I hope someday, maybe soon, that most of the 18 wheelers rolling down the Interstate will be replaced with airships like this:
Wouldn’t that be nice? A stream of these things all chained together heading somewhere without tearing up our roads? Imagine the money we would save by building roads that would last decades?
Will it happen? I’ve no idea. But anything we can reasonably do to keep trucks off our roads while maintaining our commerce lines of communication would be a huge win.
In the Artic, where there aren’t any roads, they are considering airships for freight movement.
British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada’s Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV’s first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.
Fingers crossed. I’d love for airships to flourish to the point where I could get an airship RV and cruise America, or the world, without driving.
September 6th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Dream machines. Traffic control and lift limits on payloads are two obvious barriers to the economic viability of such a scheme. Flying works only for low density traffic. As an alternative to the tundra where roads are impossibly expensive and weather sensitive, such a craft might make sense. Military isn’t cost sensitive if the mission is enabled. Otherwise, I don’t see how such a scheme could compete with trucks and trains.
And BTW: what would happen to the price of helium which is not a plentiful resource? How many pounds of helium does it take to lift one pound of freight? And helium is the champion gas for finding its way out of any container.
I suspect the designers made some convenient assumptions on the economics.
September 7th, 2011 at 9:47 am
I don’t know any of that. I just like the idea. And it isn’t like what we do now is cheap. Spending trillions fixing highways trucks break can buy a lot of helium.
September 7th, 2011 at 10:47 am
Just fuel them with Hydrogen and watch the fireworks.
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