IMO that shouldn't never ever be a number one reason, for anything, specially more for something that has the potencial to kill people in hair and the ground in case of accident.
It’s amazing how airships are the technology that won’t die. A friend of mine graduated from college back in the 80s and went to work for a company doing research into LTA aircraft for the Navy. Also, back in the late 80s, Dean Ing wrote a sci-fi book called “The Big Lifters”, where he built a whole multi-modal transportation system around hybrid airships.
@@0truckmafk That will never be financially viable and the huge amount of resources consumed in a world where we need to reduce consumption makes shipping goods inefficiently via rockets just to save time a total nonstarter.
I actually wrote my senior thesis many years ago about how airships occupy a nice place economically for shipping. I keep waiting for them to make a comeback.
Helium filled airships are no problem, but the biggest problem with them, is control. Many years ago at Hatfield , a British Airways Airship landed on a small strip of land. From there about 8 passengers got out, as it was their destination. I was just one of about 30 strong lads on the ground holding onto the main rope in the front of the airship, and we struggled to keep her on the ground. Obviously as the airship emptied her cargo( passengers), the aluminium gondola became lighter. The lift being constant, it wanted to lift up. It was a calm virtually no breeze summer afternoon, and we /the captain too, had a great deal of problems keeping the airship from just lifting off the ground. Once some more passengers filled it, it became easier to control. Then when it needed to take off again, it used to ducted fan engines acting downwards to help her lift off the ground. Now this was a calm balmy summers day, and I was amazed at the lifting power of this airship, and thus also the difficulty trying to control it, if the wind picks up , even a bit. Thus although they can lift and fly serenely and probably with less noise and pollution than a plane or helicopter, You are even more at the mercy of the wind, than a plane or helicopter. Providing your journey is not against the wind, once up in the air, it wont cost you much in fuel! Should they be brought back, that depends if they can solve the endemic control problems just highlighted here!
I imagine modern airships would need to have mechanical means of being weighed down or releasing and gaining levels of gas without waste when landing and taking off. Maybe there could be some clamps that rise up into the air to grip onto the airship and slowly pull it down pneumatically. I imagine we could also have more and better propellers to hopefully stabilize the airship in choppy weather. I must admit though, I have a hard time seeing an airship being able to operate properly in any kind of storm. I could just be lacking imagination on the subject.
why wouldn't there be an anchor to guarantee secure tethering instead of a bunch of blokes? assuming its a planned stop, a hook drilled into the ground aught to be waiting there.
People tend to imagine airship more like balloon or zeppelin (because it's cheapest), but It can be as well in shape of plane - just bit bigger, with additional lifting power - to get better control. Still solid anchoring needed for sure after unloading.
Man I don't know about the actual viability of airships, but it just seems so cool to me to be like on the crew of an airship. I don't know why but the idea just excites me so much. It kinda makes me wonder if this is how people felt when air travel was entirely new, it just seems like a new frontier.
Man i feel the same. It would be like the living when the first ship of the line were built, or during the early biplane era were planes were like small minivan of the skies, delivering all kind of stuff. A whole new frontier without the inhumane buerocracy or training required. It also feel extremely romantic, slowly soaring the skies, in a ship like control room, while you see the world from above
Airships have been trying to make a comeback for decades. In 2007, I myself was involved in an airship startup. We wanted to build a 500 meter long rigid body airship for cargo. Then after market analysis we settled on smaller ships to serve as sky cranes and tourism airships. The same ideas mentioned in this video. We even spent a lot of time on the buoyancy gas compression problem. Back then, we were looking at competitors such as the SkyCat (which is still to this day, "proposed"). It's interesting to see, in 2023, how the revival of airships is still in the planning stages. Even more interesting when you consider that they did have their heyday once. So it's not like it's a purely theoretical idea.
I've been playing with this idea about sky trains, i.e. a chain of airships linked together so that it's built of multiple sections and linked so that drag is minimized. What do you think would be the biggest problem with that, aside of maybe side wind which would likely be hard? They could be gigantic, but on the other hand, smaller ones could be used on low altitude and they could be perhaps pulled / powered using a some sort of cable system on ground, but that's a bit different concept altogether.
This is very interesting - would you be able to share the reasons why you moved away from the idea of using them for cargo? Concerns that come to mind would be; the fear of the industries inability to adapt / get on board with such an idea, or backlash from citizens not wanting their sky obstructed by large cargo airships - but that's just me guessing, I'm quite interested in what you gathered during your research!
I mean... AI was also being worked on ever since the invention of computers, right? And considering that legitimate attempts at making AI has only caught up like last year, the same can and may happen with airships soon (or at least I hope so).
If these things actually get built, I am going to sit outside of an airfield in a lawn chair with a big old bowl of popcorn and watch the show. Seeing something that big fly sounds like the coolest thing ever.
There's something so retro/steampunk yet so sci-fi about a world where these things reign supreme. Hope I get to see these in the sky one day. Edit: Peeps in comments keep mentioning "solarpunk" fitting these things more. I didn't know that was a thing or a word that existed, but now I do. Thanks.
The collective horror at the Hindenburg almost can't be overstated. Airships reached a glorious pinnacle in the 20s and 30s, and the Hindenburg was the best of them. A true marvel of the world. Its fiery and dramatic destruction created such a powerful stigma that we still haven't recovered from it. That single event changed the course of aviation history, but it probably would have happened at some point.
@@achimdemus-holzhaeuser1233 it would be the Titanic of airships if the Titanic was one of the first ships ever constructed. Hindenburg had the additional burden of being new technology, whereas the Titanic was mostly a large version of pre-existing tech
It's weird how one airship crashed destroyed an entire niche that lasted for almost ages (balloons have been around for hundreds of years) but airplanes crash all the time and people accept it.
@@RichardAlaskanforaPassing this is true, but never before had such a fiery and destructive vehicular catastrophe been captured on film for the world to see
The issue was not so much of it being a horror Hindenburg had flown over 300,000 km without fault. Consider how many civilian aircraft had crashed and burned before reaonably reliable tri-motors and the DC3 came on the scene. Far more fatalities. The issue was that in the late 1920's and early 1930's competitors for duralinium- the Zeppelin works Aluminium alloy- was now in demand by the new far more rigid, more reliable, faster and cheaper metal skinned aluminium monoplanes. One Zeppelin used far more aluminium than several aircraft that could carry equal load, further and faster. This is what truly killed the airship- and remember the massive size of the airship makes it extremely vulnerable to wind, to currents, updrafts and down drafts- so in some cases lift without thrust is self defeating. As we massively improved thrust, and lowered drag- we got massive payoffs in lift.
How many people have died in a conventional aircraft crash when the fuel in the wings ignited? Remember the Tenerife disaster? Two airplanes were destroyed in the collision. All 248 passengers and crew aboard the KLM plane died, as did 335 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am plane, primarily due to the fire and explosions resulting from the fuel spilled and ignited in the impact. The other 61 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am aircraft survived. That was a lot more people than were killed in the Hindenburg disaster.
Considering that most of our currently operating nuclear plants are fairly outdated, I'm not sure if that anology stands quite as well as you intended. Granted, even those outdated designes are still significantly safer than Chernobyl.
As an airship engineer with blimp operations experience going back 40 years, I thank you for making a video rhat actually explains the concepts, benefits and challenges correctly, and in a way that the general public would understand. Most videos about the future of airships are filled with fantasy and error.
Would it be possible to make a thermal airship using solar energy for lift by using electrical heaters and propulsion? Obviously have a back up gas system in place. Maybe enough to have a small apartment in it? If I was filthy rich screw a yacht! I'd take the airship if I could do that. However I don't like the idea if using helium specifically since it leaks, and is non renewable.
@@dianapennepacker6854 It seems thermal airships have 30% less lift for the volume, in addition if there is a heating failure you're going down and constantly heating uses energy. So the extra weight of solar, plus heating, probably going to be terrible for cargo uses.
@@dianapennepacker6854 not practical for 2 main reasons. First and most importantly hot air has 35-40% the total lifting power of hydrogen/helium. So you hit a point where structural weight exceeds lifting capacity increase with size much sooner. Second because the envelope needs to be very lightweight it is also very thing and a poor thermal insulator. So hot air-craft loose a huge amount of energy and are very inefficient. Meaning that even a perfect theoretical max solar panel would be unable to gather energy faster than its consumed. Also there is the extra problems like panels would have to be integrated into the skin but they hate heat so they need insulation from the heated envelopes but that adds weight and structural problems ect ect. Not saying its impossible would need to do actual engineering for that but the plausibility is low. Kind of like solar powered planes. Yeah you can do it but one capable of carrying 2 people is the wingspan of a 747 and a strong breeze can cause severe damage.
Nice to have an expert in the comments. Would an mixture of nitrogen hydrogen and water vapour be a suitable lifting gas? Below 14% hydrogen it would not be flammable as far as I know. If there would be enough lift it would be suitable for human transport and other safety critical stuff. For anything else would just use unmanned hydrogen drones.
One thing I always thought airships could be used for was SAR operations in regions where people get lost during normal weather, the thing can loiter over their last known location and send out camera drones to increase its effective search area, and if they’re conscious enough to signal, it’s impossible to not notice the massive dirigible in the sky and know where to direct their signal.
Well, US tried to use airships for early warning. As it turns out, while airships CAN stay in the air virtually for free, in order to stay in one spot you need to spend fuel to resist the winds. Also, if weather becomes too bad and winds becoming too strong, you need to land. So, on practice is very hard to exploit their long loitering time.
14:00 By definition, when you have lowered the load, you have a stable connection between the ground and the airship. Why not attach the tethers you used for the load to anchor points on the ground, then stabilise the lift of the airship at your leisure - whether by venting or even attaching another payload.- before departing.
I find it weird that it wasnt brought up how these airships would be grounded constantly for weather. Imagine trying to control a giant balloon in anything other than the most calm skies. They will need a HUGE ground crew with heavy equipment to control. I love the idea, but they would require so much more infrastructure than was being hinted at here.
Not really. The surface area grows with the square of their size, but the mass grows with the cube. So the bigger you go the less you are bothered by the weather. And going big is the idea anyway.
@@andrasbiro3007 Not necessarily--the buoyancy factor does some interesting things there. However, as a believer in airship tech, I like to remind people that we can predict the weather much more easily and accuratley now than we could back in the airship heyday. Yes, their functionality is a little limited, but nowhere near as much as it was when we couldn't be sure what would happen with weather patterns!
@andrasbiro3007 In the air yes. But not on the ground, vehicle mass doesn't magically reduce the wind force. Plus the higher the balloon the higher the wind speeds it sees.
I've been following for some time the rise and fall (literally) of Airlander - the UKs most recent attempt to get airships up and running again - and it isn't as easy as it sounds. The use of helium rather than hydrogen means it's not as efficient as the old pre war airships and even modern designs still limit their efficiency. More importantly, as you noted, helium is in short supply and I don't see how you'd source that limited supply without the unexpected demand dramatically increasing the price. Airlander has decided to focus on a very exclusive market to try and claw back the millions that investors (including Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson) have made over the years. And as someone who used to have blimps fly over my head as a child (I lived near the Cardington Sheds) they struggle in even light winds. As a regular and reliable means of transporting large quantities of cargo over vast distances - especially as the climate becomes even more aggressive - I just can't see it happening. Btw: Those great big 'sheds' seen in the Airlander video are in Cardington, housed the original R100/R101 series and was briefly the home of the Airlander. They're expensive to maintain and are now owned by Warner Brothers - I believe that one even appears in the background at the start of The Dark Knight Rises.
Yep, I remember reading in aeronautics trade publications that my dad would get like 30 years ago that airships are the next big thing. Then it fizzled out. Then again about 15 years ago it blew up again and all these "futuristic" designs were all over and again fizzled out. I feel like by this time if it was a good idea it would have happened by now.
8% lift difference, while it is an issue that needs to be solved later, doesn't seem like it would affect the early development of large airships too much. The cargo market is so large that I feel like there will be enough interest to sustain a rather long unprofitable periods while development continues. The wind issue seems like the largest problem. Btw, I don't think hydrogen is as big of a problem as it was. newer structural materials, and especially new propulsion methods such as hydrogen fuel cells can be managed very easily to make fires close to impossible, especially when you specifically design them around fire safety. Also since it is cargo ships, most people probably care a lot less if one goes down every few years.
I hope they fail. I don't mean that in a malicious way, hoping people lose all their money, I just don't like the business model. Helium is a finite resource which is very important for science. The idea of filling an airship with it, just so some rich twats can have a floating, safari wine bar, seems like unnecessary, wasteful decadence. Putting wind turbines in remote, hard to access locations, so they can more efficiently develop green energy seems like a better use of this scarce resource.
@@nicstroud Yeah. Helium is also one of the few genuinely non-renewable resource on Earth since it's an element (cannot be made via chemical process), and raw Helium is light enough that it escapes the atmosphere into space so it will never come back to us. We can technically make them via nuclear fusion but you only make a tiny amount from it (not to mention you may need more helium to cool the superconducting magnets anyway). Meanwhile, Helium has a unique role in science and engineering and medicine and I don't think we know of a viable alternative for some of its applications. Having mass-deployed airships that use helium seem like a terrible idea to me (not to mention expensive).
I learned something about airships in the US when I lived near a Goodyear Blimp hanger and spoke with one of the tenders. Apparently, quite a few people take pot shots at blimps with firearms. While unlikely to significantly damage a rigid airship, it does pose a potential danger to passengers.
@@wanjanechtangroeger It does, indeed. A solution to this U.S.-specific problem might be just as U.S.-specific: Equip the blimp with weapons to shoot back. I'm thinking minigun here but I'm sure you agree we need extensive tests to find out what the best defense option against belligerent civilians is.
I'm loving that we're seeing a return to technologies we'd abandoned in the past with an eye to making them safer and more efficient. Airships are one such technology, but so is wind power for ocean-going vessels! There's at least one company with a test cargo ship undergoing sea-trials using modern "sails" to use the wind as power.
Cargos can also carry hundreds of times more freight than any existing or future aeroplane. Because ultimately, a boat works like a balloon, thanks to Archimedes' push, except it's water instead of air that supports the weight.
yeah, there are 100 years old post cards, from 19xx, how people imagined future. Lots of airships. Really lots. I think Hindenburg end airship era too soon.
As an occasional hot-air balloonist I'm naturally drawn to airships; however, the proposed cruising speed of 90 km/h could easily be counteracted by high wind speeds. Airships would have to navigate around storms and fight against side winds that would considerable lengthen their flight paths and increase fuel costs. High or turbulent winds at arrival ports would also cause delays or make landing difficult.
I'm surprised by the idea that airships should be viable option if other infrastructure is devastated. If wind has destroyed buildings, where have the airships gone?
I love the fact that the startup chose the name "Flying Whales", which is the title of a Gojira song (that address environmental issues) released seven years before their founding. Plus, considering that both the startup and the band are French, I don't think it's a coincidence.
Probably my all time favourite song. The guitar is impeccable and gave me goosebumps the first time I listened to it. Literally stopped whatever I was doing and focused on the experience knowing I’ll never be able to top it.
Yeah... knowing that they plan to use it to cut down inaccessible forests makes me say that maybe they only liked the title of the song and not the environmental subtext...
All I have to say is: "Cargo-Lifter" from Germany in the 90's. In its huge hangar south of Berlin was supposed to be built exactly this: a massive cargo-carrying rigid airship. The company failed after millions had been spent on the development without getting anywhere. The hangar was later transformed into the a tourist attraction by transforming it into the largest enclosed water park in the world.
Ehh, just because something wasn't feasible 30 years ago doesn't mean it's doomed to fail in future innovation attempts. VR headsets and games are a good example - manufacturing capabilities have changed significantly in 30-40 years. Not to say it's definitely gonna work this time, but eventually these airships will very likely be feasible in some capacity after enough technological advancement.
@@TyntedVR isn't the best example as it still is an extremely niche market for users with both the money, and living space for a vr setup. Not to mention the physical limitations of the medium when it comes to handling motion sickness. The manufacturing and engineering advances still haven't made it a mass market product, much like airships currently.
What? VR is not a prohibitively expensive hobby to get into even now. You can get a Quest 2 for $300 and it provides an acceptable experience. Motion sickness is something that people have been shown to get used to the more they use VR, myself included. I would argue the lack of adoption for the Quest has more to do with Facebook being a generally awful company and locking those devices down to their terrible ecosystem. Beyond that, have you used a Valve Index? The hand tracking on that is phenomenal and the weight of the device on your head is already at an acceptable amount as it is. It is an *extremely* immersive experience that is not too far from making it to the vast majority of consumers. Given more time for ludicrously efficient chips similar to Apple's M1 to make it into headsets, it is absolutely only a matter of time before the cables go away entirely while keeping good enough battery life and excellent hand/eye tracking. The requirement of base/tracking stations is probably going to go away at some point, too, although I have no idea how far away that is. Once that point is reached, living space won't matter that much anymore as you'll be able to go outside or into your basement to have enough space for VR. Laptop CPU's and GPU's are already good enough to drive many of the games people will want to play in VR, so there won't be much cost associated with computing power. Also, take a look at Apple's AR headset they're working on and how phenomenally well their eye and hand tracking technology works - the fully wireless immersive experience is coming. VR is already a feasible market that is here to stay for many years to come, and it is likely to become much larger within a decade or two. 30 years ago, this seemed *worlds* away from what was possible at the time, much like airships still seem improbable if not impossible now. I see no reason why airships will not be a similar situation. The physics already allows them to exist. At some point, our engineering capabilities are going to make them feasible, if only for a niche market for a time. @@jordannoell4222
Something that is niche for consumers is not necessarily niche for large companies willing to spend millions/billions on one project/project item. Companies in this sense do not need accommodations for motion sickness, for instance.
I would kill for airships to become a way of holiday. Imagine spending two weeks flying over the Australian Outback, watching the sunset over the red desert from up high in the sky. It would be amazing!
That would be a definite market for them. Turn them basically into flying cruise ships, with onboard amenities, restaurants, shops, and of course floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere. Then chart a two-week cruise around the skies of the Alaskan wilderness and you're suddenly making bank. When you can take your cruise ship *anywhere* on land OR water, the sky (pun) is truly the limit. I would sail on them whenever I could.
@@ianmiller6040right? They would likely be more expensive than a cruise thanks to them having to be smaller, BUT imagine them getting to go anywhere? I wonder what a world cruise on one of them would look like
After the first minute or two when you mentioned that it's a slow and big method of travel, my first thought was "Well yeah but the same is true of cruise ships and those are quite popular." People would enjoy a slow journey as long as they have breath-taking views, and ample entertainment/luxury to pass the time when/if the views are not quite so spectacular. Plus being able to make stops along the way, spend a day grounded here or there so people can soak up the local culture before moving on to the next stop.
True but any leisure/recreational use of these airships will cost many times what a similar experience on a cruise ship would cost since airships can carry way less people and amenities than a cruise ship could, so they’d have to massively increase the price of each ticket to actually make a profit or even just to break even
Problem is that luxury (or even decent) beds are quite heavy. Same for anything else that makes a cruise comfortable. Airship liners had absolutely terrible bed even for the upper class to save weight.
@@DawnDavidsonThats pretty clever. I dont think air beds had been invented yet when air ship liners were a thing, but that seems like a great choice for any airships in the future.
