Hybrid Airships Will Change the Economics of Asia and Africa

Katigori on flickr

We are very close to waking up one day and finding ourselves in Fringe’s Alternative Universe. You can always tell by the airships’ sedate glide above the skyscrapers. Appropriately, it is on the fringe of engineering that the hybrid airship has quietly come about. 

The first powered flight was an airship 51 years before the Wright brothers. A Frenchman by the name of Jules Henri Giffard attached a 3 horsepower steam engine to a cigar-shaped lifting bag and piloted it 17 miles in Paris at 6 miles per hour. 

The Zeppelin airship, a rigid frame with cloth cover and internal lifting bags, was built by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1895. The luxury class flying industry it brought about died along with 36 passengers in the flames of the Hindenburg crash in May of 1937.

The airship had a lot going for it. It could carry a large payload faster than a passenger liner. There was very little turbulence and it had an impressive range. They can hover or turn in place. Flying low, they don’t typically require pressurization. 

And it had some serious drawbacks. It required attentive ground crews to keep it near the ground when loading and unloading. It was vulnerable to wind gusts on the ground and in the air, where it avoided bad weather at all costs. Hangar space had to be huge and, therefore, expensive. They were so huge, an old German airship hangar was converted into a large, covered waterpark. Using hydrogen in conjunction with flammable construction material was bad, bad, bad. 

Because a lot of these bad things are surmountable, a company has decided to bring back the airship. It is a hybrid airship called Airlander. It is hybrid because it gets its lift from three sources; helium-filled bag, wing-shaped lifting body, and thrusters. Using these in combination allows the ship to land like a plane but with a much shorter runway. It can also hover and come straight down. It carries its own anchor mast and can withstand 80 kilometer winds without a hangar. Which is the point. It doesn’t need a hangar and requires only a two-person ground crew for the Airlander 10 with a 10 metric ton capacity and none for the Airlander 50 with a 50 ton capacity. Production models are expected to be in the air by 2020. 

While there is a lot of hoopla about commercial passenger flying, heavy cargo transport is a given with the airship. Especially since it can go anywhere and land on any flat surface, including water without the need of a runway or hangar.  

Africa is an undeveloped continent just waiting for the Airlander to open it up. There are many places in Africa that don’t have access by paved road or the existing roads are unpaved and in poor condition. This is a severe restraint to travel and trade. With a hybrid airship, one could access the farthest reaches of a country with heavy equipment, prefab buildings, or hundreds of people at a time without roads. There are many parts of Asia on a par with Africa as far as undeveloped infrastructure. 

And who is at the forefront of acquiring and utilizing this technology? The Chinese. They are in line to receive three of the first ten manufactured Airlanders, which begins manufacturing in 2020. Just like they envisioned the importance of rare earth minerals 20 years ago and set out to dominate that market, the Chinese have realized the importance of roadless transportation, especially with regards to Africa and undeveloped parts of Asia. 

The Airlander is not the only airship China has in mind. Soon there will be an airship assembly line in Jingmen, China. With designs from French company Flying Whales, a Chinese company, China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co., Ltd. (CAIGA), will soon be pumping out airships to use for logging in Asia beginning in 2022. These ships are twice as long as a Boeing 747 and will lift 60 tons of cargo. 

Electric propulsion is already being studied for the Airlander and there seems to be no roadblocks to the airship becoming fully electric or a hybrid electric. In the latter case, the Airlander will become a hybrid hybrid airship. Sounds silly, but imagine a swath of flexible solar cells blanketing the enormous surface of an airship feeding several lithium ion batteries that would feel comfortable aboard a Tesla. If it works on the Airlander, it will work on any airship. 

Back to the 60 metric ton behemoths being built in China. That’s 132,277 pounds of payload. If it were passengers instead of logs, and we say the average weight of a human is 150 pounds then these ships could carry 882 passengers. That’s not true because there must be seats and luggage compartments and other stuff. It would only carry about 500 passengers. Now make the airship electric, and you have the cheapest airline in the world. No fuel costs. Not the fastest, but a lot of people would forego speed for thrift in the third world economies. 

Okay, so we won’t be in Fringe’s Alternate Universe, but it will look damn close except for those Chines symbols on the sides of the airships floating by. The rest of the world needs to realize the potential of this industry. Expensive infrastructure for travel and freight can be eliminated. Roads, airports, fuel stations will be much less important going forward once these airships are put in production and utilized to their maximum potential. The Hindenburg is dead! Long live the Hindenburg!


