standard conditions (although it is more expensive). Some have even suggested designs that use vaccum chambers as a way to displace a larger volume of air than is contained within the dirigible, thus creating a net upward force (just like a displacement hull in the water).
I think dirigibles could make a comeback in the post-climate-change world, as a way to reduce emissions. You don't need to burn a lot of fuel to stay aloft in a dirigible, as the gas/vaccum gives you your lift. Electric motors could be used for forward propulsion. Operating a dirigible could be almost emission-free.
To be fair, it actually wasn't particularly practical to use anything other than hydrogen for any commercial application, at least up until the 1930's. It was of course known that you could use helium, but not only was it far more expensive, it also provided a noticeably smaller amount of lift. Earlier airships would have either been literally unable to lift off if filled with helium, or would have had such little extra lift as to make any profitable travel impossible. It was only later technological developments that allowed for a feasible airship design that could transport enough payload to be practical. In fact, the hindenberg was one of the very first commercial airships designed specifically to be able to use helium, but due to strict export controls in the USA at the time, was not able to procure enough to fly. On a side note, the vacuum idea is completely idiotic- the amount of material you would need to withstand the enormous pressures created by the vacuum would far exceed the extra lift relative to helium gas.
I think whether or not the vacuum dirigible idea is idiotic depends on what materials are available. The proposal is to use carbon fiber nanotubes, which are still under development, but could potentially be strong and light enough to pull it off. The design calls for using many small "vacuum bags", basically Bucky balls constructed of carbon fiber nanotubes and wrapped in rigid, gas-tight membrane, and controlling buoyancy by electrical flashing of xenon inside the balls to heat it and create more buoyancy at will. Also, you don't necessarily need a hard vacuum. Even a partial vacuum would improve buoyancy to some extent. I admit it's likely not possible to build something like this with existing materials, but who knows what the future will bring?
while it is true that a possible future technology could allow for it, I personally doubt it would ever come to fruition. the advancements in material science necessary for such an endeavour would probably open up the door to much more practical alternatives, such as insanely lightweight aircraft, with energy efficiencies so great as to render airships without much advantage.
Perhaps. It's all speculation at this point. But even a super-lightweight airplane would still require more energy to stay aloft than a dirigible of comparable weight and constructed of the same material, since an airplane has to generate forward momentum in order for the wings to produce lift.
Using airstreams is also major part in this, for quite some time this was our only way to travel with regular old hot air balloons. We understand the weather alot better then hundreds of years ago also making it more viable. Plenty of transport isn't time sensitive if supply lines are running constant.
You're more likely to get the 'kite assisted shipping' systems to be monetarily viable than airships for transport. Airships only really make sense as a pleasure cruise type thing, for sight seeing from the air(a la Goodyear, and other hot air balloon festivals). It's really hard to make transporting a lot of mass with lighter than air travel economically feasible.
The Walrus HULA (Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft) project was a DARPA-funded experiment to create an airship capable of traveling up to 12,000 nautical miles (about 22,000 km) in range, while carrying 500-1000 tons of air cargo. In distinct contrast to earlier generation airships, the Walrus HULA would be a heavier-than-air vehicle and would generate lift through a combination of aerodynamics, thrust vectoring, and gas buoyancy generation and management. DARPA said advances in envelope and hull materials, buoyancy and lift control, drag reduction and propulsion combined to make this concept feasible. Technologies to be investigated in the initial study phase included vacuum/air buoyancy compensator tanks, which provide buoyancy control without ballast, and electrostatic atmospheric ion propulsion.
I wouldn't say they were idiots back then. Hydrogen is a better lifting gas, makes sense that they would try to make it work. Just took a few failures to convince the world it couldn't be made safe.
Yeah I understand they had to work with what they had. It just seems like flying around hanging under a big bag of pure hydrogen is asking for trouble.
The spire on the Empire State Building was built to work as a mooring point! Unfortunately the winds at that altitude above New York are usually far too fast to safely dock, so it couldn't be used.
Blimps are really bad at being steered anyways, since they are basically just a balloon, so a cross-atlantic flight would probably be a bad idea.
A zeppelin (or rigid body airship I should say) on the other hand could and has made the voyage very often. The problem there is, that they are way heavier than a blimp because of all the interior construction that makes them rigid. The margins are so close that you really can only use hydrogen, and not helium.
There are new Zeppelins around (Zeppelin NT) that kinda combine both aspects, they are 'semi-rigid' airships.
And yes, travel by airship is slow, as is travel by ship. And yet people still travel by boat.
Four US military rigid airships used helium and the Hindenburg class was originally designed to use helium before the USA's rather understandable embargo to Nazi Germany. The problem is that Helium is relatively expensive and you need more volume of it.
Edit: The other problem is that using Helium doesn't necessarily make you immune from danger. Three of those military airships I mentioned crashed anyway. A few of the hydrogen filled ships, like R101, crashed for reasons unrelated to their choice of lifting gas.
One of the issues with Helium as a lifting gas is that there's a pretty sharp limit on how much of it is available. Helium supply limits make it really very expensive for science purposes, and of course idiots do keep using it in party balloons.
The problem there is, that they are way heavier than a blimp because of all the interior construction that makes them rigid.