A possible solution for the weight-lift problem: When the airship drops off the cargo, it picks up standardized blocks of concrete (or rock or metal) that, say, weigh 5000 pounds each. Then, when the airship picks up cargo at a different stop, it drops off those blocks for the next airship to pick up. Edit: Derek stated my exact idea right after I finished making this comment
I was thinking about using water for ballast. Tanks can be purged slowly at liftoff and possibly distilled back from cloud vapor in time for landing. Or perhaps a low diameter hose could be passed up from a docking station on the ground via a rope dropped from the gondola
This large Zeppelin hangar with its 360m length that you have shown is located near Berlin. A few years ago, Germany tried to technically implement this dream, but unfortunately failed. In the meantime, this hangar is home to a leisure park called Tropical Island. You can even parachute onto a beach from a platform under the ceiling there. That's how huge the building is :D
Germany has also a not-by-authorities-approved fast-breeder nuklear power station, which is now "Wunderland Kalkar" (previous 'Kernwasserwunderland'), an amusement park.
To my knowledge Cargolifter was mostly an investment scam that sold a dream. Tropical Islands isn't a win, it is an attempt to use that hangar for at least something.
as a trucker it's not just the sweetspot for transportation, but also it's easy to get it into places. you can get close to anywhere in a truck and they're very flexible when it comes to what load you're transporting.
Yeah I was suprised that wasn't mentioned in the video. It seems to be by far the most important reason trucks are used to so much. Practically everything has road access. Only a small amount of industries have direct water or rail access and direct access to an airport is basically non existant. Practically all air cargo from planes end up in trucks to get to their actual destination. The main reason to use a truck is because it is literally the only option. If there are more options it seems like it usually isn't used.
That's true...for loads that are on the same road network. But you still have all the time and expense of intermodal exchange, for containers. You can't drive across an ocean, or across the isthmus of Panama...but you could fly an airship. You can get an airship even more places than a truck, and wouldn't have to unload it until you got to your destination. Even on land, that could be faster and much easier if not limited to road networks (like the turbine blade example).
This is mainly an infrastructure point more than a a truck vs other stuff point. Trains can (and should, and do in other countries) be much more widespread when it comes to delivering goods throughout cities, we just don't use them.
Adding also "Train" in your table at 2:07 would have been super interesting to me. I have the feeling that Train also is in that sweet spot your were talking about. But well, since car industry is much stronger in the US (and sadly also around the world) this option is not taking the most amount of tons transported. But thats just an intuition which I would have loved to confirm (or even falsify) with data...
its a logistic issue. loading and unloading trucks is way faster than trains and can be done at the final destination. my dad used to work in shipping produce
could not agree more. the only cargo benefits thees 3D renderd visions of airships have over the electric train is the travel over oceans and the minimal infrastucture needed
I looked it up and it seems like train would fall somewhere in 3-5c / ton km. All sources say that train is 3-4x more affordable than trucking. Not sure about the time, but i would guess days? Maybe a week or 2 if our (US) train infrastructure is really that bad?
Back in highschool, we had an innovation theme in Physics Class. Where I presented Hydrogen Airships, with a twist! Where the hydrogen envelopes would be encased in a nitrogen envelope. Creating a buffer between hydrogen and oxygen, where it is possible to detect it before it becomes dangerous. Still often think about it, and this made me think back on it, hydrogen is significantly cheaper than Helium, and it could also be used through a fuel cell essentialy using the same fuel for both lifting gas and electric propellers.
Hydrogen leaks is just something you have to live with, because it readily leaks even through solid metal - thin polymer film gasbag has no hope of stopping it from escaping. The way you stop hydrogen fires is the same way you stop gasoline fires - by observing fire safety. It can't burn if you don't ignite it.
@@michaelbuckers While true the leaks happen no matter what. The strength in a buffer is that you have a barrier were after the leaks the gas can't burn, and also that the leaks still will travel upwards, and away from were people are. It might even be possible to dispatch the leaks along the way. While it should be safe enough to travel with proper safety precusions, this design might help regaining trust in hydrogen, since it is overly safe.
@@Standartt01cool idea! I think a big challenge will be maintaining the purity of the nitrogen in the buffer, since hydrogen will be diffusing into it. I wonder if the density of the gasses is sufficient that you could use a centrifuge to seperate them continually to maintain buffer purity.
Honestly I think the sail effect is the killer of airships, even relatively gentle updrafts and downdrafts could send your massive hydrogen filled multimillion dollar ship into an uncontrollable flightpath. I think hybrid ships with an airfoil is the way to go but like you covered, that leave cargo behind. What a great video.
I suspect the killer to do this at a scale that conceivably replaces some portion of oceangoing container ships is the number of hangars and the associated expense to build them. For luxury civilian travel I could imagine seeing airships taking to the skies again. The point about dirigibles being able to access locations that are remote or otherwise extremely difficult to get to is interesting though. One of the fairly significant differences is that airships don’t suffer from bottlenecks in locations like the Suez or Panama canals. I just hope they don’t use helium, we cannot make more of it and it is a relatively scarce commodity that’s incredibly useful.
I rode an airship from Mountain View over San Francisco to the Napa Valley in 2011. Air Ship Ventures purchased a Zeppelin NT built in Germany and based it out of Moffett Field (the federal airbase operated by NASA and leased by Google). The 250 foot long airship named Eureka was the longest in the world at the time. The day long excursion was a beautiful and comfortable site to behold. My ticker cost less than $300! Sadly they went out of business in 2012 and the airship was disassembled and sent back to Germany where she now sits in storage waiting for a new owner. The 4 years she was in the San Francisco Bay were exciting!
0:24 and now we know everything about thermite! It's funny because I came back to this video randomly being the only one I haven't seen from Veritasium in this year
I've been daydreaming about a return of airships for the past 15 years (off and on; I'm not crazy!) and came up with every single use you have described, About the trees being lifted, I thought it would allow the harvesting of single, valuable trees, say in the Amazon, without having to carve a road in and clear-cut whole areas, just to take one or two trees. Ideally, we'd leave the whole lot alone, but you might be able to partially protect large swathes, by removing the valuable timber, leaving no incentive to cut the rest. TBH though, I don't fancy the sky having one airship for every lorry on our roads today.
The issue with this is that the logging in the amazon isn't about timber as much as it is clearing land for agriculture. Additionally, "single, valuable trees" aren't going to be viable. Timber for construction relies far to heavily on volume for selective harvesting like that.
They are only cool because they are rare. If the low height skis were flooded with them around every major population center, people would hate them as much as they hate living too close to a major airport.
@@NHCH I'm a pilot, I like planes. I hear far more complain about them, than those pointing out, "look a plane." Most don't care, unless they live close to an airport. These things will be far lower and larger than planes. The one saving grace will be if they don't make much sound, but if their engines cause a constant hum or whine in busy spaces they will be hated. Helicopters are super cool, but you don't want on hovering over your house/place of work.
I conducted an economic study of airships years ago, and while some items may have changed, the fundamental challenges remain. The most significant financial hurdle for airships is the crew cost per hour. This hourly cost is comparable to that of planes. However, airships take considerably longer to complete journeys, so they have higher crew costs. For planes, fuel (30%) efficiency is the critical factor in determining operational costs and profitability. Staff costs are about 10% Airships, with their lower speeds and different propulsion systems, have potentially lower fuel costs and higher crew costs due to longer journey times. If a plane on the Atlantic run is now about 8 hours, an airship takes about a week. For an airship going a week required at least two or three shits of crew which will add more to the cost. Trucks still maintain a significant cost advantage over airships and planes. Their operating costs remain a fraction of those of either air transport option, primarily due to lower fuel consumption, simpler infrastructure requirements, and more flexible staffing needs. Plus, trucks are less dependent on the weather. There might be specific niche markets such as the military or tourism where cargo needs to be transported in remote areas with limited infrastructure where traditional transport methods are impractical
I love that airships basically just make a lot of logistic issues a lot easier. Im honestly surprised that large airline companies arent trying to make them and figure out these issues as they are a good shift from planes.
because it would be very expensive, and could end up failing if they dont figure out the issues fast enough, or well enough. And if that failure happens, the expensive investment doesnt end up paying itself back.
I am afraid the executives of these companies may not be willing to take great financial risk to change the core of their business...it's not very rewarding on the timescale of a person's time as a decision maker.
Many of the applications are already covered by helicopters, trains or ships. No landing pad? Use a Heli. Still need to transport lots of stuff? Build the appropriate infrastructure, it'll be paid of quickly with the volume of good you are moving. You either move a lot to populated areas, or little to remote ones. There are very few applications for moving lots of stuff to remote areas. Literally the only one I can think of is extreme disaster relief, which happens rarely and unpredictably. At which point an international call for rescue helicopters and trucks is simply better than keeping a fleet of airships in storage all around the world. Also kinda telling that trains are not included in the table at 2:10. They are cheaper than trucks and just as fast, if not faster.
Two good ways to solve the problem of off-loading cargo causing the airship to shoot upward. 1. Mooring lines could be lowered to tie the ship to the ground long enough to compress the helium to effect the correct buoyancy, or, 2. lower the cargo, as depicted, on lines until the cargo touches the ground, then not releasing the cargo until the compressor compresses enough helium to make the lines lax at which point there's no longer any danger of the ship shooting upward. Then release the cargo and the airship could take off.
They shouldn't try making it with enough gas volume for lifting the products. They need to make a new container for the products, and use the air ship just a net/holder of the products. Basically fill the containers with the gas needed. No need to worry about the weight loss and raising, or lowering of the ship. If something goes wrong with the product container it can just be dropped with chutes. Makes it safer, and more capable. Plus a simpler solution is always the choice. Not to mention the ship won't technically be changing in weight.
Tie them down was exactly what I thought! You can then even one up that to make it faster and more efficient wherever you drop anything: Use the potential energy of the goods you are lowering to spin up a generator feeding power to the compressors for the helium. In airship ports you can simply make it faster by providing an additional power line, just for time efficiency.
Would it make sense to add a "hot air balloon" compartment to the Airship? So, when you need to drop something off you cool the compartment of air and then heat it back up?
I remember reading an old short sci-fi story written before planes were flying that had gigantic airships carrying people inside. I think it's the oldest imagined human flight concept.
In terms of being practical and/or mass transport/travel, I concur. However in terms of the actual words "oldest imagined human flight concept"... (I shouldn't need to point out that humans took inspiration from nature long before coming up with the idea of big balloons)
Well, we did figure out hot air balloons before planes, right? So it's basically that same concept but several degrees of science further along-i think youre correct, is what I'm saying. Other than, maybe, cliff diving, I suppose.
I would also like to see more airships in the sky. Once I had a one time job in Berlin to help starting a a small commercial airship that showed some adds. This was cool.
@masondewhirst853 Because it will absolutely implode. Which is 10 times worse. And it can't have any leaks, which makes it almost impossible to make structurally sound. And lastly, you cannot generate lift with a vacuum, as it needs to have a material strong enough to withhold the atmospheric pressure. And there is no such material.
For the buoyancy problem mentioned at 15:00 there are several simple solutions: * If you use hydrogen just use it to power something with a hydrogen fuel cell (creates water) * If you use helium just vent the helium into a storage tank on the ground that's weighed down so it doesn't float away.
For helium this partly works, but you still have the significant problem that you would need to have these helium facilities at places to land, which is in direct opposition to the whole benefit of airships that you don't need extensive infrastructure at the place you are landing. It's simply way easier to just balast the ship. For hydrogen, building fuel cells that can turn these very high amounts of hydrogen into electricity in a feasable amount of time, is basically equivalent to building a powerplant on board. And that obviously defeats the purpose of the airship as well, in addition to somehow needing to store that energy or connect it to the powergrid, which again uses a lot of infrastructure (you can't just connect these amounts of energy to the grid directly, you'd need a powerstation to do that or the grid will overload and basically fry your computer at home if you happen to live close to offloading). Hydrogen is also quite inefficient to make electrically, so you'd also waste a ton of energy turning electricity into hydrogen and back again all the time. At that point you might as well just use a plane. And that's not even talking about the safety concern mentioned in the video with constantly on and offloading hydrogen in an airship. So yeah if you think about it shortly it might make sense, but if you think about it a bit longer, you'd soon realise that just adding balast is a far easier way to deal with the problem.
All jokes aside, I think the major hurdle in creating an effective airship used for transportation will be figuring out how to make a large and light structure that can hold a vacuum without collapsing.
@@PherPhur yeah low pressure (you don't even need a vacuum really) is kinda the holy grail, except that atmospheric pressure is an insane amount of pressure, so all the vacuum chambers we've ever built are way to heavy to lift off the ground. So you need at least some lighter than air gas to reduce the pressure differential. Even if you don't make it perfectly airtight and just 0,1 atmosphere, that is still 0,9 atmospheres of pressure on the construction. Without some kind of ultra light and ultra strong material, that just isn't feasible. Any steel construction would either collapse in on itself or be so heavy it never lifts off the ground.
What about the massive twisting loads that could be imparted on it's structure by a nearby thunderstorm and microburst? You can't run away from thunderstorms when the ship is too big to park in a hangar, and to slow to run, so it's going to have to be strong enough to weather the storms.
I think they are actually quite resilient in rough weather. Most importantly they have to be in the air and not anchored. But yeah you can't really control them in rough weather they just get blown away. But if they don't collide that's not the worst. Maybe you could even use it to your advantage if you are smart about it.
@@yetanother9127 Not to mention necessary is a key factor in invention. If they need hangers that large, they can potentially build hangers that large.
I worked on a Lockheed Martin prototype hybrid airship. The wind restrictions for flying it were severe. This was partly because it was underpowered, but largely because of the "sail" effect mentioned in the video. I will honestly be surprised if airships ever live up to the marketing.
A somewhat grim reality is comparing the injury/fatality rates compared to fuel used. All the current modes of transport--ships, trains, aircraft, cars--carry huge amounts of highly flammable materials, but we've grown accustomed to that risk.
Any proper train network is electrified, so no, trains don't carry huge amounts of highly flammable materials. The only exception, of course, is if the cargo contains such materials. In that case, the risk cannot be reduced by the mode of transport anyway.
@@0redfr0g0 Firstly, your argument does not contradict my statement that trains do not carry flammable fuel. Secondly, according to the EU Agency for Railways, train fatalities are at about 0.2 fatalities per MILLION train kilometres. I could not find similar data on airships, but this should still make it clear that trains are overall a very safe method of travelling.
@RhythmnOfThought Yes, they are much safer now. But during the same time hydrogen airships were around, 1930-40 trains were very dangerous, and derailments were killing loads of people every year. Also, you are just flat out wrong about trains not using flammable fuel, while "electric" nearly all trains (especially freight trains) actually use an onboard diesel generator to make that electricity. Don't speak so arrogantly to others.
@@0redfr0g0 Yes, many diesel trains turn their fuel into electricity before using it to move their wheels. There are also diesel-electric (hybrid) trains. However, these types of trains are completely distinct from electric locomotives, which do, in fact, not carry any diesel. It is entirely possible that diesel and hybrid trains are popular in the US, but to claim that "nearly all" trains run on diesel without any evidence is just flat-out wrong. You would not need power lines above train tracks if all trains just got their electricity from diesel. Again, I have no idea how that is in the US, but there is more to the world than that single country. That's why I specifically mentioned "proper" and "electrified" train networks in my original comment. Wikipedia also defines electric locomotives as being "powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage". Also, providing statistics for my argument is not arrogant in my book. I did not mean to offend you and did not mean to sound arrogant. I simply wanted to dismantle the notion (which you might not even have intended) that trains today are somehow unsafe. Lastly, I completely agree that trains have not always been as safe as they are now. Given your further clarification, what I think you are trying to get at with your comment is something like "Had airships had the same amount of time and resources invested into them as trains, they would be much safer now". I agree that this is an interesting idea.
I wonder if they could fit each Sky Whale with a Baleen-inspired ballast system.. Fly through clouds to collect moisture in the baleen filters that could line the front of the Dirigible, separate the Hydrogen from the Oxygen to supplement the hydrogen supply, and store or release excess water freely as mist/rain. this would effectively give them a swim-bladder (or flight-bladder?), and even allow them to refuel if they land on water. Edit: I also just realized/remembered that Oxygen would also be created/released when separating the hydrogen from the water, and storing/pressurizing oxygen and then releasing it upward (or in other directions with an adjustable system) would be a good and as far as I know, environmentally safe way to add precision to landing maneuvers or speed up descent/ascent when needed.
I like the idea of collecting water to use as ballast, and the baleen inspiration from nature is a nice touch. Not sure on the feasibility of splitting water molecules onboard an airship though. There are many methods of achieving electrolysis, but many involve pressure, heat or both. But just the idea of carrying ballast water and topping up from itinerant clouds is pretty good on it's own.
@@redlion145 Thanks! animals are like the perfect machines of nature, thanks to millions of years of live testing (evolution) so I feel it's helpful to learn how they do what they do best, and apply it to our machines and sciences! (gecko hand/skin suction technology is huge right now) I learned that it's actually very easy to convert water into hydrogen, and you are correct it does often involve heat, so this could definitely pose a risk when considering the amount of hydrogen that would be on board. Though I'm sure since the process itself creates hydrogen, there must be a safe way to do it without the hydrogen combusting unintentionally, though I'm not a scientist myself so I wouldn't know unfortunately. I'm mostly concerned that the amount of water would be insufficient when converted, as I'm not sure what all the water to hydrogen conversion rates are, and the amount gather-able from atmospheric moisture vs the amount of hydrogen needed for lift may be vastly insufficient for all I know. (imagine taking weeks to gather enough moisture to land lol)
@@redlion145 There might be enough energy just stored in the frame through static to power the electrolysis, in which case you'd perhaps remove the potential threat of fire such as brought down the Hindenburg...if not, a few patches of solar panels would do.
@@auturgicflosculator2183 That's a very good point! The large surface areas of the dirigibles would lend well to solar panels, as well as the near guarantee of nothing blocking out the sun from the panels but clouds here and there and of course, the sun setting.
There allready was a company in 1996 that tried it this. Problem was it got bankrupt pretty fast. It was Called Cargolifter and was a german company. They had allready build a hangar for assembly. It was and still is the biggest non supported building in the world. Today it has a big climatised water park called Tropical Islands in it. The projekt was too big for the time and had too little funding, but I was impressed by the design and versatility. They hold still a variety of patents, that solved a lot of problems.
Cargolifter could support the building of wind power plant, transporting the wings and column in one piece, without disassembling all the obstacles along the road, avoid bridges. But 2015 the German government killed the financial support of wind power projects. Although cargolifter was bankrupt 2002, that wind power and the electric grid network (mast and transformer) is missing this potential transportation facility.
