Tom James @ 25-09-2008
As Charles Stross says, “Zeppelins have always been an icon of futurism” and I’ve always wondered why the heck we haven’t gotten over the Hindenburg and moved in to our Bright New Future. The Register gives us the lowdown on all the various engineering problems that need to be overcome for airships to be viable as a mass transport system, and how engineers are trying to solve them:
A Ukrainian airship visionary based in California has won further US military funding to develop his miraculous “Aeroscraft” sky-leviathan design. However, some question marks remain over the craft’s unique - almost miraculous - buoyancy-control technology.
[image from the Register story]
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Jeremy Eades @ 07-05-2008
Well, not figuratively, anyway. Everyone knows* that wind is stronger the higher up you go, so why not get higher to make use of those high speeds? Well, constructing a 600-ft. base isn’t all that easy to do for one. Enter the Magenn Air Rotos System (MARS), a giant sausage-shaped balloon fitted with rotors to generate power. It sounds like a wild idea, but other companies are developing similar technology as well.
A small test version is currently underway, with hopes to build small-scale models for industrial use first, then building up to megawatt generators.
(via greentechmedia) (image from Magenn website)
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Tomas Martin @ 31-01-2008
Michael Marshall Smith’s excellent novel ‘Spares’ had a large section of its story set in a crashed flying mall, which previously had flown around the country for people to come up to and shop, eat and live. With airships beginning to come back into favour, the French aerospace research body ONERA has developed the design for a flying hotel called Manned Cloud.
The whale-shaped dirigible would potentially house 40 guests and 15 crew with a range of 5000km. Although airships are less stable in high winds than planes, they also use a fraction of the fuel. Manned Cloud was designed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud. This kind of sky cruise could be an important part of mid-21st Century travel and using airships for freight would also be very efficient.
[via Lou Anders, image from StumbleUponDemo]
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Jeremy Eades @ 01-10-2007
A new article by Air & Space Magazine hints at a return to airships, with a focus on their potential use for heavy lifting in military and commercial applications, as well as a use as a spy platform. That’s the idea, anyway. It remains to be seen if the necessary advances in technology will make these behemoths economically viable. One interesting feature would be that they might not come back in the familiar cigar shape - evidently a sphere is better for balancing out the helium. Another cool thing would be hover pads that could push or pull on the surface, either to keep the airship above the ground/ice/sea, or hold it down while cargo is being offloaded so it doesn’t shoot up into the air like a, well, balloon.
(via SciTechDaily) (image from article)
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As Charles Stross says, “Zeppelins have always been an icon of futurism” and I’ve always wondered why the heck we haven’t gotten over the Hindenburg and moved in to our Bright New Future. The Register gives us the lowdown on all the various engineering problems that need to be overcome for airships to be viable as a mass transport system, and how engineers are trying to solve them:
