Will Airships ever be a mainstream reality?

[Wicked Pilot]

Spin Echo is a girl. Though I'll be the first to admit that my experience is tenuous (as in, not so much) compared to Broomstick's, let alone your's, so if you don't want to count me I won't be too offended. Until I have you helpless sometime. *smirk*

This is the first I've heard of Spin Echo, is she single by chance? And hot?


The others I know of are of course Broomstick, Lukexcom, Jenat-lai, and yours truely.

[Spin Echo]

Spin Echo is a girl. Though I'll be the first to admit that my experience is tenuous (as in, not so much) compared to Broomstick's, let alone your's, so if you don't want to count me I won't be too offended. Until I have you helpless sometime. *smirk*

This is the first I've heard of Spin Echo, is she single by chance? And hot?

First time you've heard of me, or heard of me flying?

Not single I'm afraid. As for hot, I'm probably not the most objective judge of that. I'll get around to posting a picture one of these days. In the mean time, you could try and get an opinion out of Spyder, but that may be skewed out of fear of retribution.

Spyder: "Yeah. Actually she's kinda homely" *thwack* "Ow! ... Say, where did all my stuff go?"

The others I know of are of course Broomstick, Lukexcom, Jenat-lai, and yours truely.

I think Skyman does some sort of work involving a Cessna and Spyder is in the process of mastering the landing.

[Sea Skimmer]

I was honestly thinking of an armoured train like Strelnikov's from Dr. Zhivago, but that's just me.

I’m afraid that all railway tracks and bridge girders east of the Mississippi will be requisitioned to armor my ironclad conversions.

As far as military applications, the mil-Zepp would not be flown into an advanced air defense net. However, in situations like guerrilla insurgencies, a JSTARS Zepp could park over a battlefield where, at worst, a few RPG-7 will be dumbfired upwards, or perhaps a couple old SA-7s or Stingers-- and again, if a TROPHY system can't deal with it, then the puncture will require the wounded Zepp to pick its way slowly back to a repair facility.

That's not really accomplishing anything you couldn't do with a tethered balloon though, at a small fraction of the cost.

Insurgents would have a hard time dealing with an airship except when landing its true, but I can’t see any reason why we’d need an airship to fight insurgents either.. Another C-17 is gonna be more useful as it can do more things and fly six times faster. Frankly an airship would also just make a really good propaganda target for insurgents, its destruction being far more impressive appearing then any blasted tank or a shot down C-130.

Overall I cant see military investment in the design and construction of airships as anything but a waste, and the recent civil efforts to do so have all fallen apart.

I certainly don't see anyone proposing we fly these things anywhere near someone with a dozen ZSU-23s or S-300s.

I think a 122mm field howitzer, one of the Soviet ones that fires from a pedestal, ought to work just fine for bringing down one of these stadium sized target at economical cost.

[Wicked Pilot]

First time you've heard of me, or heard of me flying?

Yeah I remember you, but (1) I've been gone from the board for a while, and (2) for many posters I recognize the avatar before the username. Now that I 'see' you, you ring a bell. Weird, I know.

[Starglider]

the recent civil efforts to do so have all fallen apart.

The whole Cargolifter fiasco almost certainly scared off many potential investors. It stands as an example of why large cargo airships aren't a viable business that any VC type would quote back to you.

Does anyone have a good summary of why they failed, other than the official 'we just couldn't raise more money after the stock market bubble burst' line? Looking at the hangar alone I have to wonder if German overeengineering syndrome was a factor.

[lukexcom]

The others I know of are of course Broomstick, Lukexcom, Jenat-lai, and yours truely.

PP-ASEL, AMEL. About 140 hours total, 30 or so of which are multi-engine. I figure I have about 4-8 years of "happy-times" flying left before the economy seriously "corrects" itself. After that, we'll see what happens.

My original backup career of backbone-switching, routing, and large network infrastructure (Cisco, and so on) may not be enough to carry me through. After all, that market segment took a heavy beating in the dot-com bust (backbone bandwidth supply growth outpaced demand). Time to hit the NucTech books, I guess. I was always fascinated by nuclear technology and power plants anyway.

[Spyder]

..Why is every single non-military pilot here a girl?

I guess my 5 or so hours in a P38 just don't count...

This is the first I've heard of Spin Echo, is she single by chance? And hot?

Nah, this Norwegian guy got to her first. Norway is always just that one step ahead of us in everything it's really freaking annoying! As for the second question, now that the skin parasites are gone I'd say she has her charms.

[Sea Skimmer]

Does anyone have a good summary of why they failed, other than the official 'we just couldn't raise more money after the stock market bubble burst' line? Looking at the hangar alone I have to wonder if German overeengineering syndrome was a factor.