BLIMP-TRANSPORT/AIRSHIP-TRANSPORTATION/AIRSHIP-HELICOPTER-DRONE-CARRIERS/AIRSHIP-DRONE-CARRIER/RESOLVED-AIRSHIP-TRANSPORTATION-STABILITY-RESOLUTION/HEXAGON-AIRSHIP/HEXAGON-BUOYANCY-PLACEMENT-AIRSHIP/HEXAGON-UMBRELLA-SHAPED-WEIGHT-SUPPORT/HEXAGON-WEIGHT-DISPLACEMENT-MECHANISM/[HEXAGON-DOME-SHAPED-AIRSHIP/HEXAGON-FORMATION-WEIGHT-DISTRIBUTION-MECHANISMS/HEXAGON-AIRSHIP-CARRIER-AI-AUTOMATED-BUOYANCY-MECHANISM Conventional airship cargo-carriers experience instability issues when loading and offloading cargo. The instability in buoyancy (levels); created by the fluctuating mass of the cargo, as well as unstable air-currents (especially at higher altitude), makes conventional designs for airship cargo-carriers inefficient, unstable and potentially unsafe... when compared to alternative modes of cargo transportation vessels, e.g. conventional cargo-ships that travel via a body of water/sea. When all is said and done... I have come to realize that the technology should be paired with 'vertical', cargo-transport carries, i.e. [droned] helicopters. Helicopter technology should be incorporated with Ai; so that the drones will be outfitted with cargo (of specific weight/mass). With their proven prowess in vertical takeoff, they will be utilized to safely mount cargo on a giant airship (said cargo will [obviously] need to be spaced/tired-down and stationed relative to each other. Inspiration from the hexagon shape should aid the intended 'fair and even [weight] distribution' of mass, across the storage site within the airship). Like an orchestra, when coordinated, the swarms of vertical [helicopter] drones (coordinated & assisted Ai; will take the shape and form of a 'helicopter', for its vertical functionality... they will double and function as integral, and additional transportation-carriers) will 'double and function' as 'construction-pulleys'; in their purpose in safely and relatively steadily mounting cargo onto the large storage site (that will be situated on top of the airship. I envision a small, but functional runway built on the surface of the airship. It is in this additional, supportive function that the airship will resemble an "aircraft carrier, battle ship"). New and emerging technologies will facilitate this mode if cargo transportation. NOTE: When all is said and done... When we take a step back, and observe the construct in action, its coordinated functionalities and mechanisms will resemble the (relationship and transport mechanism) 'worker-bees and their beehive'. Through further research and development of the quantum mechanics; that is at play, and is responsible for buoyancy (its essence is [efficient] mass/weight-distribution within a [specified] medium volume)... It will be possible to reroute/engineer buoyancy (how lighter than air gas behave), i.e. how mass is distributed within a specified [enclosed] medium-volume/volume of a specified medium. REMEMBER: that buoyancy takes the path with the least resistance. Point is, if you can manipulate/[quantum] engineer how lighter-than-air gases behave, you will have an easier time using Ai to coordinate their behaviour (with greater efficiency and precision, e.g. making lighter-than-air gases even lighter; manipulating their mass at the quantum scale). Were such endeavours researched, developed and refined to an art, then what we will be left with are the components to anti-gravity technology and [quantum] know-how. NOTE: There was a successful scientific experiment; where Rubidium was used to give additional mass to the photon. This resulted in slowing down the photo. The experiment supported the feasibility of hard-light technology. The essence of the experiment was that the mass of subatomic particles could be altered/manipulated to bare desirable outcomes. That research should have been concocted with quantum mechanics in mind. Engineering at the quantum scale is exciting and bares monumental possibilities. /Close.
I have thought much about airships (because of how, you know, they're totally AWESOME) - and AFAIK, the solution to basically all inherent problems in their development has already been arrived at by some field of engineering since their century-old heyday. Here are some problem/solution examples: -- How to control lift while loading/unloading: Make the craft less than neutral in buoyancy, then hold level using large rotors. Not propellers, mind. Think of helicopters, not airplane propellers. These can be mounted on tilting nacelles (V22-like) and their lift may be very quickly adjusted by means of collective blade pitch. You'd only need them at full power during that moment of instantaneous mass change. As the rotors hold the craft in place, the pumps have time to de/compress lifting gas and restore the craft to a neutral unpowered state. (this isn't a new thing, it's called a "Helistat") - bonus: you don't even need motors to tilt these pods, only a brake to lock it at a chosen angle, then using cyclic control of the blades, one may torque the whole nacelle as required. -- How to assemble a 500-ish meter long craft (without even larger hangars): A recent innovation in civil engineering is the concept of self-assembling structures. It is conceivable that a rigid airship can be built of lightweight (carbon fiber, why not?) lattice sections. Comprised of linked rods and spars, that hinge and interlock into position, unfolding into the fully rigid frame of the ship. A very large craft can then be inflated, just like a blimp. As the skin-envelope (with the structural bits loosely attached) assumes the correct shape, the frame linkages are locked together and the craft now has a fully rigid outer hull. - bonus: You don't need to fill the craft with actual lifting gas during this stage. Regular Air can be pumped to inflate the skin into, then once the structure around it is locked in and rigid, this can be dumped and the floatation tanks filled with the lighter-than-air element of your choice. -- I grew up watching Captain Planet. Can I have my airship all electric? An all electric airship has the unique advantage of a surface area possibly larger than other vehicle known to man. Why not cover that big empty (besides advertisement) space with solar panels? There'd be a significant trade-off with weight for perhaps not the best performance benefit. There may be a sweet-spot that pays off though, or if nothing else, a Hydrogen lifter can use its own spare lifting gas in fuel cells for the safety of non-combustion motors. -- But, Hydrogen does go Boom, dunnit? Thing to remember is: You can't have a fire if you don't let oxygen in. That's actually a lot easier than trying to stop Hydrogen from leaking OUT. Seriously, that's actually the main problem with Element #1 - Being highly flammable is surely inconvenient, but if you can figure out a way to just keep from oozing out between the very atoms of your container, (yup, it does that) chances are, then you got a reasonably safe vessel that isn't too likely to re-enact any infamous newsreels. During WW1, the brits had one heck of a hard time actively trying to set German bomber airships ablaze. Despite being filled with Hydrogen, it took hundreds of specially loaded, alternating ball and incendiary rounds fired from a machine-gun, focused on one small patch of the ship in order to get enough gas to vent out, so that it'd mix with air and finally ignite. It took them several attempts to pull this off. So it goes to show that "Oh, The Humanity!" isn't so much the default end state for any Hydrogen airship as ppl tend to think.
regarding the last point: what if we could not bother of escaping hydrogen that much? Basically have hydrogen in the internal ballutes surrounded by nitrogen, hydrogen will inevitably escape into the nitrogen atmosphere and float to the top of the outer shell, but then, periodically, the gas (nitrogen + some hydrogen in it) from the outer shell can be pumped through the hydrogen fuel cell, thus removing the leaked hydrogen. Fuel cells can be also used to control buoyancy, by processing hydrogen from the ballutes themselves. And when you need to increase buoyancy, you just top the ballutes from high pressure tanks. You could use helium instead of nitrogen for the added lift, but it would be much more expensive.
Regarding the issue with excess buoyancy while unloading: if unloading stations were equipped with extremely high-geared flywheels, the ship's upward movement could not only be dampened massively on release, but the energy it would waste bobbing around could be used to pulled it back under control while air pressure adjustments have time to be made. Anybody tries to patent this idea, I'm comin for them, because anything I post is open source and royalty free forever whether helpful or obscure.
At 15:18 the simplest solution is: instead of a compressor that compresses the gas all you need to do is cool down the gas because as gas expands from getting hotter it spreads out which causes the blimp to store higher into the sky but once gas starts cooling down it starts becoming more centralized (meaning the gas gets closer together) causing of the gas within the blimp to not as effectively hold the blimp up in the air, And this causes the blimp to sink down to the ground it's as simple as that! 😅😅😅😅😂😂
If the cargo thing doesn't work out, I'd still like to go to the north pole or the Grand Canyon in one of these. What an adventure that would be! I always thought airships were more elegant than airplanes. I'm rooting for these folks to succeed.
If you think the protests due to wind farms being unsightly are loud, just wait till huge airships start to intrude on scenic areas like the Grand Canyon.
I'm hoping they can get far enough to overtake planes for long distance travel at reasonable cost - If I want to travel 1000 miles I could take a plane, sure, I'll arrive there in a few hours - but I would be happy with the journey taking 2 or 3x as long if I used less fuel and could have a more pleasant journey. Have the journey be part of the holiday, rather than a necessary evil between me and the holiday.
@@williamstrachan I reckon you could compare a long distance trip on an airship with a long distance trip on a train, the sort of trip you take a holiday to do, like crossing the USA, crossing Australia or going thru Europe by rail. On an airship, such trips would be breathtaking! Something I look forward to in the future, for sure!
it can be the combination of luxury yacht + private jet, it can have a lot of amenities, faster than a yacht, yet doesn't pollute the ocean too much (compared to both jet and yacht)
I wish you talked more about how it would handle flying in storms and windy weather, or against the direction the wind is blowing. Or dealing with punctures.
it seems like it could land reasonably slowly if it got punctured. what would cause such a massive puncture that all the helium/hydrogen would immediately escape. also i wonder if they could get rid of the oxygen in the space between the ballasts and the hull that way a puncture wouldn't immediately cause a fire. it would have to just fly around bad weather though 🤷♂
Can’t fly on flammable hydrogen gas…yet. All helium. I’m curious though how the displacement will work? When you drop a load (😂) how will you replace the weight without ascending.
Fun video. Minority opinion here: I'd love to see Airships enter routine passenger service because it solve my jet lag problem. Zürich to Rio de Janeiro is about 9250 km. At 120km / hr, the flight would be a leisurely 3+ days. The QM2 takes a week from Portsmouth to Brooklyn. Too slow. Transatlantic flights are okay in terms of time, but miserable, uncomfortable and cause jet lag. Probably won't get my wish, but fun to think about.
In the beginning, I think a reason why trucks are so vastly popular is because of their flexibility. They don't require airports, waterports or railway stations. They can use the existing road network for transport and require their separate infrastructure like trains... You'd need to use a truck for the last mile anyways when transporting goods by train for example. That's why many companies opt for truck transport end to end as it also simpler to organize and more flexible (train networks are not always open to use, but trains run on schedules; trucks can leave whenever they want).
they're so popular because of the Jones Act which bans foreign ships from traveling between USA ports. So a ship coming from China can't stop at LA and then move onto Seattle, for example. the cargo has to be dropped off at LA and then trucked to Seattle, with the ship going back to China, usually not at full capacity. it's such a ridiculous hindrance that causes billions of dollars in lost efficiency and who knows how much emissions and traffic from all the trucks on the road.
@@michaelmvm Wow, I'm from Germany and didn't know that. Trucks are still very popular in Germany even though foreign ships are allowed to target multiple Germany ports. We have a lot less shoreline though...
@@Aereto Our railway network is at 95% in some regions. I'd love for this to happen but if DB or the government don't find a way to add capacity, it's not going to...
Did that too couple of years ago, magnificent tour of the Bodensee. They do fly over the Alps as well, and also had a partnership with Redbull,dropping off some pro snowboarders offpiste in the alps for one of RedBull's crazy winter stunts.
sometimes when conspiratory, I wonder if the Hindenburg disaster was staged by railway/oil industries to kill off any interest in air ships among the public...
One of my close friends tried to start an airship company. In college we built together a small model airship, which unfortunately, was uncontrollable and flew away in the wind. That guy changed his mind and started a balloon company instead 😂 I also had the chance to meet a senior airship expert (fantastic guy, he was one of the few to practice competitive ballooning - a very selective and skill-based sport, and also former flying whales employee if I remember), and his honest opinion was "airships are an amazing passion, but they have the slightest chance to work" Also coincidentally, another friend of mine works at Latitude (a french rocket company) and their plan to carry the rocket to the launchpad in northern Scotland (in the Shetland islands) is to use flying whales airships. Make sense since the transport there is so difficult and the rocket is a large piece 😁
Getting it as a working tool, instead of being 'just' a passionate project, makes me thinking of nuclear fusion... The rocket part: Why don't they lift off in France? Being ~2000km closer to the equator (than Shetland) reduces the amount of lift forces / fuel quite a bit.
@@Jehty_ his honest opinion joins Derek's conclusion but in a more pessimistic approach. They are hard to build, develop and certify, and at the beginning can only compete for a niche market. Also - something not mentioned in Veritasium's video - airship are very hard to operate. One big deal is that there's no way to park an airship outside - you can only plant it on one single end and hope that the wind will not be too strong (and then you have to account for a very large area covered by the radius of the airship) or you have to store it in a big enough hangar. (Attaching multiple ground anchors is usually not feasible due to the immense force the airship would be subjected to in crosswind cases). Very different from aircrafts, which can be stored for relatively long duration on ground, awaiting for a new payload. Airship effective groundspeed are also heavily affected by wind, so that could limit the reliability of their time to delivery.
For the problem of having to reduce buoyancy when unloading, there is a solution that requires specific infrastructure which eliminates the remote area advantage, but could still work in a commercial sense. You could set up a network of helium storage wells at and around existing distribution centres and logistics hubs so that when an airship unloads cargo, helium is released via hose pipe into a ground storage well, then be either be pumped back in when the airship is reloaded, or stored for future loads and unloads. There would be a need for ground crews to operate and manage the pumps and a "harbour master" of sorts who keeps books and records of transfers, kind of like a helium bank manager
In the 1920s, they had air ships that were longer than the titanic and could catch airplanes in mid air and launch them… after a century of technological improvements, I think this idea is worth revisiting.
I love the idea of using water as ballast when unloading the cargo. You can pump it in at the same rate you're unloading to minimize strain, with the added benefit of potentially bringing silt/nutrients to areas with low rainfall or poor soil. Also 500 tons of water would be mighty useful combating forest fires (assuming the thermals and explosion potential were manageable).
@danielstewart3507 Good call. I'm pretty sure that only applies to straight suction, a sump pump style setup shouldn't have that limitation. Alternatively a tower with stepped tanks should resolve that too.
@@evangonzalez2245 Yeah that's true. But the addition of all those things is also extra weight, limiting the carrying capacity. Will definitely be interesting to see how they solve that problem. :)
@stevenboelke6661 I had considered that too, but coastal areas where sea water would be the logical choice are already likely to be serviced by ships in port. The rural and mountainous examples in the video are much more likely to have fresh water sources available 🤓
The problem with the cubed-squared advantage is that the larger the airship gets, the more shearing forces it has to deal with from the atmosphere. A helium balloon is fine with a very thin layer of rubber or mylar, but build a balloon like that on the scale of an airship, and even light gusts of wind will tear it apart. So there's also a cost in going larger, in terms of the support structures necessary to keep the airship in one piece.
@@bozo5632 Nice idea, but do you have enough of it to make a balloon? And what about the brittle nature? Hit it just right and it shatters. Catastrophic for flying vehicles.
Great video! I would say though that trains have become more and more important particularly for long distance shipping. Working in the industry I have seen the shipping by train increases pretty steadily as it is cheaper then trucking by a significant amount of time plus in longer distances moves is faster. On down side is that then the shipment needs to be picked up and delivered somehow from the rail yards. A lot of trucking companies have started using this method a lot more then having city drivers in these big ports who pick up and drop off shipments. Just my observation. Though the rail industry is monopolistic in North America with these companies penny pinching and not heavily regulated because of it’s importance to the supply chain. It’s a hard line to balance but if more regulations were put in place for rail companies overall it would definitely be the best method for price and time.
The problem with rail in the US is that trucking gets massive subsidies with free highways, but rail has to build their own infrastructure. It's not the regulations, it's the brutal economics
finally someone with sense in the comment section, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, basically all other countries that have the ability to build the infrastructure have solved this issue with trains
@@argh523The US has the problem that we decommissioned most of our rail network. We need a concerted national effort to restore and expand it, not only for shipping, but for passengers as well.
Rail is the best for overland transport in every way. Ships are best for sea transport. Airships are much faster than maritime ships, but maritime ships can transport higher volumes. Airships are also cheap alternatives to helicopters. Like rail, airships can be powered electrically, and unlike trains, they have the surface area for solar cells. (Not necessarily the crystalline ones; the ones that can be painted on are lighter and cheaper, but also less efficient. Still a good trade-off.) Maritime ships can be powered by wind, and some are partially wind-powered already. Where propellers are needed, electric motors are best because they provide the most torque, are the most efficient, and require the fewest parts. Unfortunately, container tall ships exist only on paper so far. Airships could fill this gap. I don't see any case for planes.
I've liked blimps and airships since I could remember and I really hope to see one that is as big or bigger than the Hindenburg. I believe that airships are way, WAY ahead of their time, and as such so were the problems they faced. But now technology and the knowledge of physics and old materials being used in new ways combined with new materials being tested, I really think we are catching up to that age where airships will be recognized as a safe reliable craft for all kinds of purposes. Also lets not forget that our understanding of the weather is vastly better than what it was almost 100 years ago! Im excited to see what develops.
Nothing will develop, It will only be supressed. Governments, central banks, and ultimately parasites, can't let people roam the earth freely. How do you tax a person that lives in the air, anywhere they want? You can't control the cattle if their house can fly anywhere anytime.
2:15 Another thing trucks have going for them is that they go everywhere the roads do, not just to specific ports (either air or water). Indeed, this is probably the biggest factor. 2:38 As the footnote of this graph says, US-Canada & US Mexico are excluded. A *lot* of stuff goes by truck over those 2 borders. 6:30 500 tons is *miniscule* compared to even small container ships. There are currently about 55,000 merchant ships, including 5300 container ships operating, each carrying thousands of containers. To replace their capacity, you'd need *hundreds of thousands to millions* of airships. Given all the problems, I doubt airships will ever succeed in anything but the most niche markets. They certainly won't become the "trucks of the sky".
@@firewoodlokiAnd that is what container ships do. Intercontinental. Carry far more, can hand bad weather, more fuel efficient per lb transported, last longer. When it comes to the most efficient method of transporting over land, trains win in every way. There is just no spot for a derigible/blimp to fill.
@@crissd8283if they maybe develop a heavy hauler blimp there is a possible spot to fill. It’s an extremely niche spot though so there wouldn’t be much value in developing something to fill it. They sure as hell won’t be carrying high voltage power poles dangling below them like in the video lol.
Yeah I died a bit when that article said “only half of the container market”. Over half of something astronomically large is still astronomically large. Even more so when you aren’t replacing vessels 1:1
What if you made those gas compartments in the rigid airships modular so that the right amount of them can be pulled down at a port (with a kind of inverted crane) at the same time as the loading-off of cargo? Thus as the weight goes down, lift goes down equally. These modular gas compartments can be stored at ports for future airships that are departing and need more lift for the additional weight of the cargo.
@@tank-elevenThis. Any mechanism that could do this quickly would weigh tons, and doing it light weight (bunch of bolts or something) would take a ton of time.
Love your idea. That was mine: Would it be possible to take the Helium/Hydrogen out with drones? They come up from the logistic-center and take robust ballons out as the payload of the blimp reduces. On the way up they create lift, when they want to go down, they turn upside down and slowly descend until they can attach the ballons on the ground.
True, it could make it longer to load and unload but it would be far more economical than replacing it with pull-down weight, and could be a realistic solution considering we cannot compress helium yet. If the belly of the airship could be openable, you could add the compartments at the same time as the cargo that would sit beneath. I wouldn't think you'd need a heavy and clunky system to attach them considering the compartments would actually be the ones lifting the airship's structure. Also, the core structure of the airship being completely rigid, it wouldn't deform
For those wondering why the video was reuploaded, Derek just forgot the sponsor segment 😅. That's the "error" in the pinned comment. It wasn't an error with the information presented in the video fortunately.
The cargolifter hanger (the largest ever build airship hanger, as seen at 17:00) is now used as a tropical spa. It is located about 50 km south of Berlin and called tropical island. The airship company that build it went bankrupt.
It went bancrupt because the company lacked finacial support and the regional government carelessly denied state funds despite all experts openly supporting the company. They simply let it die. My guess is the truck lobbyists working hard behind the scenese.
