Is Google Building a Secret Airship at NASA Ames?
With Secret Airship, Sergey Brin Also Wants to Fly, Bloomberg
“Larry Page has his flying cars. Sergey Brin shall have an airship. Brin, the Google co-founder, has secretly been building a massive airship inside of Hangar 2 at the NASA Ames Research Center, according to four people with knowledge of the project. It’s unclear whether the craft, which looks like a zeppelin, is a hobby or something Brin hopes to turn into a business. “Sorry, I don’t have anything to say about this topic right now,” Brin wrote in an email.”
Neat! I love airships, even if I think they’re impractical compared to airplanes for most air-related stuff.
Not necessarily impractical. Airships may be economically viable, compared to heavier-that-air, in the same way rail transportation is more efficient than highways. The real problem was that airships were demonstrably unsafe and prone to crashes under bad weather conditions. I once came across a 1990s study, which did modern CFD modeling of the old Akron class airships, postdicted the stability problems, and claimed that the modern state of the art in aeronautics could produce airships which did not suffer from those problems.
They’re only practical under some very limited circumstances, such as when you need an aircraft to loiter for longer than a couple of hours, or in places where there’s no room for a landing strip either on water or land. Airships just can’t carry much cargo even at enormous size compared to airplanes – some of the big ones proposed presently are supposed to carry about 20 tons worth of cargo. Contrast that with an Airbus A330 (70 metric tons of cargo), never mind a large cargo aircraft like the An-225 or C-5.
Yes, airplane can carry much more, and at a faster tempo, but then they all require relatively clear runways (even for tough birds like the C-17). One ISIS truck bomb making a runway divot, or an earthquake pot-hole, or hurricane re-located trees/cars/buildings can ruin your whole delivery day.
It’s also quite true that airships are practical in limited circumstances, but such circumstances can be very critical ones. A loitering airship is able to take its sweet time maneuvering to vertically and gently deploy (or load) its cargo (rather than it being kicked out of the back at high altitude) in the middle of remote areas devoid of any clear flat areas (mountains, thick jungles, heavily destroyed disaster areas – think Jamaica).
One has to learn to use transpiration systems in a manner that best suit the circumstances.
For instance, helicopters can do a similar job falling in the middle between airplanes and airships, but face their own limitations. They’re fantastic at rapid response, mission tempo, and flexibility, but thanks to limited fuel, they are less in range & loitering time. There are large-lifters (e.g., CH-53E, Mi-26), but that increased capacity sacrifices range.
Those are pretty rare circumstances, though, aside from the “loitering time” issue. How often are you going to need air transit to locations that can’t be reached either by airplanes (no landing strip or water landing area), by helicopters (no flat landing surfaces, limited range), or by ground transit in a pinch if the former two are not available and there’s a time issue? We already use helicopters for fire-fighting and search-and-rescue purposes in remote areas.
They might make more sense if fuel was cost-prohibitive, or if the airship travel was much cheaper overall.
“locations that can’t be reached either by airplanes (no landing strip or water landing area), by helicopters (no flat landing surfaces, limited range), or by ground transit in a pinch”
Would that be most of the state of Alaska, as well as most of Siberia?
As far as cost and fuel are concerned, drag goes as velocity squared. Going faster requires more thrust, and therefore more fuel per mile traveled. Going slow is inherently more fuel efficient, and heavier-than-air vehicles don’t have the option of going slow.
Most of Alaska can already be reached by bush airplanes.
True, but most of those bush planes are small, specialized nitch aircraft, having skis or pontoons, and much of the Alaskan “landing strips” are bodies of water, like lakes, or Winter-dependent snow fields. Even then, those are dependent on open, level, areas to operate.
Large cargo airplanes are what the airships are being compared against (so the venerable Otter doesn’t count here). Those can’t go as far as paved runways, unless there’s a civil variant of a C-17 — which there aren’t, that I know of (although I hear there are a couple of DC-3’s still flying up there).
The part about capacity is a surprising bit of data to a lot of people, yours truly included; I guess I thought that airships could reliably lift in the thousand ton range.
But back of the envelope calcs on the volume/ mass of displaced atmosphere shows it ain’t so. Too bad.
I disagree. You are talking about the current airship (actually hybrid) concepts, which are specifically designed for a niche market which heavier-than-air vehicles can not address. That doesn’t accurately represent what lighter than air vehicles are capable of. For example, the USS Akron (ZRS-4) could lift 73 tonnes of payload, and that was in 1931. Heavier-than-air aviation has almost a century of a head start, in terms of technology development and supporting infrastructure. It is far from clear than a revival of lighter-than-air vehicles could overcome that. But that’s a development issue, not one of inherent efficiency. In the same way, you could look at the use of trains for long-distance, personal transportation, and (in the US) conclude that it was a hopeless disaster. It isn’t (or is), entirely due to the supporting infrastructure and the way people use it.
I stand corrected, although I still think the situations where it would be an improvement over a plane carrying 73 metric tons of cargo are limited.
There may be a tourism model to a new Hindenburg
LOL.
They really should start doing all this work inside the crater of an extinct volcano. On an island.
If we are thinking of the same literary reference, that doesn’t really apply. Unless you know of a very rich east Indian, with a grudge against countries with a colonial history, and an interest in oceanography and biology.
I’m sure Pat’s thinking Ernst Blofeld, as opposed to Capt Nemo. True, “Ernie” had no airship, but he did have a VTVL rocket!
As for moi, I like Dr. Evil’s preference for LIVE volcanos (“surrounded by liquid hot mmagmma”)
years ago I did a powerpoint (muwawawa) it had a large airship with GH2 in cells or compartments interoir to GHe2 in the outer compartments, the idea was in advent of a accident the He and H would mix togather before the atmosphere could combust the mix
Next step: Orbital Mind Control Lasers!
I’m envisioning Christopher Walker in view to a kill.
This airship talk is ridiculous….everyone knows all you really need is freaken sharks With freaken laser beams attached to their heads and you’re in business
I wonder if its related to this project Google announced in 2013.
https://www.forbes.com/site…
Jun 5, 2013 @ 08:33 AM
Google’s Next Cloud Product: Google Blimps To Bring Wireless Internet to Africa
A good technical paper on the basic idea.
http://www.ijetae.com/files…