Other articles you may enjoy:


Outfitting a Mined Asteroid Into a Luxury Solar System Shuttle

I Am a Witness to Climate Change—You Should Be, Too

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the  Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

Your World Is Changing

This is a glimpse into the future, and one of the many technologies seamlessly incorporated into the space opera Transmat World. 

While Peak Oil and Climate Change are being debated by politicos, the nerds that actually bothered to attend math and science classes and listen are telling us it is a rapidly changing world, and not for the better. Population growth and global warming are increasing at a break-neck speed. 

Prospective Peak Oil Scenario

Image courtesy Raquel Baranow
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Although your life seems normal now, it won’t stay that way. Wind, solar, and nuclear energy projects of the future won’t be built on the basis of a referendum. They will be mandatory. Cars will have to go hydrogen (derived from electrolysis) or electric. 

And so will planes. The future of the airline industry for rapid travel about the globe will have to change. Jet aircraft will have to adopt hydrogen as a fuel. But there is an alternative. It is slower and harkens back to an earlier time, but modern technology breathes new life into the concept of an airship.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

By combining several unique concepts, modern airships will revolutionize air travel, carrying 5,000 passengers at a time for the cost of construction and maintenance - no fuel involved. 

The major problem with airships in the past has been two-fold: 
1. They required ballast to offset lift, therefore the ballast and the lifting gas became consumables, each one in turn having to be jettisoned to make the craft rise or fall. 
2. They could not land like a plane. A ground crew was required to handle the lighter-than-air craft, and it could not be done in a stiff breeze.


These two problems and more have been fixed. You start with a lighter-than-air lifting body and add wings and a solid floor to which everything is attached. Flexible solar cells cover the body and power up lithium-ion batteries which turn motors and props, thrusting it through the air silently without products of combustion fouling the atmosphere.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE

Lifting bags of helium, the lifting body design, and the wings provide lift. The frame of the ship is not metal. It is light-weight inflatable structures, much like the bouncy castle used for a kid’s birthday party. This structure is heavier duty, utilizing modern fiber technology to allow higher pressures resulting in a much stiffer support. These air-filled trusses support the solar cell skin on the outside and the lifting bags of helium on the inside.


The helium lifting bags are the key to making the airship work properly. They provide the lift to allow this ship to carry thousands of passengers or heavy cargo. Unlike in the past, however, the lifting gas does not have to be discharged to allow the ship to land. Instead, pumps suck out the helium gas, storing it in pressurized containers for re-use. This causes the lift bags to be variable in their lifting capacity, allowing the pilot to switch to a slightly heavier-than-air mode for more maneuverability when landing. The fact that it can land and be hangared like a plane greatly increases its safety in inclement weather.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

The rich will always ride their jets of combustion no matter the cost, but for millions the price of airfare could drop dramatically with the advent of solar-powered airships. We should start talking about planning and implementation now because it is not a matter of if but when.


Please leave your thoughts, comments, suggestions. They are always welcome.

Thanks,
Glen Hendrix, author of Transmat World

Move over FedEx, Here Comes FatEx

You may have read my blog on the necessity of change. Population growth and global warming are increasing at a break-neck speed. Although your life seems normal now, it won’t stay that way. Wind, solar, and nuclear energy projects of the future won’t be built on the basis of a referendum. They will be mandatory. Cars will have to go hydrogen (derived from electrolysis) or electric. And so will planes. The future of the airline industry for hauling freight and people about the globe will have to change. Jet aircraft will have to adopt hydrogen as a fuel. But there is an alternative. It is slower and harkens back to an earlier time, but modern technology breathes new life into the concept of an airship.

My previous post on this subject touched on passenger air travel but this concept is even more appropriate when talking about freight. By combining several unique concepts, modern airships will revolutionize air travel; carrying 500 tons cross country at 100 mph--no fuel involved. The major problem with airships in the past has been two-fold: 1. They required ballast to offset lift, therefore the ballast and the lifting gas became consumables, each one in turn having to be jettisoned to make the craft rise or fall. 2. They could not land like a plane. A ground crew was required to handle the lighter-than-air craft, and it could not be done in a stiff breeze.