Cargolifter went bancrupt not only because of lacking financal support. They underestimated the problem of using diesel engines for propusion and dynamic balancing (which momentarily would use more horsepower than propulsion). There is no airworthy - certified - diesel engine of that size. The certification process of - say - an already existing MAN engine would cost a fortune and last for years. But all the planning was focused on diesel engines. The engines use up diesel, so, the airship looses weight. To counter that loss of weight, Cargolifter planned to condense the exhaust gas and keep the water that is also produced when burning diesel. And there would be more water than used up diesel. You could simply spill the surplus water. The Zeppelins of the old days did exactly that trick to cross the Atlantic (exept of using petrol engines - no big difference in that). So, Cargolifter changed the planning (far too late in the process) to use already certified turbine engines - like in helicopters. The exhaust gas of such a turbine is much hotter than diesel exhaust coming out of a piston engine. And there is no way to cool ist down sufficiently to condense it. The proposed reach of the CL160 dropped from more than 10.000 km to a some 100 km. With that, investors pulled out,
They are back! For at least the last thirty years Zeppelin NT (new technology) have been operating Zeppelin sightseeing tours over Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
well cheap translates to scalable. Helium is not just to expansive it is also to valuable to be used in masses for this application. And it is nonrenewable. So for scaling it up for an actual industry is not really an option.
If the Airship was going to a location that had pre-existing setup you could just have some anchors cemented into the ground that'd be like set-ins when climbing, Airship lowers some durable cables, hook those into the anchors, and then pull the Airship down with winches and keep it stable. Could also help with the wind issue if the cables are kept taught.
I had the same idea, but it doesn't really solve the problem - it only delays it. This would only work if you can replace the cargo with different cargo of the same weight, which makes it incredibly inflexible. Otherwise you can unload all cargo but at some point you want to release the cables, and before doing so you have to decrease lift or the airship will be ejected straight into the stratosphere and most likely be destroyed in the process.
Very True, Guess you'd need massive, industrial sized gas tanks at both ends to either provide or store highly pressurised lifting gas as appropriate. Although if using Hydrogen that'd be prone to a lot of leakage.@@miguelcervantes6604
I was thinking why not pump in or out gas as needed while loading or unloading? would limit it to fixed locations that would need some specialized equipment but that's also the case for freight ships and planes, they need harbors and airfields with all the supporting infrastructure as well.
@@miguelcervantes6604 I see your point but I think it could actually solve some problems. You could have airships running back and forth in a continuous loop between two cities, for instance, operating for a long time by being attached to the wire on the ground. If you want to take it off the track for whatever reason you just eject some gas to reduce the buoyancy, but ideally you wouldn't have to do that often. There's obviously a clear danger of the thing shooting into the stratosphere if it gets unclipped, as you said. So you would probably want to make sure these do not have any people on board.
@@miguelcervantes6604just carry ballast weights. It's going to be needed for balance anyways if the airship is not unloading and rebalancing all the cargo.
This actually makes a lot of sense. I work in the transport industry and we work with a variety of these scenarios such as harsh conditions on aggressive roadways in remote parts of the North, and large loads including windmill equipment and large oilfield equipment. This would not only reduce the risks to companies, but if it was cost effective it could eliminate needing large cranes and equipment to also come to site to unload (if the unit is stable enough to position accurately), and of course transport it also. Very Cool
Kind of sounds like the harsh conditions you mention would be even more of a problem for airships, especially if strong winds are common that pretty much excludes them from consideration.
There are so many challenges here, but I absolutely want airships to make a comeback! I would love to ride in one (although very much not likely), but it is never going to happen. The untapped capabilities and benefits are too much for us to pass up over the fear of the unknown. And as an ergonomist, all the challenges and potential issues are really intriguing to think about.
As a fan of the whole Steampunk aesthetic, I’d be very happy to see Airships return. As well as to witness the engineering challenges it would present, as well as the benefits that follow.
I grew up in a city named after the Goodyear tire company. We had a nascar race track in the city, and every year during nascar season we got to see the Goodyear blimp. I know she's not based in our city, but it was always a great sight to see her come back every year.
I feel like one of the greatest challenges, even if everything else was accounted for and worked out, would be the weather. Ships can weather storms and planes move fast enough to be able to route around storms, but a giant slow airship would likely get either caught by bad storms or need to consistently ground to avoid them.
I can't help but think of that super tall trashcan building in New York with the strategic gaps to prevent it from falling over during intense winds/storms. May not make sense to put holes in a gigantic balloon though.
@@michaelschauperl172 Above the clouds?? (facepalm) Oh, you mean at the altitude where your crew members need pressurized environments and life support systems, which are notoriously heavy. Even if this wasn't a big issue with this idea, the fact that many thunderheads can top out at 70,000' functionally means it's not possible to just "fly high" enough to avoid big storms!!!
As someone who did their senior project on hydrogen based airships, I love this topic. Thanks for helping me stay informed on it. You're the best Derek.
@@johnrobertgalera we had some sponsor companies that assigned projects. I may have been misleading, it was a capstone project for my EE degree, so some companies worked through the department to get teams of 7-8 EE and ME students to do research on a number of different subjects. Mine was on using hydrogen as a lifting gas and the possibility of extracting hydrogen from water in the atmosphere (as well as energy) to extend the range of operation.
I definitely feel like people's fear of airships like this is similar to their fear of nuclear power. They immediately condemn a thing because it failed once, not realizing that we've developed safer ways of doing that thing since those failures.
not considering all the material development we did in 100 years. original airships were cow intestins glued hydrogen balloons, covered with an explosive cotton tissue... now we have plastics and carbon fiber.
Also because it's failure are big and novel, rather then routine. Like your typical coal power plant emits more radiation then a fission plant, but people don't care because it's not accidental(?)
The equilibrium challenge could be solved with modularity. For each unit of cargo offloaded, an equivalent unit of buoyancy is tethered to the cargo station, maintaining equilibrium without loss of potential energy. Tethered ballons would then be added to airships to maintain equilibrium while adding cargo. Logistically nightmarish but potentially very energy efficient. Really what you want to do is map lifting modules one-to-one with cargo destinations, so the module detaches from the mother ship, is tethered to the cargo station, unloaded, then filled with cargo, untethered, and added to an outgoing airship. You definitely want to have modular boyant units and you want the modules to clip together to form larger lifting units. Definitely separate primary thrust providing modules from lifters, that's a no brainer.
Interesting, but as you mentioned potentially logistically challenging, I wonder if there's a combination of solutions here. Offloading lifting gas, compressing lifting gas, and using ground-based infrastructure to quickly mediate the needs. Perhaps, a large volume gas connection can be made, that pumps large amounts of lifting gas to a ground based tank (or balloons), where it can be efficiently compressed and compressed gas is returned to the airship. Lots of ways to combine.
@@remote24 Pumping a Maersk worth of water is a lot to imagine. You could attach "placeholder weights" (water or otherwise) whenever you unclip a container but that requires more energy to to lift the weights. Has the same downsides as pumping helium or hydrogen in/out. But yeah you could use the same crane you use to lower the container. Maybe that's a more practical solution.
Hi Veritasium! Seing that you touched the transports topic, would be really interesting to see the physics between other types of mobility, and their pros and cons. It seems for me that we peaked in some ways of mobility like trains and we are trying sometimes to search for a futuristic solution when we have one developed some centuries ago.
Yeah trains are the second most efficient mode of transportation second only to shipping but very few countries has a robust inland waterways system so initial cost of trains are way cheaper than inland shipping and far more cheaper running cost than hundreds of trucks Trains for the win!!
@@sharunsan2683does shipping beat trains on anything other than economics of scale and the lower resistance of slower speeds? It seems like to me that water drag should exceed the rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails.
As I watched this video I kept thinking of all the things that would doom it. I'm 76 years old so I have seen a lot of things and heard of a lot of things that can cause the catastrophes. Your video carefully answered all of those concerns I had, that's why I watch your channel. You make things easier to understand without glossing over hard issues. Please keep doing what your doing. I still have reservations about airships vi-abilities but I know they are being addressed.
When he cited that the US moves more things via trucks than rail and never explained why, I was about to lose my mind. It's because the US needs a better railway across the country. Instead of fixing that issue, people are here bringing back zeppelins as if we didn't discover why they're a problem before. This is the second time Veritasium has made a video that feels like a long commercial instead of an actual scientific video. The first one was with self-driving cars, which people called him out for not disclosing he was being paid to promote the idea.
@@MrWhiteVzla It's sort of the same issue. The US is too large and too rural. Maintaining all the infrastructure for railways and roads are both very expensive and since we have a dearth of public transportation, cars are more important so they choose to maintain the roads rather than the rails.
@@justinankar I agree, and there lies the problem. The solution is for the US government to invest in railways just like they did when they built the highways. But they won't. Instead, they will humour the idea of snake-oil salespeople like these companies or anything Elon Musk sales as a good idea.
I had an idea in college of doing a similar design airship to target some of the leisure cruise market. Imagine a ship with capacity similar to a river cruise or one of those niche yachts that isn't bound by waterways for where it can visit - you can take a cruise from Denver to Vegas or a direct route from Venice to Rome without having to go around the bottom of Italy. If you target the kind of guest who appreciates a more environmentally friendly way to travel than modern cruise ships and who wouldn't miss the lack of things like a pool, it could be an amazing experience - and think of the views!
Personally, i believe the tourism aspect has much more potential than any other usage. After all, in their hayday, airships were competing with ocean liners. One thing they severely lacked were showers however, so they'd better have a solution for that lol
Zeppelin are still used in tourism. For at least the last thirty years Zeppelin NT (new technology) have been operating Zeppelin sightseeing tours over Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
I might be wrong but i believe compressing at a slower rate the gases needed for lift is possible with a simple (ish) trick that is actually used by ships already, an anchor, basically you take the load to wherever you need to, anchor and then compress the gas at a somewhat slower rate but currently possible, and just un-anchor once you have the lift stable. And in-before comment saying that anchors cant hold that much weight... let me remind you they are used for cargo ships in the ocean which are WAY more heavy
I am intrigued by the airship concept. I hope they find a niche as transporters. If for nothing else, at least, as emergency service vehicles in remote places, such as field hospitals, for example.
That sort of thing is likely the only thing they're useful for other than flying over sports matches. Just about everything that you can do with them can be done with other vehicles that are already being produced. I do think that having them flying over disaster areas and picking up survivors that would normally be done via boat or helicopter is a worthwhile reason to have them, but it's questionable whether that's a better solution than remotely controlled boats.
Wind turbine blades is a big one! here in germany with many hills and mountains and windy roads its very hard to get them around the corners etc and to the peaks (where the best wind is). and they dont weigh as much as cargo containers so maybe the airship doesnt have to be as large, and you can avoid the stability vs lightness problems of larger ships
I wonder if a solution to the buoyancy problem could be to have partitioned balloon sections that can be anchored to the ground when offloading cargo to offset the weight. For example, an airship with several separately filled balloon sections could arrive at a port, anchor to the ground, offload 500 tons of cargo, and then take-off by decoupling from a 500 ton section (or five 100 ton sections, etc) that's already anchored to the ground. These balloon sections could then be reattached to airships that come back to the port and load up more cargo (while anchored to the ground during the transfer of course). I feel like this would be a more economical way of solving the buoyancy issue without the need for compression or having to throw counterweight overboard.
At Philadelphia's large 30th Street Train Station - there is a wall sculpture/mural from 1895 called the "Spirit of Transportation". It depicts a parade of people using horses, boats trains etc, but at the very front of the sculpture/parade is a little boy with a toy airship, holding it up proudly. Even in 1895, the airship was seen as the future of transportation. Such a shame the disasters in the 30s essentially halted any progress. Maybe one day we can fulfill their full potential.
The containers currently used can also evolve. If somehow each container is attached to a way to contain part of the gas, not only the dropping of the load might be less difficult, but also it might help to take away part of the gas that is not needed anymore on the ship. 14:31
If each container had gas with, you'd be carrying smaller blimps, not containers - that would mean an airship could only carry a few of these instead of the freight amounts.
You'd end up needing a lot of volume of lifting gas for each container, so each container gets much larger. I mean, if you fill a standard container with even pure hydrogen, with no actual cargo inside, would that even be enough to lift just the weight of the container itself? And it complicates the ground operations a lot. What do you do with the empty, buoyant containers once you've got the cargo out? You either save them for later (takes up space, they need to be anchored, assumes that you will have cargo to send not just receive, basically just turns into the ballast problem) or vent the gas and discard the container (losing money as discussed in the video, same issue as venting directly from the airship). So at first glance it seems this doesn't really solve any of the problems, just moves them around. A purely modular system is an interesting idea though, like a cloud of cargo balloons that attaches to some propulsion module.
Another point, if you use hydrogen as a lifting gas, your ship can be equipped with an oxygen extractor and fuel cells and you have an essentially unlimited amount of fuel. Such an airship would be entirely electric and produce only water as exhaust. Your fuel would not only weigh nothing but would actually provide you with lift. Green and efficient!
We posted this video yesterday, but took it down soon after when we noticed an error. Here’s take 2 - thank you for watching!
ok
what was the error?
What error was it? I didn’t notice anything
what was the error?
Thought I hallucinated
The number one reason why air ship should make a comeback is because they look awesome
IMO that shouldn't never ever be a number one reason, for anything, specially more for something that has the potencial to kill people in hair and the ground in case of accident.
@@Argoon1981 I think it was a joke
You look awesome 🤩
wtf you have the same profile picture as me
The cool factor reigns supreme!
It’s amazing how airships are the technology that won’t die. A friend of mine graduated from college back in the 80s and went to work for a company doing research into LTA aircraft for the Navy. Also, back in the late 80s, Dean Ing wrote a sci-fi book called “The Big Lifters”, where he built a whole multi-modal transportation system around hybrid airships.
Niceee
won't die? I'd say calling it alive is a stretch, there are more astronauts than blimp pilots haha
SpaceX will be the new market disrupter in terms of shipping good with his Starship rockets from China to NY in just 40 minutes.
Readings me of the fictional book I read when I was young - Airbourne. Themed around a giant airship.
@@0truckmafk That will never be financially viable and the huge amount of resources consumed in a world where we need to reduce consumption makes shipping goods inefficiently via rockets just to save time a total nonstarter.
I actually wrote my senior thesis many years ago about how airships occupy a nice place economically for shipping. I keep waiting for them to make a comeback.
That sounds interesting! Is it possible for you to send that thesis to me as pdf?
Economics only, or was it on the engineering as well? I'm curious as to the viability of using hot air as a lifting gas.
@@Gremlin23I would think that it would only be slightly lighter than the air outside, and you would need to use a lot of energy to keep it hot.
Or - hear me out - you could heat the hydrogen!
The airlander is thicc
Helium filled airships are no problem, but the biggest problem with them, is control. Many years ago at Hatfield , a British Airways Airship landed on a small strip of land. From there about 8 passengers got out, as it was their destination. I was just one of about 30 strong lads on the ground holding onto the main rope in the front of the airship, and we struggled to keep her on the ground. Obviously as the airship emptied her cargo( passengers), the aluminium gondola became lighter. The lift being constant, it wanted to lift up. It was a calm virtually no breeze summer afternoon, and we /the captain too, had a great deal of problems keeping the airship from just lifting off the ground. Once some more passengers filled it, it became easier to control. Then when it needed to take off again, it used to ducted fan engines acting downwards to help her lift off the ground.
Now this was a calm balmy summers day, and I was amazed at the lifting power of this airship, and thus also the difficulty trying to control it, if the wind picks up , even a bit.
Thus although they can lift and fly serenely and probably with less noise and pollution than a plane or helicopter, You are even more at the mercy of the wind, than a plane or helicopter. Providing your journey is not against the wind, once up in the air, it wont cost you much in fuel! Should they be brought back, that depends if they can solve the endemic control problems just highlighted here!
I imagine modern airships would need to have mechanical means of being weighed down or releasing and gaining levels of gas without waste when landing and taking off.
Maybe there could be some clamps that rise up into the air to grip onto the airship and slowly pull it down pneumatically. I imagine we could also have more and better propellers to hopefully stabilize the airship in choppy weather.
I must admit though, I have a hard time seeing an airship being able to operate properly in any kind of storm. I could just be lacking imagination on the subject.
why wouldn't there be an anchor to guarantee secure tethering instead of a bunch of blokes? assuming its a planned stop, a hook drilled into the ground aught to be waiting there.
Maybe it stabilizes if it's pointed in the right direction and a computer could do that?
People tend to imagine airship more like balloon or zeppelin (because it's cheapest), but It can be as well in shape of plane - just bit bigger, with additional lifting power - to get better control. Still solid anchoring needed for sure after unloading.
Helium filled airships are a problem, because the world is facing a looming shortage of helium.
Man I don't know about the actual viability of airships, but it just seems so cool to me to be like on the crew of an airship. I don't know why but the idea just excites me so much. It kinda makes me wonder if this is how people felt when air travel was entirely new, it just seems like a new frontier.
Man i feel the same. It would be like the living when the first ship of the line were built, or during the early biplane era were planes were like small minivan of the skies, delivering all kind of stuff. A whole new frontier without the inhumane buerocracy or training required.
It also feel extremely romantic, slowly soaring the skies, in a ship like control room, while you see the world from above
Have you explore cruise travel! Not the same as being in the air but easily majestic and humbling on new frontiers
Just imagine how quiet it would be, especially when staying still.
@@hitmanRazoSo airships can basically be like luxury cruise travel with lots of amenities except in the air instead of on the sea.
My dad was a barge man. I figure it'd feel quite the same. Like a cross between the prestige of a pilot and the adventure and comradery of sailors
Airships have been trying to make a comeback for decades. In 2007, I myself was involved in an airship startup. We wanted to build a 500 meter long rigid body airship for cargo. Then after market analysis we settled on smaller ships to serve as sky cranes and tourism airships. The same ideas mentioned in this video. We even spent a lot of time on the buoyancy gas compression problem. Back then, we were looking at competitors such as the SkyCat (which is still to this day, "proposed"). It's interesting to see, in 2023, how the revival of airships is still in the planning stages. Even more interesting when you consider that they did have their heyday once. So it's not like it's a purely theoretical idea.
I've been playing with this idea about sky trains, i.e. a chain of airships linked together so that it's built of multiple sections and linked so that drag is minimized. What do you think would be the biggest problem with that, aside of maybe side wind which would likely be hard? They could be gigantic, but on the other hand, smaller ones could be used on low altitude and they could be perhaps pulled / powered using a some sort of cable system on ground, but that's a bit different concept altogether.
This is very interesting - would you be able to share the reasons why you moved away from the idea of using them for cargo? Concerns that come to mind would be; the fear of the industries inability to adapt / get on board with such an idea, or backlash from citizens not wanting their sky obstructed by large cargo airships - but that's just me guessing, I'm quite interested in what you gathered during your research!
Well one thing is they need to use Hydrogen. The world is running out of helium.
I mean... AI was also being worked on ever since the invention of computers, right? And considering that legitimate attempts at making AI has only caught up like last year, the same can and may happen with airships soon (or at least I hope so).
Did you consider an idea of just using metal chains to fixate it after it landed?
If these things actually get built, I am going to sit outside of an airfield in a lawn chair with a big old bowl of popcorn and watch the show. Seeing something that big fly sounds like the coolest thing ever.
There's something so retro/steampunk yet so sci-fi about a world where these things reign supreme. Hope I get to see these in the sky one day.