If you want airships to become a mainstream reality then they’d need to be built around the world. I'd think that hanger would be expensive for anyone to build. Materials costs have risen very steeply in recent years too, thanks to China. Steel is three or four times the price that it was back in 2000.

As for German overengginearing, I recently read something I’m sure everyone would love. On the latest BMW 3 series sedans, the engine has no oil dipstick! The manufacture recommended way to physically determine the oil level is to have the dealer drain the oil, measure it in a container and then ‘reinstall’ it. The engine’s computerized oil level sensor is assumed to warn of any trouble. Great sign of things to come.

The M3 model however, does still have the dipstick.

[Howedar]

Duraluminium plating is more useful as a measure against attack in military variations where it could at least provide some defence against small-arms fire.

Oh, really?

It would have to be thicker than what's on a Cessna 172, which are easily punctured by "small arms fire" through multiple surfaces per bullet.

I'm assuming a loss of significant amounts of cargo weight in favour of armour, so, a lot thicker than that.

Though it occurs to me that an alternative might be to make the whole outer fabric out of kevlar.

It won't work. It would never work. I don't know if you have a good feeling for how truly insane the surface area of an airship is, or how pathetically little lift you get per unit volume.

Airships are vastly more sensitive to overweight design than fixed-wing aircraft, not less.

[Howedar]

To elaborate a bit...

Let's say you have a 150m-radius spherical airship. Filled with helium, the airship would have about 1.44e8 newtons of lift. An aluminum skin for such an airship would cost you about 7.63e6 kg per centimeter of thickness. Just to break even, with no internal structure, crew, engines, or payload, you'd get a maximum of about 1.9cm of aluminum.

I'm not deeply knowledgeable about required armor thickness, but I'm pretty certain that wouldn't do the job against a 12.7x99 Browning. I don't think I'd even bet against a .30-06, although that's a pretty tenuous guess.

But you're sure not going to get away with zero structure, crew, propulsion or payload. And you're even more certainly not going to get a better volume/surface area ratio than you will with a sphere.

I don't think it's realistically possible to build an airship that is resistant to even small arms fire.

[Spin Echo]

..Why is every single non-military pilot here a girl?

I guess my 5 or so hours in a P38 just don't count...

Okay Spyder, which one of these looks like the plane you fly? Plane A or Plane B

[Admiral Valdemar]

To elaborate a bit...

Let's say you have a 150m-radius spherical airship. Filled with helium, the airship would have about 1.44e8 newtons of lift. An aluminum skin for such an airship would cost you about 7.63e6 kg per centimeter of thickness. Just to break even, with no internal structure, crew, engines, or payload, you'd get a maximum of about 1.9cm of aluminum.

I'm not deeply knowledgeable about required armor thickness, but I'm pretty certain that wouldn't do the job against a 12.7x99 Browning. I don't think I'd even bet against a .30-06, although that's a pretty tenuous guess.

But you're sure not going to get away with zero structure, crew, propulsion or payload. And you're even more certainly not going to get a better volume/surface area ratio than you will with a sphere.

I don't think it's realistically possible to build an airship that is resistant to even small arms fire.

By "resistant", I assume you're meaning without being punctured. An airship can deal with many small holes in it, especially with modern materials tech. It's not ideal, but anyone expecting the skin of such a vehicle to repel bullets is asking too much sacrifice in lifting capacity for little added protection. I'd rather the ship flew too high to be affected by small arms and have a simple, durable, solid skin that wasn't meant as armour.

Course, as The Great Leader mentioned, no one is really investing in any such systems today because of fixed wind aircraft. When jet fuel becomes more of a premium than it is now, I expect people will take more note of these projects that failed to get off the ground today, doubly so when freighter ships have extortionate fuel costs too.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Okay Spyder, which one of these looks like the plane you fly? Plane A or Plane B

That was gratuitously cruel.

I like you.

[Spyder]

..Why is every single non-military pilot here a girl?

I guess my 5 or so hours in a P38 just don't count...

Okay Spyder, which one of these looks like the plane you fly? Plane A or Plane B

I was meant to say PA-38 wasn't I?

[Broomstick]

I guess my 5 or so hours in a P38 just don't count...

Okay Spyder, which one of these looks like the plane you fly? Plane A or Plane B

I was meant to say PA-38 wasn't I?

Ha-ha-ha... Yes, you were. Thank you for being a good sport about it. The red eventually fades from the blushing face.

[Spyder]

Okay Spyder, which one of these looks like the plane you fly? Plane A or Plane B

I was meant to say PA-38 wasn't I?

Ha-ha-ha... Yes, you were. Thank you for being a good sport about it. The red eventually fades from the blushing face.

My first flight instructor told me use a sheet of paper instead of the logbook, just until I got it all straight.

I've been meaning to copy the entries I've got on to that sheet into the logbook for a while now, I'm suddenly very glad I haven't got around to doing that yet.