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The Hybrid Air Vechile - The Future of Airtravel?

JRS

JRS

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Here is an interesting clip from BBC:

magine a flying machine that can cruise in the air for three weeks without landing - and does not need a runway when it finally comes back to earth. It may sound like science fiction, but the Hybrid Air Vehicle - which looks like a traditional airship - can land anywhere and on any surface.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12110386
Click to expand...
Looks pretty cool:cool: and very interesting:)
The benefits against normal airplanes are clear..
but what about the weakneses?
Can it hand rough weather?
What if the baloon bursts midflight?
Nontheles I wish this project success..because aviation indrustry need innovations..and more less polluting options:bolian:

What do you think..does this project have a commercial future..and could it be the next revolution in air travel?
 
JRS said:
Here is an interesting clip from BBC:

magine a flying machine that can cruise in the air for three weeks without landing - and does not need a runway when it finally comes back to earth. It may sound like science fiction, but the Hybrid Air Vehicle - which looks like a traditional airship - can land anywhere and on any surface.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12110386
Click to expand...
Looks pretty cool:cool: and very interesting:)
The benefits against normal airplanes are clear..
but what about the weakneses?
Can it hand rough weather?
What if the baloon bursts midflight?
Nontheles I wish this project success..because aviation indrustry need innovations..and more less polluting options:bolian:

What do you think..does this project have a commercial future..and could it be the next revolution in air travel?
Click to expand...

The airship does not provide the speed or the stability of the modern airplane.. the US navy had a fleet of 3 modern airships in the 1930s..all were lost or severely damaged due to bad weather..

http://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-shenandoah
http://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-akron-macon

http://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-los-angeles


This modern airship will be nothing more than a curiosity
 
^ Military interest in airships is a lot more recent than that. DARPA only cancelled the WALRUS program aiming to produce a giant, fuck-off airship for strategic airlift last year:

45386090532646.jpg


Then there was DARPA's program to develop an airship to replace the E-3 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS aircraft cancelled only a few years back too.

In less interesting but more practical news, Northrop Grumman's LEMV hybrid airship for the US Army is expected to be deployed to Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Commercial civilian applications are rather more difficult to envision.
 
There were also the black project "Stealth Blimps" -- one reputed to be as large as 1-mile long. Kind of difficult to hide a sucker as big as that, even a stealthy one, and it would probably require way more Helium than has ever been extracted on the Earth.
 
I could actually see something like this used for the kind of long distance haulage currently done by artics (big rigs.) No worries about traffic jams holding up deliveries, they could probably hold several times the tonnage, are far more fuel efficient and could probably be controlled either remotely or robotically. It'd just be a matter of having depos on the ground that can accommodate them for offloads and maintenance.
 
Will this be used in a passenger-transport role, or just a military role?

I think a commercial aircraft should have a pilot onboard even if just for emergencies, plus I believe it's a bad idea to put large numbers of people out of business (especially with the economy in the state that it's in).
 
Airships are too slow to be practical for passenger transportation in most circumstances. I fancy them a great deal anyways. Next step is the Highwind!
 
I think airships are still suffering from the "Hindenburg" fears - but that ship only exploded because they were using hydrogen instead of helium.

Blimps are used for heavy lifting in remote areas and I think they were be amazing instead of a cruise ship.

And I read an article where the military is planning one for use for over enemy territory for radar and sensing.

I think they have a lot of unrealized potential.
 
ebusinesstutor said:
I think airships are still suffering from the "Hindenburg" fears - but that ship only exploded because they were using hydrogen instead of helium.
Click to expand...
And recent re-investigation of the Hindenburg disaster strongly suggests that the hydrogen burned cleanly upward and away from the passenger and crew areas, and that most of the deaths and injuries were the result of burning fuel and fabric (the fabric covering of the Hindenburg was painted with a highly flammable acetate dope containing powdered aluminum).

The Hindenburg was originally designed to use helium, but the U.S. was the only country at that time producing helium in sufficient quantities to fill a huge airship -- and we weren’t about to sell any to the Nazi regime.

Here’s another proposal for a hybrid aerostatic-aerodynamic craft. Like all the others, I’m sure it will remain a pipe dream.
 
goldbug said:
http://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-los-angeles
Click to expand...

Off topic, but "Los Angeles" has had a very interesting legacy with the USN. A zeppelin, a heavy cruiser, and a class-leading submarine. One wonders what the next one will be...

ebusinesstutor said:
I think airships are still suffering from the "Hindenburg" fears
Click to expand...

I really doubt people today are that affected by a disaster that happened 80 years ago and killed ~40 people. The issue with airships is that they're just not as practical as airplanes. Airliners have been lost, have exploded, been bombed, hijacked and diverted, hijacked and flown into buildings. On occasion doors and wings have fallen off them. We still fly in them.

The problem with airships is that they're not the best at anything. They're not the fastest mode of transport, airplanes are. They're not the most convenient, autos are. They're not the cheapest way to travel either, as trains and ships are (on land and sea respectively, of course). So given any situation (outside of very specific military needs) there's usually a better option.
 
^^ I'm not sure if this is correct, since I haven't actually crunched the numbers. But I read somewhere that sufficiently large airships could be more efficient than either cargo planes or surface transportation for carrying bulky, low-density freight.
 
Maybe. Even pagers are still around because they serve a niche. My larger point was that airships are anachronistic, largely (though likely not entirely) obsolete.
 
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