Edit: Peeps in comments keep mentioning "solarpunk" fitting these things more. I didn't know that was a thing or a word that existed, but now I do. Thanks.
Blimp is a funny word haha
in America people will shoot them
U can still see them every now and then
It’s solar punk! We can have a beautiful future.
I was gonna say, sounds like solarpunk to me!
The collective horror at the Hindenburg almost can't be overstated. Airships reached a glorious pinnacle in the 20s and 30s, and the Hindenburg was the best of them. A true marvel of the world. Its fiery and dramatic destruction created such a powerful stigma that we still haven't recovered from it. That single event changed the course of aviation history, but it probably would have happened at some point.
The Titanic of Airships so to say. .. sadly we still have Luxury Cruisers :)
@@achimdemus-holzhaeuser1233 it would be the Titanic of airships if the Titanic was one of the first ships ever constructed. Hindenburg had the additional burden of being new technology, whereas the Titanic was mostly a large version of pre-existing tech
It's weird how one airship crashed destroyed an entire niche that lasted for almost ages (balloons have been around for hundreds of years) but airplanes crash all the time and people accept it.
@@RichardAlaskanforaPassing this is true, but never before had such a fiery and destructive vehicular catastrophe been captured on film for the world to see
The issue was not so much of it being a horror Hindenburg had flown over 300,000 km without fault. Consider how many civilian aircraft had crashed and burned before reaonably reliable tri-motors and the DC3 came on the scene. Far more fatalities.
The issue was that in the late 1920's and early 1930's competitors for duralinium- the Zeppelin works Aluminium alloy- was now in demand by the new far more rigid, more reliable, faster and cheaper metal skinned aluminium monoplanes. One Zeppelin used far more aluminium than several aircraft that could carry equal load, further and faster. This is what truly killed the airship- and remember the massive size of the airship makes it extremely vulnerable to wind, to currents, updrafts and down drafts- so in some cases lift without thrust is self defeating. As we massively improved thrust, and lowered drag- we got massive payoffs in lift.
I'd love to explore the challenges to anchoring the airship and pulling it down as opposed to trying to constantly push it down with propellers.
Maybe, but would that not take away one of it’s strengths: to be able to land anywhere with minimal infrastructure?
Also, it may work if you re-load the airship right after, but what if you need to move or even return home with the airship unloaded?
This was my exact thought as well
@@assarlannerborn9342 True, but a few cable winches still sound fairly minimal when compared to road, rail, and even runways.
should be able to dynamically adjust buoyancy with some pumps and pressure tanks.
Comparing Hindenburg to a modern zeppelin would be like comparing Chernobyl to a modern nuclear power plant
Both are still being done
How many people have died in a conventional aircraft crash when the fuel in the wings ignited? Remember the Tenerife disaster? Two airplanes were destroyed in the collision. All 248 passengers and crew aboard the KLM plane died, as did 335 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am plane, primarily due to the fire and explosions resulting from the fuel spilled and ignited in the impact. The other 61 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am aircraft survived. That was a lot more people than were killed in the Hindenburg disaster.
@@mirandahotspring4019 It's like if we we're to discontinue cars after the first crash
R101
Considering that most of our currently operating nuclear plants are fairly outdated, I'm not sure if that anology stands quite as well as you intended.
Granted, even those outdated designes are still significantly safer than Chernobyl.
As an airship engineer with blimp operations experience going back 40 years, I thank you for making a video rhat actually explains the concepts, benefits and challenges correctly, and in a way that the general public would understand. Most videos about the future of airships are filled with fantasy and error.
Would it be possible to make a thermal airship using solar energy for lift by using electrical heaters and propulsion? Obviously have a back up gas system in place.
Maybe enough to have a small apartment in it?
If I was filthy rich screw a yacht! I'd take the airship if I could do that. However I don't like the idea if using helium specifically since it leaks, and is non renewable.
@@dianapennepacker6854 It seems thermal airships have 30% less lift for the volume, in addition if there is a heating failure you're going down and constantly heating uses energy. So the extra weight of solar, plus heating, probably going to be terrible for cargo uses.
@@dianapennepacker6854 not practical for 2 main reasons.
First and most importantly hot air has 35-40% the total lifting power of hydrogen/helium. So you hit a point where structural weight exceeds lifting capacity increase with size much sooner.
Second because the envelope needs to be very lightweight it is also very thing and a poor thermal insulator. So hot air-craft loose a huge amount of energy and are very inefficient. Meaning that even a perfect theoretical max solar panel would be unable to gather energy faster than its consumed.
Also there is the extra problems like panels would have to be integrated into the skin but they hate heat so they need insulation from the heated envelopes but that adds weight and structural problems ect ect.
Not saying its impossible would need to do actual engineering for that but the plausibility is low.
Kind of like solar powered planes. Yeah you can do it but one capable of carrying 2 people is the wingspan of a 747 and a strong breeze can cause severe damage.
Nice to have an expert in the comments. Would an mixture of nitrogen hydrogen and water vapour be a suitable lifting gas?
Below 14% hydrogen it would not be flammable as far as I know. If there would be enough lift it would be suitable for human transport and other safety critical stuff. For anything else would just use unmanned hydrogen drones.
Water vapour only to 80% humidity because it’s lighter than air
One thing I always thought airships could be used for was SAR operations in regions where people get lost during normal weather, the thing can loiter over their last known location and send out camera drones to increase its effective search area, and if they’re conscious enough to signal, it’s impossible to not notice the massive dirigible in the sky and know where to direct their signal.
Well, US tried to use airships for early warning.
As it turns out, while airships CAN stay in the air virtually for free, in order to stay in one spot you need to spend fuel to resist the winds. Also, if weather becomes too bad and winds becoming too strong, you need to land. So, on practice is very hard to exploit their long loitering time.
Fire the flare toward the airship. It exploded. 😅
@@СоюзниксОкинавыWhy not just tether it to the ground, then?
@@seanhoude It may be difficult to establish an improvised anchor, it may not be as straightforward as with sea ships.
@@brauljo Perhaps, but I'm thinking less improvised and more like a mooring.
14:00 By definition, when you have lowered the load, you have a stable connection between the ground and the airship. Why not attach the tethers you used for the load to anchor points on the ground, then stabilise the lift of the airship at your leisure - whether by venting or even attaching another payload.- before departing.
I find it weird that it wasnt brought up how these airships would be grounded constantly for weather. Imagine trying to control a giant balloon in anything other than the most calm skies. They will need a HUGE ground crew with heavy equipment to control. I love the idea, but they would require so much more infrastructure than was being hinted at here.
Not really. The surface area grows with the square of their size, but the mass grows with the cube. So the bigger you go the less you are bothered by the weather. And going big is the idea anyway.
They did mention weather constraints around the 14 min mark.
Weather doesn't exist, climate change and cow farts killed it.
@@andrasbiro3007 Not necessarily--the buoyancy factor does some interesting things there. However, as a believer in airship tech, I like to remind people that we can predict the weather much more easily and accuratley now than we could back in the airship heyday. Yes, their functionality is a little limited, but nowhere near as much as it was when we couldn't be sure what would happen with weather patterns!
@andrasbiro3007 In the air yes. But not on the ground, vehicle mass doesn't magically reduce the wind force. Plus the higher the balloon the higher the wind speeds it sees.
I've been following for some time the rise and fall (literally) of Airlander - the UKs most recent attempt to get airships up and running again - and it isn't as easy as it sounds. The use of helium rather than hydrogen means it's not as efficient as the old pre war airships and even modern designs still limit their efficiency. More importantly, as you noted, helium is in short supply and I don't see how you'd source that limited supply without the unexpected demand dramatically increasing the price. Airlander has decided to focus on a very exclusive market to try and claw back the millions that investors (including Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson) have made over the years. And as someone who used to have blimps fly over my head as a child (I lived near the Cardington Sheds) they struggle in even light winds. As a regular and reliable means of transporting large quantities of cargo over vast distances - especially as the climate becomes even more aggressive - I just can't see it happening.
Btw: Those great big 'sheds' seen in the Airlander video are in Cardington, housed the original R100/R101 series and was briefly the home of the Airlander. They're expensive to maintain and are now owned by Warner Brothers - I believe that one even appears in the background at the start of The Dark Knight Rises.
This was a great read, thx for sharing!
Yep, I remember reading in aeronautics trade publications that my dad would get like 30 years ago that airships are the next big thing. Then it fizzled out. Then again about 15 years ago it blew up again and all these "futuristic" designs were all over and again fizzled out. I feel like by this time if it was a good idea it would have happened by now.
8% lift difference, while it is an issue that needs to be solved later, doesn't seem like it would affect the early development of large airships too much. The cargo market is so large that I feel like there will be enough interest to sustain a rather long unprofitable periods while development continues. The wind issue seems like the largest problem.
Btw, I don't think hydrogen is as big of a problem as it was. newer structural materials, and especially new propulsion methods such as hydrogen fuel cells can be managed very easily to make fires close to impossible, especially when you specifically design them around fire safety. Also since it is cargo ships, most people probably care a lot less if one goes down every few years.
I hope they fail. I don't mean that in a malicious way, hoping people lose all their money, I just don't like the business model.
Helium is a finite resource which is very important for science. The idea of filling an airship with it, just so some rich twats can have a floating, safari wine bar, seems like unnecessary, wasteful decadence.
Putting wind turbines in remote, hard to access locations, so they can more efficiently develop green energy seems like a better use of this scarce resource.
@@nicstroud Yeah. Helium is also one of the few genuinely non-renewable resource on Earth since it's an element (cannot be made via chemical process), and raw Helium is light enough that it escapes the atmosphere into space so it will never come back to us. We can technically make them via nuclear fusion but you only make a tiny amount from it (not to mention you may need more helium to cool the superconducting magnets anyway). Meanwhile, Helium has a unique role in science and engineering and medicine and I don't think we know of a viable alternative for some of its applications.
Having mass-deployed airships that use helium seem like a terrible idea to me (not to mention expensive).
I learned something about airships in the US when I lived near a Goodyear Blimp hanger and spoke with one of the tenders. Apparently, quite a few people take pot shots at blimps with firearms. While unlikely to significantly damage a rigid airship, it does pose a potential danger to passengers.
Sounds like a problem very specific to the US :D
@@wanjanechtangroeger It does, indeed. A solution to this U.S.-specific problem might be just as U.S.-specific: Equip the blimp with weapons to shoot back. I'm thinking minigun here but I'm sure you agree we need extensive tests to find out what the best defense option against belligerent civilians is.
I would argue that's far more an American issue than for any other country, especially Europe, most of Asia and China.
@@karabenomar Probably makes sense in the eyes of many US citizens :D
Maybe large, long distance airships would fly high enough to dodge this problem altogether.
I think we have a fascination with air ships because deep down we all just want to live in a Ghibli movie.
so true
I'm loving that we're seeing a return to technologies we'd abandoned in the past with an eye to making them safer and more efficient. Airships are one such technology, but so is wind power for ocean-going vessels! There's at least one company with a test cargo ship undergoing sea-trials using modern "sails" to use the wind as power.
Cargos can also carry hundreds of times more freight than any existing or future aeroplane. Because ultimately, a boat works like a balloon, thanks to Archimedes' push, except it's water instead of air that supports the weight.
@@yyy-875 the company was doing a hybrid system from the start, to reduce fuel consumption
I would be so stoked for airships to become a thing. Used to be obsessed with them as a kid. Read many sci-fi books about airships in my youth
Would the book Airbourne be one of them? 🙂
yeah, there are 100 years old post cards, from 19xx, how people imagined future. Lots of airships. Really lots. I think Hindenburg end airship era too soon.
could you list some? i would like to read a few too.
Did you read the big lifters?
@@oadka the series Airborn by Kenneth Oppel is amazing, highly recommend
As an occasional hot-air balloonist I'm naturally drawn to airships; however, the proposed cruising speed of 90 km/h could easily be counteracted by high wind speeds. Airships would have to navigate around storms and fight against side winds that would considerable lengthen their flight paths and increase fuel costs. High or turbulent winds at arrival ports would also cause delays or make landing difficult.
I'm surprised by the idea that airships should be viable option if other infrastructure is devastated. If wind has destroyed buildings, where have the airships gone?
@@helvettefaensatan They wait until the storm has passed? For a hurricane, that's a day or so.
I want them to come back just because they look so fun and whimsical I love it
I love the fact that the startup chose the name "Flying Whales", which is the title of a Gojira song (that address environmental issues) released seven years before their founding. Plus, considering that both the startup and the band are French, I don't think it's a coincidence.
WATER OF CHAOS HAVE INVADED ALL SPACE
THE FLOOD ON EARTH AGAIN, I HAVE TO FIND THE WHALES
I was just thinking about this lol they probably will never comment on it but could very well be
Probably my all time favourite song. The guitar is impeccable and gave me goosebumps the first time I listened to it. Literally stopped whatever I was doing and focused on the experience knowing I’ll never be able to top it.
go see them live @@flawless7019
Yeah... knowing that they plan to use it to cut down inaccessible forests makes me say that maybe they only liked the title of the song and not the environmental subtext...
All I have to say is: "Cargo-Lifter" from Germany in the 90's.
In its huge hangar south of Berlin was supposed to be built exactly this: a massive cargo-carrying rigid airship.
The company failed after millions had been spent on the development without getting anywhere.
The hangar was later transformed into the a tourist attraction by transforming it into the largest enclosed water park in the world.
Ehh, just because something wasn't feasible 30 years ago doesn't mean it's doomed to fail in future innovation attempts. VR headsets and games are a good example - manufacturing capabilities have changed significantly in 30-40 years. Not to say it's definitely gonna work this time, but eventually these airships will very likely be feasible in some capacity after enough technological advancement.
@@TyntedVR isn't the best example as it still is an extremely niche market for users with both the money, and living space for a vr setup. Not to mention the physical limitations of the medium when it comes to handling motion sickness. The manufacturing and engineering advances still haven't made it a mass market product, much like airships currently.
What? VR is not a prohibitively expensive hobby to get into even now. You can get a Quest 2 for $300 and it provides an acceptable experience. Motion sickness is something that people have been shown to get used to the more they use VR, myself included. I would argue the lack of adoption for the Quest has more to do with Facebook being a generally awful company and locking those devices down to their terrible ecosystem.
Beyond that, have you used a Valve Index? The hand tracking on that is phenomenal and the weight of the device on your head is already at an acceptable amount as it is. It is an *extremely* immersive experience that is not too far from making it to the vast majority of consumers. Given more time for ludicrously efficient chips similar to Apple's M1 to make it into headsets, it is absolutely only a matter of time before the cables go away entirely while keeping good enough battery life and excellent hand/eye tracking. The requirement of base/tracking stations is probably going to go away at some point, too, although I have no idea how far away that is. Once that point is reached, living space won't matter that much anymore as you'll be able to go outside or into your basement to have enough space for VR. Laptop CPU's and GPU's are already good enough to drive many of the games people will want to play in VR, so there won't be much cost associated with computing power.
Also, take a look at Apple's AR headset they're working on and how phenomenally well their eye and hand tracking technology works - the fully wireless immersive experience is coming. VR is already a feasible market that is here to stay for many years to come, and it is likely to become much larger within a decade or two.
30 years ago, this seemed *worlds* away from what was possible at the time, much like airships still seem improbable if not impossible now.
I see no reason why airships will not be a similar situation. The physics already allows them to exist. At some point, our engineering capabilities are going to make them feasible, if only for a niche market for a time. @@jordannoell4222
Something that is niche for consumers is not necessarily niche for large companies willing to spend millions/billions on one project/project item.
Companies in this sense do not need accommodations for motion sickness, for instance.
There was an awesome Tom Scott video on this.
I would kill for airships to become a way of holiday. Imagine spending two weeks flying over the Australian Outback, watching the sunset over the red desert from up high in the sky. It would be amazing!
That would be a definite market for them. Turn them basically into flying cruise ships, with onboard amenities, restaurants, shops, and of course floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere. Then chart a two-week cruise around the skies of the Alaskan wilderness and you're suddenly making bank. When you can take your cruise ship *anywhere* on land OR water, the sky (pun) is truly the limit. I would sail on them whenever I could.
@@ianmiller6040right? They would likely be more expensive than a cruise thanks to them having to be smaller, BUT imagine them getting to go anywhere? I wonder what a world cruise on one of them would look like
That sounds awesome!
I mean there are billionaires in this world... Get on their will and ill leave the rest to u
It would be very sea sickening
After the first minute or two when you mentioned that it's a slow and big method of travel, my first thought was "Well yeah but the same is true of cruise ships and those are quite popular." People would enjoy a slow journey as long as they have breath-taking views, and ample entertainment/luxury to pass the time when/if the views are not quite so spectacular. Plus being able to make stops along the way, spend a day grounded here or there so people can soak up the local culture before moving on to the next stop.
True but any leisure/recreational use of these airships will cost many times what a similar experience on a cruise ship would cost since airships can carry way less people and amenities than a cruise ship could, so they’d have to massively increase the price of each ticket to actually make a profit or even just to break even
Airships are several times bigger than cruise ships, with only a fraction of passengers. Hence the 200 thousand ticket price.
Problem is that luxury (or even decent) beds are quite heavy. Same for anything else that makes a cruise comfortable. Airship liners had absolutely terrible bed even for the upper class to save weight.
@@2MeterLPseems like air beds would be the thing? Some can be might comfy. :)
@@DawnDavidsonThats pretty clever. I dont think air beds had been invented yet when air ship liners were a thing, but that seems like a great choice for any airships in the future.
A possible solution for the weight-lift problem: When the airship drops off the cargo, it picks up standardized blocks of concrete (or rock or metal) that, say, weigh 5000 pounds each. Then, when the airship picks up cargo at a different stop, it drops off those blocks for the next airship to pick up.
Edit: Derek stated my exact idea right after I finished making this comment
I was thinking about using water for ballast. Tanks can be purged slowly at liftoff and possibly distilled back from cloud vapor in time for landing. Or perhaps a low diameter hose could be passed up from a docking station on the ground via a rope dropped from the gondola
This large Zeppelin hangar with its 360m length that you have shown is located near Berlin. A few years ago, Germany tried to technically implement this dream, but unfortunately failed. In the meantime, this hangar is home to a leisure park called Tropical Island. You can even parachute onto a beach from a platform under the ceiling there. That's how huge the building is :D
well the money got stolen sadly
@@georgyekimov4577 there was bo other use for this building
Germany has also a not-by-authorities-approved fast-breeder nuklear power station, which is now "Wunderland Kalkar" (previous 'Kernwasserwunderland'), an
amusement park.
To my knowledge Cargolifter was mostly an investment scam that sold a dream. Tropical Islands isn't a win, it is an attempt to use that hangar for at least something.
@@christiankrause1594 interesting, that's something i didnt know.
as a trucker it's not just the sweetspot for transportation, but also it's easy to get it into places. you can get close to anywhere in a truck and they're very flexible when it comes to what load you're transporting.
Yeah I was suprised that wasn't mentioned in the video. It seems to be by far the most important reason trucks are used to so much. Practically everything has road access. Only a small amount of industries have direct water or rail access and direct access to an airport is basically non existant. Practically all air cargo from planes end up in trucks to get to their actual destination. The main reason to use a truck is because it is literally the only option. If there are more options it seems like it usually isn't used.
I would love to see a tax credit for truck drivers and sharecroppers and herders. Positions like that in this country.
Truck propaganda!