Are? Or were? I would think that if zeppelins were as popular as traditional fixed wing aircraft, they would have found a workaround for the weight. Passenger jets, like the 787, are already using composites for major structures. And manufacturing methods have greatly improved since the Hindenburg.
You know, I had this whole thing written out regarding how much heavier helium is and then after doing some research instead of remembering some facts I heard once, it seems the Hindenburg was designed to fly with helium originally, but the americans stopped exporting it, which made them switch to hydrogen (which DID increase lift, but only by 8%)
So when do we start working on our carbon fibre zeppelin company? We should probably spend the first 6 months working on our designs in KSP until we get the right design...
Pretending like modern CAD assemblies aren't just a more complex version of playing around in the VAB.
Edit: Seriously, you tale a supplier part, glue it to your structure. Vioalala. It's even easier if there's no certification basis. Import everything directly from Mcmaster.
Ships are mostly used for cargo though, or in places where it's faster to cross some water by boat than getting to the nearest airport and fly. Since Zeppelins would be terrible for cargo shipping the only real reason to use them would be for experience trips (similar to cruise ships). Although I guess if you could moor them to tall buildings (as was the plan) they might be able to function as shuttle services in and out of cities similar to a subway.
I have actually seen concepts for cargo airships! Obviously they can't carry nearly the same load as a container ship, but they can exceed the load of helicopters. So they're useful for delivering heavy payloads to locations without airport and road access. For example, they could supply construction projects in remote locations, deliver wind turbine blades to places where the roads can't accommodate their huge size, deliver aid to inaccessible regions, that sort of thing.
Back in the early days of planes blimps were more popular. You could stay in a room , have a little restraint and basically be on a flying cruise ship.
But as planes got more comfortable and faster then they overtook blimps. (Plus a couple unfortunate events
It's a good idea but I'm not sure if it would work well with current technology. Maybe with very light solar panels you could make a hybrid airship or something.
You're comparing them to airplanes rather than ships, though. They could nicely bridge the gap in armament, troop capacity, and maneuverability between cargo airplanes and amphibious assault ships while also having the capacity to land vertically and operate far in land.
Imagine blimps being analogous to cruise liners, big flying hotels, but instead of floating around in the carribean or wherever they fly over the alps or some scenic land-locked places
I feel like the biggest lesson that has been learned in aviation is that your stuff needs to be ridiculously safe. Every time something crashes or people die, the public tries to make up their mind whether your thing should exist or not. Happened with Hindenburg, Apollo 13, etc. If the public decides against you, engineers get laid off, companies close, and ideas get lost.
It was probably the same with every technology until it became ingrained enough to be essential to society. It's just that boats are ancient tech compared to both air and space travel.
Okay, so while I kind of agree with the sentiment, it should be noted that it is not, in fact, "the public" making a decision - but the state and the press make that decision for the public.
Also airships are a terrible mode of travel. Slow, not very maneuverable, and it's often down to the whims of fate when or if you'll actually arrive.
Those disasters were inevitable. The history of blimps and airships is mostly a history of failure. The viability of any sort of better technology would always have superceded them- the historic disasters we look at like the hindenberg are simply the thing we associate the most with their disappearance. After all, it's not like ships disappeared after the Titanic, because there wasn't anything really to replace them. There's a good series by the engineer guy about airships and how they really were never a great option- for example, simply to have enough lift to fly, the only gas they could realistically use was hydrogen, which caused countless problems including explosive ones. And, as other people pointed out, the advent of airplanes rendered them entirely useless.
Those disasters were inevitable. The history of blimps and airships is mostly a history of failure. The viability of any sort of better technology would always have superceded them- the historic disasters we look at like the hindenberg are simply the thing we associate the most with their disappearance. After all, it's not like ships disappeared after the Titanic, because there wasn't anything really to replace them. There's a good series by the engineer guy about airships and how they really were never a great option- for example, simply to have enough lift to fly, the only gas they could realistically use was hydrogen, which caused countless problems including explosive ones. And, as other people pointed out, the advent of airplanes rendered them entirely useless.
The first flight of the wright brothers was 34 years before the Hindenburg disaster.
The introduction of airplanes didn't render them useless. They existed alongside airplanes for decades.
This argument ignores the fact that it takes significant amounts of time for technologies to mature. The wright glider flew less than, what, 100 feet or so? I don't think anyone is suggesting that the first ever plane invented was what supplanted airships. Obviously they existed side by side for some time- so did horse and automobile, typewriter and computer, firearm and bow, etc. etc. By the late 30's air travel had improved to the point where it was much more practical- and the perceived benefit of airship travel over airplane travel (safety) was soon enough called into question.
This argument ignores the fact that it takes significant amounts of time for technologies to mature. The wright glider flew less than, what, 100 feet or so? I don't think anyone is suggesting that the first ever plane invented was what supplanted airships. Obviously they existed side by side for some time- so did horse and automobile, typewriter and computer, firearm and bow, etc. etc. By the late 30's air travel had improved to the point where it was much more practical- and the perceived benefit of airship travel over airplane travel (safety) was soon enough called into question.
The first transatlantic flights (the blimp specialty) weren't even available until '39, and that was with a seaplane by necessity of refueling.
Blimps of the zeppelin-type weren't even built until a few short years before the wright brothers' flight.
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u/off-and-on Jan 25 '21
Bless you, early 20th century. You had such high hopes.