These two problems and more have technical fixes. You start with a lighter-than-air lifting body and add wings and a solid floor to which everything is attached. Flexible solar cells cover the body and power up lithium-ion batteries which turn motors and props, thrusting it through the air silently without the products of combustion fouling the atmosphere.

Lifting bags of helium, the lifting body design, and the wings provide lift. The frame of the ship is not metal. It is light-weight inflatable structures, much like the bouncy castle used for a kid’s birthday party. But this "bouncy castle" is heavier duty, utilizing modern fiber technology to allow higher pressures resulting in a much stiffer support. These air-filled trusses support the solar cell skin on the outside and the lifting bags of helium on the inside.



Helium lifting bags are the key to making the airship work properly. They, along with the wings and lifting body, provide the lift to allow this ship to carry a million pounds of cargo. Unlike in the past, however, helium does not have to be discharged to allow the ship to land. Instead, pumps suck out the helium gas, storing it in pressurized containers for re-use. This causes the lift bags to be variable in their lifting capacity, allowing the pilot to switch to a slightly heavier-than-air mode for more maneuverability when landing. The fact that it can land and be hangared like a plane greatly increases its safety in bad weather.

When it has to be there overnight, jets rule, but for the majority of freight, the price could drop dramatically with the advent of solar-powered airships, and it would be a start in cleaning up and revitalizing an industry that is so important to us all.


Please leave your thoughts, comments, suggestions. They are always welcome.

Thanks,
Glen Hendrix, author of Transmat World

Dramatic Changes Coming to the Airline Industry

It is a rapidly changing world. Population growth and global warming are increasing at a break-neck speed. Although your life seems normal now, it won’t stay that way. Wind, solar, and nuclear energy projects of the future won’t be built on the basis of a referendum. They will be mandatory. Cars will have to go hydrogen (derived from electrolysis) or electric. And so will planes. The future of the airline industry for rapid travel about the globe will have to change. Jet aircraft will have to adopt hydrogen as a fuel. But there will be a future alternative. It is slower and harkens back to an earlier time, but modern technology breathes new life into the concept of an airship. Click on any image to enlarge.

The future of air travel.

By combining several unique concepts, modern airships will revolutionize air travel; carrying 5,000 passengers at a time for the cost of construction and maintenance - no fuel involved. The major problem with airships in the past has been two-fold: 1. They required ballast to offset lift, therefore the ballast and the lifting gas became consumables, each one in turn having to be jettisoned to make the craft rise or fall. 2. They could not land like a plane. A ground crew was required to handle the lighter-than-air craft, and it could not be done in a stiff breeze.

It costs $4000 to recycle ton of plastic bags worth $500 on open market.

These two problems and more have been fixed. You start with a lighter-than-air lifting body and add wings and a solid floor to which everything is attached. Flexible solar cells cover the body and power up lithium-ion batteries which turn motors and props, thrusting it through the air silently without the products of combustion fouling the atmosphere.

An inside look.

Lifting bags of helium, the lifting body design, and the wings provide lift. The frame of the ship is not metal. It is light-weight inflatable structures, much like the bouncy castle used for a kid’s birthday party. This structure is heavier duty than a bouncy castle, utilizing modern fiber technology to allow higher pressures resulting in a much stiffer support. These air-filled trusses support the solar cell skin on the outside and the lifting bags of helium on the inside.

The helium lifting bags are the key to making the airship work properly. They provide the lift to allow this ship to carry thousands of passengers or heavy cargo. Unlike in the past, however, helium does not have to be discharged to allow the ship to land. Instead, pumps suck down the helium gas, storing it in pressurized containers for re-use. This causes the lift bags to be variable in their lifting capacity, allowing the pilot to switch to a slightly heavier-than-air mode for more maneuverability when landing. The fact that it can land and be hangared like a plane greatly increases its safety in inclement weather.

If this had been around 15 years ago, the “paper or plastic” question would be moot. 

The landing can use such a short runway, for all intents and purposes, this airship is a vertical take-off and landing craft. As such, it can scoff at airports. This will be the air transport of Africa, developing its vast territories like no commercial airliner or wheeled vehicle can. It will bring Africa into the 21st Century.

Plenty of room.

The rich will always ride their jets of combustion no matter the cost for the speed, but for millions of more patient people the price of airfare could drop dramatically with the advent of solar-powered airships. We should start talking about planning and implementation now because it is not a matter of if but when.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions are always welcome.

Thanks,
Glen Hendrix, author of Transmat World