That's true...for loads that are on the same road network. But you still have all the time and expense of intermodal exchange, for containers. You can't drive across an ocean, or across the isthmus of Panama...but you could fly an airship. You can get an airship even more places than a truck, and wouldn't have to unload it until you got to your destination. Even on land, that could be faster and much easier if not limited to road networks (like the turbine blade example).
This is mainly an infrastructure point more than a a truck vs other stuff point. Trains can (and should, and do in other countries) be much more widespread when it comes to delivering goods throughout cities, we just don't use them.
Adding also "Train" in your table at 2:07 would have been super interesting to me. I have the feeling that Train also is in that sweet spot your were talking about. But well, since car industry is much stronger in the US (and sadly also around the world) this option is not taking the most amount of tons transported. But thats just an intuition which I would have loved to confirm (or even falsify) with data...
its a logistic issue. loading and unloading trucks is way faster than trains and can be done at the final destination. my dad used to work in shipping produce
could not agree more. the only cargo benefits thees 3D renderd visions of airships have over the electric train is the travel over oceans and the minimal infrastucture needed
Same! I found it very confusing as to why it wasn't included.
I looked it up and it seems like train would fall somewhere in 3-5c / ton km. All sources say that train is 3-4x more affordable than trucking. Not sure about the time, but i would guess days? Maybe a week or 2 if our (US) train infrastructure is really that bad?
I recently did airship across much of Australia, amazing experience and once people know it’s going to boom
Back in highschool, we had an innovation theme in Physics Class. Where I presented Hydrogen Airships, with a twist! Where the hydrogen envelopes would be encased in a nitrogen envelope. Creating a buffer between hydrogen and oxygen, where it is possible to detect it before it becomes dangerous.
Still often think about it, and this made me think back on it, hydrogen is significantly cheaper than Helium, and it could also be used through a fuel cell essentialy using the same fuel for both lifting gas and electric propellers.
That sounds like a very interesting concept - I hope the companies designing airships take note and see if it's practical!
Hydrogen leaks is just something you have to live with, because it readily leaks even through solid metal - thin polymer film gasbag has no hope of stopping it from escaping. The way you stop hydrogen fires is the same way you stop gasoline fires - by observing fire safety. It can't burn if you don't ignite it.
@@michaelbuckers While true the leaks happen no matter what. The strength in a buffer is that you have a barrier were after the leaks the gas can't burn, and also that the leaks still will travel upwards, and away from were people are. It might even be possible to dispatch the leaks along the way. While it should be safe enough to travel with proper safety precusions, this design might help regaining trust in hydrogen, since it is overly safe.
@@stepheneyles2198I'm sure they're watxhing this vifeo right now, taking notes
@@Standartt01cool idea! I think a big challenge will be maintaining the purity of the nitrogen in the buffer, since hydrogen will be diffusing into it. I wonder if the density of the gasses is sufficient that you could use a centrifuge to seperate them continually to maintain buffer purity.
Honestly I think the sail effect is the killer of airships, even relatively gentle updrafts and downdrafts could send your massive hydrogen filled multimillion dollar ship into an uncontrollable flightpath. I think hybrid ships with an airfoil is the way to go but like you covered, that leave cargo behind. What a great video.
Maybe the answer is to never land.... perhaps an ejectable gondola quad-copter could be used?
@@DJRonnieG That'll be $750 billion in R&D for an ejectable gondola quad-copter in 20 years and yeah no that's an engineering nightmare
@gmdille so in other words, it needs a military application to speed things along and the obligatory bottomless pit of funding.
I suspect the killer to do this at a scale that conceivably replaces some portion of oceangoing container ships is the number of hangars and the associated expense to build them. For luxury civilian travel I could imagine seeing airships taking to the skies again. The point about dirigibles being able to access locations that are remote or otherwise extremely difficult to get to is interesting though. One of the fairly significant differences is that airships don’t suffer from bottlenecks in locations like the Suez or Panama canals. I just hope they don’t use helium, we cannot make more of it and it is a relatively scarce commodity that’s incredibly useful.
An escape system would be useful if this idea were to be revived
I rode an airship from Mountain View over San Francisco to the Napa Valley in 2011. Air Ship Ventures purchased a Zeppelin NT built in Germany and based it out of Moffett Field (the federal airbase operated by NASA and leased by Google). The 250 foot long airship named Eureka was the longest in the world at the time. The day long excursion was a beautiful and comfortable site to behold. My ticker cost less than $300! Sadly they went out of business in 2012 and the airship was disassembled and sent back to Germany where she now sits in storage waiting for a new owner. The 4 years she was in the San Francisco Bay were exciting!
I think I remember Peter Doctor going on, probably that very one, and it being a big inspiration for the film Up
❤
Oh yeah, I flew on the Good Year blimp in the late 80's in Southern California.
She does not sit in storage but flies as D-LZNT today. :)
bro rode built in Germany Airship named Erika 💀💀
0:24 and now we know everything about thermite! It's funny because I came back to this video randomly being the only one I haven't seen from Veritasium in this year
I've been daydreaming about a return of airships for the past 15 years (off and on; I'm not crazy!) and came up with every single use you have described, About the trees being lifted, I thought it would allow the harvesting of single, valuable trees, say in the Amazon, without having to carve a road in and clear-cut whole areas, just to take one or two trees. Ideally, we'd leave the whole lot alone, but you might be able to partially protect large swathes, by removing the valuable timber, leaving no incentive to cut the rest. TBH though, I don't fancy the sky having one airship for every lorry on our roads today.
The issue with this is that the logging in the amazon isn't about timber as much as it is clearing land for agriculture. Additionally, "single, valuable trees" aren't going to be viable. Timber for construction relies far to heavily on volume for selective harvesting like that.
dude me too!!! lets all collectively dream and manifest airships back!!!!
“I don’t fancy the sky having one airship for every lorry on our roads today.” Unlike lorries though, airships wouldn’t need to use roads.
@@mechadoggyI wouldn't mind AT ALL 😊
Everybody gangsta till the tree pirates pull up in da air ship
I think one upside of having airships back is that they look cool as hell
They are only cool because they are rare. If the low height skis were flooded with them around every major population center, people would hate them as much as they hate living too close to a major airport.
Given your KSP profile picture, have you used the mod Hooligan Labs airships? It's like my only 'must have' mod at this point
@@barongerhardtplanes aren't rare and they are cool as hell as well 😅
@@NHCH I'm a pilot, I like planes. I hear far more complain about them, than those pointing out, "look a plane." Most don't care, unless they live close to an airport.
These things will be far lower and larger than planes. The one saving grace will be if they don't make much sound, but if their engines cause a constant hum or whine in busy spaces they will be hated.
Helicopters are super cool, but you don't want on hovering over your house/place of work.
@@barongerhardtNah. planes suck because theyr eloud
I love the idea of seeing airships in the sky. They just seem so much more graceful.
It's like a giant whale in the sky 🐳☁️
I conducted an economic study of airships years ago, and while some items may have changed, the fundamental challenges remain. The most significant financial hurdle for airships is the crew cost per hour. This hourly cost is comparable to that of planes. However, airships take considerably longer to complete journeys, so they have higher crew costs.
For planes, fuel (30%) efficiency is the critical factor in determining operational costs and profitability. Staff costs are about 10%
Airships, with their lower speeds and different propulsion systems, have potentially lower fuel costs and higher crew costs due to longer journey times.
If a plane on the Atlantic run is now about 8 hours, an airship takes about a week. For an airship going a week required at least two or three shits of crew which will add more to the cost.
Trucks still maintain a significant cost advantage over airships and planes. Their operating costs remain a fraction of those of either air transport option, primarily due to lower fuel consumption, simpler infrastructure requirements, and more flexible staffing needs. Plus, trucks are less dependent on the weather.
There might be specific niche markets such as the military or tourism where cargo needs to be transported in remote areas with limited infrastructure where traditional transport methods are impractical
I love that airships basically just make a lot of logistic issues a lot easier. Im honestly surprised that large airline companies arent trying to make them and figure out these issues as they are a good shift from planes.
because it would be very expensive, and could end up failing if they dont figure out the issues fast enough, or well enough. And if that failure happens, the expensive investment doesnt end up paying itself back.
I am afraid the executives of these companies may not be willing to take great financial risk to change the core of their business...it's not very rewarding on the timescale of a person's time as a decision maker.
wind
The expense of helium and the loss of knowledge for airship operations ensures that airlines using airplanes would always be on top.
Many of the applications are already covered by helicopters, trains or ships. No landing pad? Use a Heli. Still need to transport lots of stuff? Build the appropriate infrastructure, it'll be paid of quickly with the volume of good you are moving. You either move a lot to populated areas, or little to remote ones. There are very few applications for moving lots of stuff to remote areas. Literally the only one I can think of is extreme disaster relief, which happens rarely and unpredictably. At which point an international call for rescue helicopters and trucks is simply better than keeping a fleet of airships in storage all around the world.
Also kinda telling that trains are not included in the table at 2:10. They are cheaper than trucks and just as fast, if not faster.
Two good ways to solve the problem of off-loading cargo causing the airship to shoot upward. 1. Mooring lines could be lowered to tie the ship to the ground long enough to compress the helium to effect the correct buoyancy, or, 2. lower the cargo, as depicted, on lines until the cargo touches the ground, then not releasing the cargo until the compressor compresses enough helium to make the lines lax at which point there's no longer any danger of the ship shooting upward. Then release the cargo and the airship could take off.
Sometimes the easiest ways are forgotten
How about build them to be slightly heaver than air, then use the lifting body concept to compensate for the added weight.
They shouldn't try making it with enough gas volume for lifting the products. They need to make a new container for the products, and use the air ship just a net/holder of the products. Basically fill the containers with the gas needed. No need to worry about the weight loss and raising, or lowering of the ship. If something goes wrong with the product container it can just be dropped with chutes. Makes it safer, and more capable. Plus a simpler solution is always the choice. Not to mention the ship won't technically be changing in weight.
Tie them down was exactly what I thought!
You can then even one up that to make it faster and more efficient wherever you drop anything:
Use the potential energy of the goods you are lowering to spin up a generator feeding power to the compressors for the helium.
In airship ports you can simply make it faster by providing an additional power line, just for time efficiency.
Would it make sense to add a "hot air balloon" compartment to the Airship? So, when you need to drop something off you cool the compartment of air and then heat it back up?
I remember reading an old short sci-fi story written before planes were flying that had gigantic airships carrying people inside. I think it's the oldest imagined human flight concept.
We did also commercialize airships before airplanes.
In terms of being practical and/or mass transport/travel, I concur. However in terms of the actual words "oldest imagined human flight concept"... (I shouldn't need to point out that humans took inspiration from nature long before coming up with the idea of big balloons)
Sorry to crash your party but have you ever heard of "hot air balloons"?
That moment when you realize a hot air balloon is indeed an airship :P
Well, we did figure out hot air balloons before planes, right? So it's basically that same concept but several degrees of science further along-i think youre correct, is what I'm saying.
Other than, maybe, cliff diving, I suppose.
I would also like to see more airships in the sky. Once I had a one time job in Berlin to help starting a a small commercial airship that showed some adds. This was cool.
Such an interesting concept I'd love to see it happen
@masondewhirst853 Because it will absolutely implode. Which is 10 times worse. And it can't have any leaks, which makes it almost impossible to make structurally sound. And lastly, you cannot generate lift with a vacuum, as it needs to have a material strong enough to withhold the atmospheric pressure. And there is no such material.
Having the gas inside would be tremendously useful right? hydrogen would weigh nothing and contribute to the stability of the structure
Get to tha chopper! We got a cargo crate to deliver to Maui.
No. Send an airship Mr President.
you dont need to re-invent the wheel, just invest in rail
@masondewhirst853remember that submarine and some billionaires? That's a vacuum, surrounded by pressure.
Bloop!
For the buoyancy problem mentioned at 15:00 there are several simple solutions:
* If you use hydrogen just use it to power something with a hydrogen fuel cell (creates water)
* If you use helium just vent the helium into a storage tank on the ground that's weighed down so it doesn't float away.
Same same as I said. And it must have been thought by them, even if they didn't talked about it here in this video.
For helium this partly works, but you still have the significant problem that you would need to have these helium facilities at places to land, which is in direct opposition to the whole benefit of airships that you don't need extensive infrastructure at the place you are landing. It's simply way easier to just balast the ship. For hydrogen, building fuel cells that can turn these very high amounts of hydrogen into electricity in a feasable amount of time, is basically equivalent to building a powerplant on board. And that obviously defeats the purpose of the airship as well, in addition to somehow needing to store that energy or connect it to the powergrid, which again uses a lot of infrastructure (you can't just connect these amounts of energy to the grid directly, you'd need a powerstation to do that or the grid will overload and basically fry your computer at home if you happen to live close to offloading). Hydrogen is also quite inefficient to make electrically, so you'd also waste a ton of energy turning electricity into hydrogen and back again all the time. At that point you might as well just use a plane. And that's not even talking about the safety concern mentioned in the video with constantly on and offloading hydrogen in an airship.
So yeah if you think about it shortly it might make sense, but if you think about it a bit longer, you'd soon realise that just adding balast is a far easier way to deal with the problem.
All we need to do is keep up with global warming and then maybe Nitrogen will be a viable cheap alternative to the 2 of those.
All jokes aside, I think the major hurdle in creating an effective airship used for transportation will be figuring out how to make a large and light structure that can hold a vacuum without collapsing.
@@PherPhur yeah low pressure (you don't even need a vacuum really) is kinda the holy grail, except that atmospheric pressure is an insane amount of pressure, so all the vacuum chambers we've ever built are way to heavy to lift off the ground. So you need at least some lighter than air gas to reduce the pressure differential. Even if you don't make it perfectly airtight and just 0,1 atmosphere, that is still 0,9 atmospheres of pressure on the construction. Without some kind of ultra light and ultra strong material, that just isn't feasible. Any steel construction would either collapse in on itself or be so heavy it never lifts off the ground.
What about the massive twisting loads that could be imparted on it's structure by a nearby thunderstorm and microburst? You can't run away from thunderstorms when the ship is too big to park in a hangar, and to slow to run, so it's going to have to be strong enough to weather the storms.
No airplane is built to withstand the full force of a thunderstorm. Plans are made to either fly around thunderstorms or fly tomorrow.
I think they are actually quite resilient in rough weather. Most importantly they have to be in the air and not anchored. But yeah you can't really control them in rough weather they just get blown away. But if they don't collide that's not the worst. Maybe you could even use it to your advantage if you are smart about it.
There actually were hangars large enough to accommodate airships back in the day. Alas, most of them have been torn down over the years.
I imagine they would have to leave the area if a big storm was coming.
@@yetanother9127
Not to mention necessary is a key factor in invention. If they need hangers that large, they can potentially build hangers that large.
I worked on a Lockheed Martin prototype hybrid airship. The wind restrictions for flying it were severe. This was partly because it was underpowered, but largely because of the "sail" effect mentioned in the video. I will honestly be surprised if airships ever live up to the marketing.
A somewhat grim reality is comparing the injury/fatality rates compared to fuel used.
All the current modes of transport--ships, trains, aircraft, cars--carry huge amounts of highly flammable materials, but we've grown accustomed to that risk.
Any proper train network is electrified, so no, trains don't carry huge amounts of highly flammable materials. The only exception, of course, is if the cargo contains such materials. In that case, the risk cannot be reduced by the mode of transport anyway.
@@RhythmnOfThoughtThough there have been many rail accidents that have killed more people than the Hindenburg.
@@0redfr0g0 Firstly, your argument does not contradict my statement that trains do not carry flammable fuel.
Secondly, according to the EU Agency for Railways, train fatalities are at about 0.2 fatalities per MILLION train kilometres. I could not find similar data on airships, but this should still make it clear that trains are overall a very safe method of travelling.
@RhythmnOfThought Yes, they are much safer now. But during the same time hydrogen airships were around, 1930-40 trains were very dangerous, and derailments were killing loads of people every year. Also, you are just flat out wrong about trains not using flammable fuel, while "electric" nearly all trains (especially freight trains) actually use an onboard diesel generator to make that electricity. Don't speak so arrogantly to others.
@@0redfr0g0 Yes, many diesel trains turn their fuel into electricity before using it to move their wheels. There are also diesel-electric (hybrid) trains. However, these types of trains are completely distinct from electric locomotives, which do, in fact, not carry any diesel. It is entirely possible that diesel and hybrid trains are popular in the US, but to claim that "nearly all" trains run on diesel without any evidence is just flat-out wrong. You would not need power lines above train tracks if all trains just got their electricity from diesel.
Again, I have no idea how that is in the US, but there is more to the world than that single country. That's why I specifically mentioned "proper" and "electrified" train networks in my original comment. Wikipedia also defines electric locomotives as being "powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage".
Also, providing statistics for my argument is not arrogant in my book. I did not mean to offend you and did not mean to sound arrogant. I simply wanted to dismantle the notion (which you might not even have intended) that trains today are somehow unsafe.
Lastly, I completely agree that trains have not always been as safe as they are now. Given your further clarification, what I think you are trying to get at with your comment is something like "Had airships had the same amount of time and resources invested into them as trains, they would be much safer now". I agree that this is an interesting idea.
I wonder if they could fit each Sky Whale with a Baleen-inspired ballast system.. Fly through clouds to collect moisture in the baleen filters that could line the front of the Dirigible, separate the Hydrogen from the Oxygen to supplement the hydrogen supply, and store or release excess water freely as mist/rain. this would effectively give them a swim-bladder (or flight-bladder?), and even allow them to refuel if they land on water.
Edit: I also just realized/remembered that Oxygen would also be created/released when separating the hydrogen from the water, and storing/pressurizing oxygen and then releasing it upward (or in other directions with an adjustable system) would be a good and as far as I know, environmentally safe way to add precision to landing maneuvers or speed up descent/ascent when needed.
That's creative/imaginative thinking.
I like the idea of collecting water to use as ballast, and the baleen inspiration from nature is a nice touch. Not sure on the feasibility of splitting water molecules onboard an airship though. There are many methods of achieving electrolysis, but many involve pressure, heat or both.
But just the idea of carrying ballast water and topping up from itinerant clouds is pretty good on it's own.
@@redlion145 Thanks!
animals are like the perfect machines of nature, thanks to millions of years of live testing (evolution) so I feel it's helpful to learn how they do what they do best, and apply it to our machines and sciences! (gecko hand/skin suction technology is huge right now)
I learned that it's actually very easy to convert water into hydrogen, and you are correct it does often involve heat, so this could definitely pose a risk when considering the amount of hydrogen that would be on board. Though I'm sure since the process itself creates hydrogen, there must be a safe way to do it without the hydrogen combusting unintentionally, though I'm not a scientist myself so I wouldn't know unfortunately.
I'm mostly concerned that the amount of water would be insufficient when converted, as I'm not sure what all the water to hydrogen conversion rates are, and the amount gather-able from atmospheric moisture vs the amount of hydrogen needed for lift may be vastly insufficient for all I know. (imagine taking weeks to gather enough moisture to land lol)
@@redlion145 There might be enough energy just stored in the frame through static to power the electrolysis, in which case you'd perhaps remove the potential threat of fire such as brought down the Hindenburg...if not, a few patches of solar panels would do.
@@auturgicflosculator2183 That's a very good point!
The large surface areas of the dirigibles would lend well to solar panels, as well as the near guarantee of nothing blocking out the sun from the panels but clouds here and there and of course, the sun setting.
There allready was a company in 1996 that tried it this. Problem was it got bankrupt pretty fast. It was Called Cargolifter and was a german company. They had allready build a hangar for assembly. It was and still is the biggest non supported building in the world. Today it has a big climatised water park called Tropical Islands in it. The projekt was too big for the time and had too little funding, but I was impressed by the design and versatility. They hold still a variety of patents, that solved a lot of problems.
Cargolifter could support the building of wind power plant, transporting the wings and column in one piece, without disassembling all the obstacles along the road, avoid bridges.
But 2015 the German government killed the financial support of wind power projects. Although cargolifter was bankrupt 2002, that wind power and the electric grid network (mast and transformer) is missing this potential transportation facility.
Germany did a lot of bad things following 2012...
@@PeterBirett
I LOVE threads like this in video comments. Endless, cool-ass information for greedy nerds like me🤓 Thanks!
yep you can see tropical island at 17:00
BLIMP-TRANSPORT/AIRSHIP-TRANSPORTATION/AIRSHIP-HELICOPTER-DRONE-CARRIERS/AIRSHIP-DRONE-CARRIER/RESOLVED-AIRSHIP-TRANSPORTATION-STABILITY-RESOLUTION/HEXAGON-AIRSHIP/HEXAGON-BUOYANCY-PLACEMENT-AIRSHIP/HEXAGON-UMBRELLA-SHAPED-WEIGHT-SUPPORT/HEXAGON-WEIGHT-DISPLACEMENT-MECHANISM/[HEXAGON-DOME-SHAPED-AIRSHIP/HEXAGON-FORMATION-WEIGHT-DISTRIBUTION-MECHANISMS/HEXAGON-AIRSHIP-CARRIER-AI-AUTOMATED-BUOYANCY-MECHANISM
Conventional airship cargo-carriers experience instability issues when loading and offloading cargo. The instability in buoyancy (levels); created by the fluctuating mass of the cargo, as well as unstable air-currents (especially at higher altitude), makes conventional designs for airship cargo-carriers inefficient, unstable and potentially unsafe... when compared to alternative modes of cargo transportation vessels, e.g. conventional cargo-ships that travel via a body of water/sea.
When all is said and done... I have come to realize that the technology should be paired with 'vertical', cargo-transport carries, i.e. [droned] helicopters. Helicopter technology should be incorporated with Ai; so that the drones will be outfitted with cargo (of specific weight/mass). With their proven prowess in vertical takeoff, they will be utilized to safely mount cargo on a giant airship (said cargo will [obviously] need to be spaced/tired-down and stationed relative to each other. Inspiration from the hexagon shape should aid the intended 'fair and even [weight] distribution' of mass, across the storage site within the airship). Like an orchestra, when coordinated, the swarms of vertical [helicopter] drones (coordinated & assisted Ai; will take the shape and form of a 'helicopter', for its vertical functionality... they will double and function as integral, and additional transportation-carriers) will 'double and function' as 'construction-pulleys'; in their purpose in safely and relatively steadily mounting cargo onto the large storage site (that will be situated on top of the airship. I envision a small, but functional runway built on the surface of the airship. It is in this additional, supportive function that the airship will resemble an "aircraft carrier, battle ship"). New and emerging technologies will facilitate this mode if cargo transportation.
NOTE: When all is said and done... When we take a step back, and observe the construct in action, its coordinated functionalities and mechanisms will resemble the (relationship and transport mechanism) 'worker-bees and their beehive'. Through further research and development of the quantum mechanics; that is at play, and is responsible for buoyancy (its essence is [efficient] mass/weight-distribution within a [specified] medium volume)... It will be possible to reroute/engineer buoyancy (how lighter than air gas behave), i.e. how mass is distributed within a specified [enclosed] medium-volume/volume of a specified medium.
REMEMBER: that buoyancy takes the path with the least resistance. Point is, if you can manipulate/[quantum] engineer how lighter-than-air gases behave, you will have an easier time using Ai to coordinate their behaviour (with greater efficiency and precision, e.g. making lighter-than-air gases even lighter; manipulating their mass at the quantum scale). Were such endeavours researched, developed and refined to an art, then what we will be left with are the components to anti-gravity technology and [quantum] know-how.
NOTE: There was a successful scientific experiment; where Rubidium was used to give additional mass to the photon. This resulted in slowing down the photo. The experiment supported the feasibility of hard-light technology. The essence of the experiment was that the mass of subatomic particles could be altered/manipulated to bare desirable outcomes. That research should have been concocted with quantum mechanics in mind. Engineering at the quantum scale is exciting and bares monumental possibilities.
/Close.
I have thought much about airships (because of how, you know, they're totally AWESOME) - and AFAIK, the solution to basically all inherent problems in their development has already been arrived at by some field of engineering since their century-old heyday.
Here are some problem/solution examples:
-- How to control lift while loading/unloading:
Make the craft less than neutral in buoyancy, then hold level using large rotors. Not propellers, mind. Think of helicopters, not airplane propellers.
These can be mounted on tilting nacelles (V22-like) and their lift may be very quickly adjusted by means of collective blade pitch.
You'd only need them at full power during that moment of instantaneous mass change. As the rotors hold the craft in place, the pumps have time to de/compress lifting gas and restore the craft to a neutral unpowered state. (this isn't a new thing, it's called a "Helistat")
- bonus: you don't even need motors to tilt these pods, only a brake to lock it at a chosen angle, then using cyclic control of the blades, one may torque the whole nacelle as required.
-- How to assemble a 500-ish meter long craft (without even larger hangars):
A recent innovation in civil engineering is the concept of self-assembling structures. It is conceivable that a rigid airship can be built of lightweight (carbon fiber, why not?) lattice sections. Comprised of linked rods and spars, that hinge and interlock into position, unfolding into the fully rigid frame of the ship.
A very large craft can then be inflated, just like a blimp. As the skin-envelope (with the structural bits loosely attached) assumes the correct shape, the frame linkages are locked together and the craft now has a fully rigid outer hull.
- bonus: You don't need to fill the craft with actual lifting gas during this stage. Regular Air can be pumped to inflate the skin into, then once the structure around it is locked in and rigid, this can be dumped and the floatation tanks filled with the lighter-than-air element of your choice.
-- I grew up watching Captain Planet. Can I have my airship all electric?
An all electric airship has the unique advantage of a surface area possibly larger than other vehicle known to man. Why not cover that big empty (besides advertisement) space with solar panels? There'd be a significant trade-off with weight for perhaps not the best performance benefit. There may be a sweet-spot that pays off though, or if nothing else, a Hydrogen lifter can use its own spare lifting gas in fuel cells for the safety of non-combustion motors.
-- But, Hydrogen does go Boom, dunnit?
Thing to remember is: You can't have a fire if you don't let oxygen in. That's actually a lot easier than trying to stop Hydrogen from leaking OUT. Seriously, that's actually the main problem with Element #1 - Being highly flammable is surely inconvenient, but if you can figure out a way to just keep from oozing out between the very atoms of your container, (yup, it does that) chances are, then you got a reasonably safe vessel that isn't too likely to re-enact any infamous newsreels.
During WW1, the brits had one heck of a hard time actively trying to set German bomber airships ablaze. Despite being filled with Hydrogen, it took hundreds of specially loaded, alternating ball and incendiary rounds fired from a machine-gun, focused on one small patch of the ship in order to get enough gas to vent out, so that it'd mix with air and finally ignite.
It took them several attempts to pull this off. So it goes to show that "Oh, The Humanity!" isn't so much the default end state for any Hydrogen airship as ppl tend to think.
regarding the last point: what if we could not bother of escaping hydrogen that much? Basically have hydrogen in the internal ballutes surrounded by nitrogen, hydrogen will inevitably escape into the nitrogen atmosphere and float to the top of the outer shell, but then, periodically, the gas (nitrogen + some hydrogen in it) from the outer shell can be pumped through the hydrogen fuel cell, thus removing the leaked hydrogen. Fuel cells can be also used to control buoyancy, by processing hydrogen from the ballutes themselves. And when you need to increase buoyancy, you just top the ballutes from high pressure tanks. You could use helium instead of nitrogen for the added lift, but it would be much more expensive.
Regarding the issue with excess buoyancy while unloading: if unloading stations were equipped with extremely high-geared flywheels, the ship's upward movement could not only be dampened massively on release, but the energy it would waste bobbing around could be used to pulled it back under control while air pressure adjustments have time to be made. Anybody tries to patent this idea, I'm comin for them, because anything I post is open source and royalty free forever whether helpful or obscure.
Like for the algorithm
At 15:18 the simplest solution is: instead of a compressor that compresses the gas all you need to do is cool down the gas because as gas expands from getting hotter it spreads out which causes the blimp to store higher into the sky but once gas starts cooling down it starts becoming more centralized (meaning the gas gets closer together) causing of the gas within the blimp to not as effectively hold the blimp up in the air, And this causes the blimp to sink down to the ground it's as simple as that! 😅😅😅😅😂😂
If the cargo thing doesn't work out, I'd still like to go to the north pole or the Grand Canyon in one of these. What an adventure that would be! I always thought airships were more elegant than airplanes. I'm rooting for these folks to succeed.
If you think the protests due to wind farms being unsightly are loud, just wait till huge airships start to intrude on scenic areas like the Grand Canyon.
I'm hoping they can get far enough to overtake planes for long distance travel at reasonable cost - If I want to travel 1000 miles I could take a plane, sure, I'll arrive there in a few hours - but I would be happy with the journey taking 2 or 3x as long if I used less fuel and could have a more pleasant journey. Have the journey be part of the holiday, rather than a necessary evil between me and the holiday.
@@williamstrachan I reckon you could compare a long distance trip on an airship with a long distance trip on a train, the sort of trip you take a holiday to do, like crossing the USA, crossing Australia or going thru Europe by rail. On an airship, such trips would be breathtaking! Something I look forward to in the future, for sure!
it can be the combination of luxury yacht + private jet, it can have a lot of amenities, faster than a yacht, yet doesn't pollute the ocean too much (compared to both jet and yacht)
I wish you talked more about how it would handle flying in storms and windy weather, or against the direction the wind is blowing. Or dealing with punctures.
it seems like it could land reasonably slowly if it got punctured. what would cause such a massive puncture that all the helium/hydrogen would immediately escape. also i wonder if they could get rid of the oxygen in the space between the ballasts and the hull that way a puncture wouldn't immediately cause a fire. it would have to just fly around bad weather though 🤷♂
Hoho, don't get so real! This is Veritassium...
Punctures aren't that big of a problem for rigid airships.
As mentioned in this video they have multiple cells that hold the lifting gas.
Can’t fly on flammable hydrogen gas…yet. All helium.
I’m curious though how the displacement will work? When you drop a load (😂) how will you replace the weight without ascending.
@@Bob.martens if you had watched the video they mentioned that rigid is the most feasible concept for any kind of cargo or even passenger airships...
Fun video. Minority opinion here: I'd love to see Airships enter routine passenger service because it solve my jet lag problem. Zürich to Rio de Janeiro is about 9250 km. At 120km / hr, the flight would be a leisurely 3+ days. The QM2 takes a week from Portsmouth to Brooklyn. Too slow. Transatlantic flights are okay in terms of time, but miserable, uncomfortable and cause jet lag. Probably won't get my wish, but fun to think about.
In the beginning, I think a reason why trucks are so vastly popular is because of their flexibility. They don't require airports, waterports or railway stations. They can use the existing road network for transport and require their separate infrastructure like trains... You'd need to use a truck for the last mile anyways when transporting goods by train for example. That's why many companies opt for truck transport end to end as it also simpler to organize and more flexible (train networks are not always open to use, but trains run on schedules; trucks can leave whenever they want).
they're so popular because of the Jones Act which bans foreign ships from traveling between USA ports. So a ship coming from China can't stop at LA and then move onto Seattle, for example. the cargo has to be dropped off at LA and then trucked to Seattle, with the ship going back to China, usually not at full capacity. it's such a ridiculous hindrance that causes billions of dollars in lost efficiency and who knows how much emissions and traffic from all the trucks on the road.
@@michaelmvm Wow, I'm from Germany and didn't know that. Trucks are still very popular in Germany even though foreign ships are allowed to target multiple Germany ports. We have a lot less shoreline though...
@@BenjayTaythe freight rails can make Germany effective as a logistics middleman
@@Aereto Our railway network is at 95% in some regions. I'd love for this to happen but if DB or the government don't find a way to add capacity, it's not going to...
The biggest advantage is you can always replace the driver in the last minute
Had the pleasure of flying with the Zeppelin NT in Germany, a 70m airship. Such a cool way of traveling. Goodyear updated their fleet with these.
Did that too couple of years ago, magnificent tour of the Bodensee. They do fly over the Alps as well, and also had a partnership with Redbull,dropping off some pro snowboarders offpiste in the alps for one of RedBull's crazy winter stunts.
sometimes when conspiratory, I wonder if the Hindenburg disaster was staged by railway/oil industries to kill off any interest in air ships among the public...
One of my close friends tried to start an airship company. In college we built together a small model airship, which unfortunately, was uncontrollable and flew away in the wind. That guy changed his mind and started a balloon company instead 😂
I also had the chance to meet a senior airship expert (fantastic guy, he was one of the few to practice competitive ballooning - a very selective and skill-based sport, and also former flying whales employee if I remember), and his honest opinion was "airships are an amazing passion, but they have the slightest chance to work"
Also coincidentally, another friend of mine works at Latitude (a french rocket company) and their plan to carry the rocket to the launchpad in northern Scotland (in the Shetland islands) is to use flying whales airships. Make sense since the transport there is so difficult and the rocket is a large piece 😁
Are there any flying whales airships out there yet? All I see are CGI videos.
not yet, they only have some model sized ones I believe. Developing an airship is far from an easy task!
Getting it as a working tool, instead of being 'just' a passionate project, makes me thinking of nuclear fusion...
The rocket part: Why don't they lift off in France? Being ~2000km closer to the equator (than Shetland) reduces the amount of lift forces / fuel quite a bit.
And what was his reasoning why "they have the slightest chance to work"?
Your comment is kinda pointless without that....
@@Jehty_ his honest opinion joins Derek's conclusion but in a more pessimistic approach. They are hard to build, develop and certify, and at the beginning can only compete for a niche market. Also - something not mentioned in Veritasium's video - airship are very hard to operate. One big deal is that there's no way to park an airship outside - you can only plant it on one single end and hope that the wind will not be too strong (and then you have to account for a very large area covered by the radius of the airship) or you have to store it in a big enough hangar. (Attaching multiple ground anchors is usually not feasible due to the immense force the airship would be subjected to in crosswind cases). Very different from aircrafts, which can be stored for relatively long duration on ground, awaiting for a new payload.
Airship effective groundspeed are also heavily affected by wind, so that could limit the reliability of their time to delivery.
For the problem of having to reduce buoyancy when unloading, there is a solution that requires specific infrastructure which eliminates the remote area advantage, but could still work in a commercial sense.
You could set up a network of helium storage wells at and around existing distribution centres and logistics hubs so that when an airship unloads cargo, helium is released via hose pipe into a ground storage well, then be either be pumped back in when the airship is reloaded, or stored for future loads and unloads.
There would be a need for ground crews to operate and manage the pumps and a "harbour master" of sorts who keeps books and records of transfers, kind of like a helium bank manager
well, helium is incredibly rare, so unless we find a way to magically create scores of helium, this is not viable.
Seeing that asterisk on the Mriya at 6:44 makes me sad.
In the 1920s, they had air ships that were longer than the titanic and could catch airplanes in mid air and launch them… after a century of technological improvements, I think this idea is worth revisiting.
yes, we could finally do crimson skies for real!
@@zwenkwiel816woo yeah air piracy
@@zwenkwiel816 it baffles me than that gem has never been remade or copied
Omg floating cities🤯
The Hindenburg could do it. it more technology we can do it
I love the idea of using water as ballast when unloading the cargo. You can pump it in at the same rate you're unloading to minimize strain, with the added benefit of potentially bringing silt/nutrients to areas with low rainfall or poor soil. Also 500 tons of water would be mighty useful combating forest fires (assuming the thermals and explosion potential were manageable).
The maximum theoretical suction height for pumping the water up, at sea level, is about 10.33 meters. This is also a major hurdle to overcome.
@danielstewart3507 Good call. I'm pretty sure that only applies to straight suction, a sump pump style setup shouldn't have that limitation. Alternatively a tower with stepped tanks should resolve that too.
@@evangonzalez2245 Yeah that's true. But the addition of all those things is also extra weight, limiting the carrying capacity. Will definitely be interesting to see how they solve that problem. :)
They'd often try to use sea water, I'd imagine. I doubt the salts would do much good for the soil.
@stevenboelke6661 I had considered that too, but coastal areas where sea water would be the logical choice are already likely to be serviced by ships in port. The rural and mountainous examples in the video are much more likely to have fresh water sources available 🤓
As long as good weather also makes a comeback.
Now that we have radar bad weather can be avoided like we do with ocean ships.
The problem with the cubed-squared advantage is that the larger the airship gets, the more shearing forces it has to deal with from the atmosphere. A helium balloon is fine with a very thin layer of rubber or mylar, but build a balloon like that on the scale of an airship, and even light gusts of wind will tear it apart. So there's also a cost in going larger, in terms of the support structures necessary to keep the airship in one piece.
Graphene!
@@bozo5632 Nice idea, but do you have enough of it to make a balloon? And what about the brittle nature? Hit it just right and it shatters. Catastrophic for flying vehicles.
@@martinmelhus7324 Depleted Uranium!
@@bozo5632 Might be good as ballast, but not my cup of tea.
Great video! I would say though that trains have become more and more important particularly for long distance shipping. Working in the industry I have seen the shipping by train increases pretty steadily as it is cheaper then trucking by a significant amount of time plus in longer distances moves is faster. On down side is that then the shipment needs to be picked up and delivered somehow from the rail yards. A lot of trucking companies have started using this method a lot more then having city drivers in these big ports who pick up and drop off shipments. Just my observation. Though the rail industry is monopolistic in North America with these companies penny pinching and not heavily regulated because of it’s importance to the supply chain. It’s a hard line to balance but if more regulations were put in place for rail companies overall it would definitely be the best method for price and time.
The problem with rail in the US is that trucking gets massive subsidies with free highways, but rail has to build their own infrastructure. It's not the regulations, it's the brutal economics
finally someone with sense in the comment section, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, basically all other countries that have the ability to build the infrastructure have solved this issue with trains
@@argh523 who pays for the highways then? but beware, I'm going to laugh out loud if it's in a "communist" way through people's taxes
@@argh523The US has the problem that we decommissioned most of our rail network. We need a concerted national effort to restore and expand it, not only for shipping, but for passengers as well.
Rail is the best for overland transport in every way. Ships are best for sea transport. Airships are much faster than maritime ships, but maritime ships can transport higher volumes. Airships are also cheap alternatives to helicopters.
Like rail, airships can be powered electrically, and unlike trains, they have the surface area for solar cells. (Not necessarily the crystalline ones; the ones that can be painted on are lighter and cheaper, but also less efficient. Still a good trade-off.)
Maritime ships can be powered by wind, and some are partially wind-powered already. Where propellers are needed, electric motors are best because they provide the most torque, are the most efficient, and require the fewest parts. Unfortunately, container tall ships exist only on paper so far. Airships could fill this gap.
I don't see any case for planes.
I love the aesthetic of airships. It would be so cool to see this happen for practical reasons!
This is one of the few instances where "just make it bigger bro" is a solid argument
I've liked blimps and airships since I could remember and I really hope to see one that is as big or bigger than the Hindenburg. I believe that airships are way, WAY ahead of their time, and as such so were the problems they faced. But now technology and the knowledge of physics and old materials being used in new ways combined with new materials being tested, I really think we are catching up to that age where airships will be recognized as a safe reliable craft for all kinds of purposes. Also lets not forget that our understanding of the weather is vastly better than what it was almost 100 years ago! Im excited to see what develops.
Nothing will develop, It will only be supressed. Governments, central banks, and ultimately parasites, can't let people roam the earth freely. How do you tax a person that lives in the air, anywhere they want? You can't control the cattle if their house can fly anywhere anytime.
6:50 largest airplane before it was destroyed
that made me sad, hope they build it again.
2:15 Another thing trucks have going for them is that they go everywhere the roads do, not just to specific ports (either air or water). Indeed, this is probably the biggest factor.
2:38 As the footnote of this graph says, US-Canada & US Mexico are excluded. A *lot* of stuff goes by truck over those 2 borders.
6:30 500 tons is *miniscule* compared to even small container ships. There are currently about 55,000 merchant ships, including 5300 container ships operating, each carrying thousands of containers. To replace their capacity, you'd need *hundreds of thousands to millions* of airships.
Given all the problems, I doubt airships will ever succeed in anything but the most niche markets. They certainly won't become the "trucks of the sky".
They should have said intercontinental instead of international.
@@firewoodlokiAnd that is what container ships do. Intercontinental. Carry far more, can hand bad weather, more fuel efficient per lb transported, last longer. When it comes to the most efficient method of transporting over land, trains win in every way.
There is just no spot for a derigible/blimp to fill.
@@crissd8283if they maybe develop a heavy hauler blimp there is a possible spot to fill. It’s an extremely niche spot though so there wouldn’t be much value in developing something to fill it.
They sure as hell won’t be carrying high voltage power poles dangling below them like in the video lol.
Yeah I died a bit when that article said “only half of the container market”. Over half of something astronomically large is still astronomically large. Even more so when you aren’t replacing vessels 1:1
so many new materials today, a fantastic idea.
What if you made those gas compartments in the rigid airships modular so that the right amount of them can be pulled down at a port (with a kind of inverted crane) at the same time as the loading-off of cargo? Thus as the weight goes down, lift goes down equally.
These modular gas compartments can be stored at ports for future airships that are departing and need more lift for the additional weight of the cargo.
that'd add so much weight and so much logistic complexity
@@tank-elevenThis. Any mechanism that could do this quickly would weigh tons, and doing it light weight (bunch of bolts or something) would take a ton of time.
Love your idea. That was mine: Would it be possible to take the Helium/Hydrogen out with drones? They come up from the logistic-center and take robust ballons out as the payload of the blimp reduces. On the way up they create lift, when they want to go down, they turn upside down and slowly descend until they can attach the ballons on the ground.
True, it could make it longer to load and unload but it would be far more economical than replacing it with pull-down weight, and could be a realistic solution considering we cannot compress helium yet.
If the belly of the airship could be openable, you could add the compartments at the same time as the cargo that would sit beneath.
I wouldn't think you'd need a heavy and clunky system to attach them considering the compartments would actually be the ones lifting the airship's structure. Also, the core structure of the airship being completely rigid, it wouldn't deform
how is this better than gas pumps and pressure tanks to dynamically change buoyancy ?
For those wondering why the video was reuploaded, Derek just forgot the sponsor segment 😅. That's the "error" in the pinned comment. It wasn't an error with the information presented in the video fortunately.
The cargolifter hanger (the largest ever build airship hanger, as seen at 17:00) is now used as a tropical spa. It is located about 50 km south of Berlin and called tropical island.
The airship company that build it went bankrupt.
Had to think a moment - you meant 'hangar'. I though 'hanger' was a thing hanging from an airship, which raised the question if still was flying ..
There was a Tom Scott video about this, wasn't there
It went bancrupt because the company lacked finacial support and the regional government carelessly denied state funds despite all experts openly supporting the company.
They simply let it die. My guess is the truck lobbyists working hard behind the scenese.
Cargolifter went bancrupt not only because of lacking financal support. They underestimated the problem of using diesel engines for propusion and dynamic balancing (which momentarily would use more horsepower than propulsion). There is no airworthy - certified - diesel engine of that size. The certification process of - say - an already existing MAN engine would cost a fortune and last for years. But all the planning was focused on diesel engines. The engines use up diesel, so, the airship looses weight. To counter that loss of weight, Cargolifter planned to condense the exhaust gas and keep the water that is also produced when burning diesel. And there would be more water than used up diesel. You could simply spill the surplus water. The Zeppelins of the old days did exactly that trick to cross the Atlantic (exept of using petrol engines - no big difference in that).
So, Cargolifter changed the planning (far too late in the process) to use already certified turbine engines - like in helicopters. The exhaust gas of such a turbine is much hotter than diesel exhaust coming out of a piston engine. And there is no way to cool ist down sufficiently to condense it. The proposed reach of the CL160 dropped from more than 10.000 km to a some 100 km. With that, investors pulled out,
@@rolfadler8445 Nothing that couldnt be fixed had they had the backing.
They are back! For at least the last thirty years Zeppelin NT (new technology) have been operating Zeppelin sightseeing tours over Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
I always loved Zepplins, and had a massive book on the history of zepplins as a kid. Glad to see Veritasium giving them the attention they deserve.
"Hydrogen is really cheap, but it will kill you"
I think we all know what gas these companies will be using.
We never underestimate the power of "CHEAP" word
It doesn't seem to be a matter of saving a little bit of money, though. There is no viable alternative.
@@timvermeulen4024 yeah it was more of a joke, but we still know even if it was a question it would have gone a certain way
well cheap translates to scalable.
Helium is not just to expansive it is also to valuable to be used in masses for this application. And it is nonrenewable. So for scaling it up for an actual industry is not really an option.
I mean, we use Lithium batteries in our vehicles, so....
If the Airship was going to a location that had pre-existing setup you could just have some anchors cemented into the ground that'd be like set-ins when climbing, Airship lowers some durable cables, hook those into the anchors, and then pull the Airship down with winches and keep it stable. Could also help with the wind issue if the cables are kept taught.
I had the same idea, but it doesn't really solve the problem - it only delays it.
This would only work if you can replace the cargo with different cargo of the same weight, which makes it incredibly inflexible.
Otherwise you can unload all cargo but at some point you want to release the cables, and before doing so you have to decrease lift or the airship will be ejected straight into the stratosphere and most likely be destroyed in the process.
Very True, Guess you'd need massive, industrial sized gas tanks at both ends to either provide or store highly pressurised lifting gas as appropriate. Although if using Hydrogen that'd be prone to a lot of leakage.@@miguelcervantes6604
I was thinking why not pump in or out gas as needed while loading or unloading? would limit it to fixed locations that would need some specialized equipment but that's also the case for freight ships and planes, they need harbors and airfields with all the supporting infrastructure as well.
@@miguelcervantes6604 I see your point but I think it could actually solve some problems. You could have airships running back and forth in a continuous loop between two cities, for instance, operating for a long time by being attached to the wire on the ground. If you want to take it off the track for whatever reason you just eject some gas to reduce the buoyancy, but ideally you wouldn't have to do that often. There's obviously a clear danger of the thing shooting into the stratosphere if it gets unclipped, as you said. So you would probably want to make sure these do not have any people on board.
@@miguelcervantes6604just carry ballast weights. It's going to be needed for balance anyways if the airship is not unloading and rebalancing all the cargo.
This kind of idea radiates the feeling of castle in the sky
This actually makes a lot of sense. I work in the transport industry and we work with a variety of these scenarios such as harsh conditions on aggressive roadways in remote parts of the North, and large loads including windmill equipment and large oilfield equipment. This would not only reduce the risks to companies, but if it was cost effective it could eliminate needing large cranes and equipment to also come to site to unload (if the unit is stable enough to position accurately), and of course transport it also. Very Cool
Kind of sounds like the harsh conditions you mention would be even more of a problem for airships, especially if strong winds are common that pretty much excludes them from consideration.
There are so many challenges here, but I absolutely want airships to make a comeback! I would love to ride in one (although very much not likely), but it is never going to happen. The untapped capabilities and benefits are too much for us to pass up over the fear of the unknown. And as an ergonomist, all the challenges and potential issues are really intriguing to think about.
As a fan of the whole Steampunk aesthetic, I’d be very happy to see Airships return. As well as to witness the engineering challenges it would present, as well as the benefits that follow.
I grew up in a city named after the Goodyear tire company. We had a nascar race track in the city, and every year during nascar season we got to see the Goodyear blimp. I know she's not based in our city, but it was always a great sight to see her come back every year.
I feel like one of the greatest challenges, even if everything else was accounted for and worked out, would be the weather. Ships can weather storms and planes move fast enough to be able to route around storms, but a giant slow airship would likely get either caught by bad storms or need to consistently ground to avoid them.
Or to fly high above the clouds. And stay up until the weather fits... could probably be weeks somtimes
I can't help but think of that super tall trashcan building in New York with the strategic gaps to prevent it from falling over during intense winds/storms. May not make sense to put holes in a gigantic balloon though.
@@michaelschauperl172
Above the clouds?? (facepalm)
Oh, you mean at the altitude where your crew members need pressurized environments and life support systems, which are notoriously heavy.
Even if this wasn't a big issue with this idea, the fact that many thunderheads can top out at 70,000' functionally means it's not possible to just "fly high" enough to avoid big storms!!!
Weather was the downfall of the USS Akron and USS Macon "Flying Aircraft Carriers." They were both destroyed in storms.
The Navy figured out how to make airships all-weather-capable back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Look up “Operation Whole Gale.”
As someone who did their senior project on hydrogen based airships, I love this topic. Thanks for helping me stay informed on it. You're the best Derek.
Why did you need / how did you come up with / had the idea about that?
@@johnrobertgalera we had some sponsor companies that assigned projects. I may have been misleading, it was a capstone project for my EE degree, so some companies worked through the department to get teams of 7-8 EE and ME students to do research on a number of different subjects.
Mine was on using hydrogen as a lifting gas and the possibility of extracting hydrogen from water in the atmosphere (as well as energy) to extend the range of operation.
I definitely feel like people's fear of airships like this is similar to their fear of nuclear power. They immediately condemn a thing because it failed once, not realizing that we've developed safer ways of doing that thing since those failures.
not considering all the material development we did in 100 years. original airships were cow intestins glued hydrogen balloons, covered with an explosive cotton tissue... now we have plastics and carbon fiber.
Also because it's failure are big and novel, rather then routine. Like your typical coal power plant emits more radiation then a fission plant, but people don't care because it's not accidental(?)
Nuclear-powered hot-air balloons, when?
I guess it helps the venting and replacing for adjustable lift. /Shrugs/
air cooled nuclear powered hot air ridged airships, good idea for the future!
@@BastiatC Nice straw man argument.
If this is how the future looks, I'm absolutely hyped for it.
The equilibrium challenge could be solved with modularity. For each unit of cargo offloaded, an equivalent unit of buoyancy is tethered to the cargo station, maintaining equilibrium without loss of potential energy. Tethered ballons would then be added to airships to maintain equilibrium while adding cargo. Logistically nightmarish but potentially very energy efficient. Really what you want to do is map lifting modules one-to-one with cargo destinations, so the module detaches from the mother ship, is tethered to the cargo station, unloaded, then filled with cargo, untethered, and added to an outgoing airship. You definitely want to have modular boyant units and you want the modules to clip together to form larger lifting units. Definitely separate primary thrust providing modules from lifters, that's a no brainer.
Interesting, but as you mentioned potentially logistically challenging, I wonder if there's a combination of solutions here. Offloading lifting gas, compressing lifting gas, and using ground-based infrastructure to quickly mediate the needs. Perhaps, a large volume gas connection can be made, that pumps large amounts of lifting gas to a ground based tank (or balloons), where it can be efficiently compressed and compressed gas is returned to the airship. Lots of ways to combine.
Exactly the same as I was thinking bruv, but I couldn't have said it better than you😅
Just fill watertanks the airship carries with it. Water is everywhere. Just plug it, load the tanks while unloading the ship.😊
@@remote24 Pumping a Maersk worth of water is a lot to imagine. You could attach "placeholder weights" (water or otherwise) whenever you unclip a container but that requires more energy to to lift the weights. Has the same downsides as pumping helium or hydrogen in/out. But yeah you could use the same crane you use to lower the container. Maybe that's a more practical solution.
That would be a journey worth to see it, too!
Hi Veritasium! Seing that you touched the transports topic, would be really interesting to see the physics between other types of mobility, and their pros and cons. It seems for me that we peaked in some ways of mobility like trains and we are trying sometimes to search for a futuristic solution when we have one developed some centuries ago.
Yeah trains are the second most efficient mode of transportation second only to shipping but very few countries has a robust inland waterways system so initial cost of trains are way cheaper than inland shipping and far more cheaper running cost than hundreds of trucks
Trains for the win!!
He takes sponsorships by self driving car companies. Don't expect an element of truth for this subject
@@sharunsan2683does shipping beat trains on anything other than economics of scale and the lower resistance of slower speeds? It seems like to me that water drag should exceed the rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails.
As I watched this video I kept thinking of all the things that would doom it. I'm 76 years old so I have seen a lot of things and heard of a lot of things that can cause the catastrophes. Your video carefully answered all of those concerns I had, that's why I watch your channel. You make things easier to understand without glossing over hard issues. Please keep doing what your doing. I still have reservations about airships vi-abilities but I know they are being addressed.
that's cute, you sound very sweet 😊
i also feel the same way towards this! though i definitely didn't know enough about what could cause a catastrophe
Planes don't crash (trust me)
When he cited that the US moves more things via trucks than rail and never explained why, I was about to lose my mind. It's because the US needs a better railway across the country. Instead of fixing that issue, people are here bringing back zeppelins as if we didn't discover why they're a problem before.
This is the second time Veritasium has made a video that feels like a long commercial instead of an actual scientific video. The first one was with self-driving cars, which people called him out for not disclosing he was being paid to promote the idea.
@@MrWhiteVzla It's sort of the same issue. The US is too large and too rural. Maintaining all the infrastructure for railways and roads are both very expensive and since we have a dearth of public transportation, cars are more important so they choose to maintain the roads rather than the rails.
@@justinankar I agree, and there lies the problem. The solution is for the US government to invest in railways just like they did when they built the highways. But they won't. Instead, they will humour the idea of snake-oil salespeople like these companies or anything Elon Musk sales as a good idea.
I had an idea in college of doing a similar design airship to target some of the leisure cruise market. Imagine a ship with capacity similar to a river cruise or one of those niche yachts that isn't bound by waterways for where it can visit - you can take a cruise from Denver to Vegas or a direct route from Venice to Rome without having to go around the bottom of Italy. If you target the kind of guest who appreciates a more environmentally friendly way to travel than modern cruise ships and who wouldn't miss the lack of things like a pool, it could be an amazing experience - and think of the views!
Personally, i believe the tourism aspect has much more potential than any other usage. After all, in their hayday, airships were competing with ocean liners. One thing they severely lacked were showers however, so they'd better have a solution for that lol
Modern day planes can have showers, so that shouldn't be a problem nowadays!
Drive it through a cloud and deploy the water-catcher mesh...
Kaboom!
Hindenburg!
sonic shower...
Zeppelin are still used in tourism. For at least the last thirty years Zeppelin NT (new technology) have been operating Zeppelin sightseeing tours over Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
I might be wrong but i believe compressing at a slower rate the gases needed for lift is possible with a simple (ish) trick that is actually used by ships already, an anchor, basically you take the load to wherever you need to, anchor and then compress the gas at a somewhat slower rate but currently possible, and just un-anchor once you have the lift stable. And in-before comment saying that anchors cant hold that much weight... let me remind you they are used for cargo ships in the ocean which are WAY more heavy
I am intrigued by the airship concept. I hope they find a niche as transporters. If for nothing else, at least, as emergency service vehicles in remote places, such as field hospitals, for example.
That sort of thing is likely the only thing they're useful for other than flying over sports matches. Just about everything that you can do with them can be done with other vehicles that are already being produced. I do think that having them flying over disaster areas and picking up survivors that would normally be done via boat or helicopter is a worthwhile reason to have them, but it's questionable whether that's a better solution than remotely controlled boats.
Wind turbine blades is a big one! here in germany with many hills and mountains and windy roads its very hard to get them around the corners etc and to the peaks (where the best wind is). and they dont weigh as much as cargo containers so maybe the airship doesnt have to be as large, and you can avoid the stability vs lightness problems of larger ships
I wonder if a solution to the buoyancy problem could be to have partitioned balloon sections that can be anchored to the ground when offloading cargo to offset the weight. For example, an airship with several separately filled balloon sections could arrive at a port, anchor to the ground, offload 500 tons of cargo, and then take-off by decoupling from a 500 ton section (or five 100 ton sections, etc) that's already anchored to the ground. These balloon sections could then be reattached to airships that come back to the port and load up more cargo (while anchored to the ground during the transfer of course). I feel like this would be a more economical way of solving the buoyancy issue without the need for compression or having to throw counterweight overboard.
I think that's an excellent idea!
yea that’s actually pretty smart, just a matter of whether it can be done practically and safely
Purposely moving the hydrogen bags seems like tempting fate
@@furrycow9263 oh, but why not helium?
As said in the video, it wouldn't be sustainable with helium.
It costs too much
At Philadelphia's large 30th Street Train Station - there is a wall sculpture/mural from 1895 called the "Spirit of Transportation". It depicts a parade of people using horses, boats trains etc, but at the very front of the sculpture/parade is a little boy with a toy airship, holding it up proudly. Even in 1895, the airship was seen as the future of transportation. Such a shame the disasters in the 30s essentially halted any progress. Maybe one day we can fulfill their full potential.
The containers currently used can also evolve. If somehow each container is attached to a way to contain part of the gas, not only the dropping of the load might be less difficult, but also it might help to take away part of the gas that is not needed anymore on the ship. 14:31
It might work if the container doesn't fly away as soon as it's dropped from the ship. Need to dip up what's the weight to lift ratio of helium.
If each container had gas with, you'd be carrying smaller blimps, not containers - that would mean an airship could only carry a few of these instead of the freight amounts.
But that sounds like a safety disaster for the depot.
I don't know. I assume you are talking about airships that don't use helium.
You'd end up needing a lot of volume of lifting gas for each container, so each container gets much larger. I mean, if you fill a standard container with even pure hydrogen, with no actual cargo inside, would that even be enough to lift just the weight of the container itself?
And it complicates the ground operations a lot. What do you do with the empty, buoyant containers once you've got the cargo out? You either save them for later (takes up space, they need to be anchored, assumes that you will have cargo to send not just receive, basically just turns into the ballast problem) or vent the gas and discard the container (losing money as discussed in the video, same issue as venting directly from the airship).
So at first glance it seems this doesn't really solve any of the problems, just moves them around. A purely modular system is an interesting idea though, like a cloud of cargo balloons that attaches to some propulsion module.
Another point, if you use hydrogen as a lifting gas, your ship can be equipped with an oxygen extractor and fuel cells and you have an essentially unlimited amount of fuel. Such an airship would be entirely electric and produce only water as exhaust. Your fuel would not only weigh nothing but would actually provide you with lift. Green and efficient!