
Helium Dreams - samsolomon
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born
======
yomly
This article really gets me going - there's really nothing more inspiring for
me than to see a person fighting all his life, fighting against all the odds,
fighting against the status quo to make his dream a reality. I really hope
Pasternak can do it!

~~~
gozur88
I remember reading about this guy more than twenty years ago. He and Franklin
Chang-Diaz (who's been plugging away at VASIMR... well, for ever) get the
lifetime determination award.

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gene-h
Scientific American has a great article on why airships will probably not be
part of our transportation infrastructure[0]. In short the energy required to
move a specified payload is about the same as that of an airplane, but the
payload gets there at a much reduced speed.

[0][https://web.archive.org/web/20150701151003/http://blogs.scie...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150701151003/http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-
blog/helium-hokum-why-airships-will-never-be-part-of-our-transportation-
infrastructure)

~~~
gozur88
>And in terms of energy cost, large classical airships like the ones that flew
in the 1930s are just barely cheaper than the most efficient cargo planes...

This, I think, is simply wrong, though I'd be happy to look at numbers to the
contrary. Unless, of course, he's trying to compare _actual_ airships from the
'30s to today's cargo planes.

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ph0rque
_Today’s airship designers share a vision: magnificent amounts of trucking
going on in the sky—regular convoys of enormous airships carrying timber,
coal, wind turbines, prefabricated homes, or an entire summer harvest,
puttering gently along at about a hundred miles an hour, ten thousand feet
over our heads._

So, airships are the next container ships? Sounds intriguing. Do they emit
less CO2 per mile than the container ships?

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acjohnson55
I haven't read the whole article yet, but I tried to do a quick search for
whether it mentions our helium resourcing problem [1], but couldn't find that
mentioned.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2015/07/feds-created-helium-problem-
tha...](http://www.wired.com/2015/07/feds-created-helium-problem-thats-
screwing-science/)

~~~
yomly
For argument's sake, say we have 1000 (high estimate) active cargo airships in
the world. To further simplify the problem, let's assume they all have the
same volume as the Dragon Dream (17,000m^3)[1]. So 1000 airships would take up
17,000,000m^3 of gas - less than 10% of current global consumption of helium
(180,000,000m^3 pa [2].

Yes, this is grossly oversimplified (e.g. how often do airships need to
replenish their lifting gas?) and yes we should be concerned about a major
growth industry dependent on a scarce resource. On the other hand, is this a
price worth paying considering the possible benefits to society it could bring
via delivery of goods/aid to hard to reach areas and a reduction in fuel
intensive cargo planes?

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Dream)
[2][http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-
grea...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/27/what-great-helium-
shortage/#5921f6ea7c69)

~~~
adambard
The Dragon Dream is "half the size" of the latest model, which may not be a
good benchmark. The largest airship aeros is building is quite a lot larger:

> And the ML86X will be nine hundred and twenty feet (nearly three football
> fields) long, two hundred and fifteen feet (more than the Tower of Pisa)
> high, three hundred and fifty-five feet (two Boeing 747s) wide, and able to
> carry five hundred tons.

That's 8.329×10^6 m^3 [1] each. That five hundred tons, by the way, is on the
order which the logistics expert quoted claimed would be required for airships
to be viable. So instead of 1000 dragon dreams, that's 2 ML86Xs.

But before total helium depletion is a problem, this whole venture is
predicated on airships providing cost-effective transport when compared to
planes -- that seems unlikely to hold up if helium prices rise thanks to the
proliferation of mammoth airships like this one.

[1]
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(4%2F3)+*+pi+*++920+*+2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(4%2F3\)+*+pi+*++920+*+215+*+355+cubic+feet+in+litres)

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ph0rque
I wonder if you could use vacuum instead of helium for the lighter-than-air
medium? That way, you just have a vacuum pump as the energy expenditure. Also,
that solves the problem of the ship being too light after unloading: just let
a controlled amount of air back in to make it neutrally buoyant.

Edit: "The main problem with the concept of vacuum airships however is that
with a near-vacuum inside the airbag, the atmospheric pressure would exert
enormous forces on the airbag, causing it to collapse if not supported. Though
it is possible to reinforce the airbag with an internal structure, it is
theorized that any structure strong enough to withstand the forces would
invariably weigh the vacuum airship down and exceed the total lift capacity of
the airship, preventing flight."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship)

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piker
Is hydrogen completely out of the question if these airships are unmanned?
Doesn't it generate more lift? With today's technology, could an fleet of
smaller, "drone" hydrogen airships be effective or is it just too difficult to
prevent disaster dealing with hydrogen gas? Honest questions.

~~~
kirrent
I don't know about the safety questions but hydrogen doesn't provide too much
more lift than helium. Compared to the density of air being displaced the
difference between hydrogen and helium is pretty small. It goes from a mass
fraction of about 25% to around 6%. Certainly an improvement, but there's only
a 25% increase in buoyancy from helium to hydrogen.

~~~
Retric
The difference is more than your suggesting as you care about lifting the
ship's cargo not just the ship's total mass. AKA if the air can lift 20 tons,
and the ship masses 10 tons then increasing that to 25 tons is a 50% increase
in cargo capacity (25-10) = 1.5 x (20-10) not a 25% increase.

~~~
aaron695
Hydrogen can lift ~10% more than Helium.

Hydrogen can escape easier so I'd imagine heaver material would need to be
used.

Hydrogen rocks cause it's cheap. Helium is pretty expensive.

Hydrogen has a PR problem. But we drive around on top of a flammable fuel
quite happy so that might change.

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mannykannot
The US operated four helium-filled airships in the 20s and 30s, and three of
them were destroyed by bad weather. We do incredibly better at forecasting the
weather today, But it is important to remember that flammability was not the
only problem with the first generation of airships.

~~~
gozur88
That's a story in itself.

The Germans used airships to bomb Holland and the UK during WW I. Early in the
war, before superchargers, the airships flew higher than the airplanes the
allies sent to stop them. But with improvements in allied airplane engines,
Germany started to take heavy losses.

So they started to build a series of airships they called "height climbers".
The idea was they'd drop their bombs, drop their ballast, and fly home far
above allied aircraft. It worked, too, though they lost a lot of people to
hypothermia and oxygen deprivation.

Fast forward to the end of the war. As part of the Treaty of Versailles, the
remaining German airships were divvied up among the victorious countries. What
the US (and others ) got were the stripped-down airships that were never
intended for normal use. These were ships designed right to the edge of simply
falling apart, because otherwise they would have been destroyed by airplanes.

And that's what the US used as a template to produce domestic airships. It's
no surprise they broke apart in a strong wind.

Zeppelin knew how to build airships, though. By 1937 the _Graf Zeppelin_ had
flown over a million miles without incident.

~~~
mannykannot
There is a further twist in that the only US rigid airship that did not crash,
the Los Angeles, was built by the Zeppelin company specifically for the US
Navy after WW1, in an agreement to pay down reparations. The Shenandoah may
have been based on the wartime height-climbers, but I don't think the Akron
and Macon were.

You are right about the Graf Zeppelin being a great success, but I have
wondered how much that depended on Hugo Eckener's good judgment about when and
where to fly.

~~~
gozur88
The _Akron_ and _Macon_ may not have been copied from height climbers, but
they were certainly _influenced_ by them in the sense that the US didn't know
how to build anything else.

Regarding _Graf Zeppelin_ , I have no idea how much Eckener's judgement came
into play. But surely it must have braved a storm or two over that many miles.

~~~
mannykannot
Some non-zeppelin airship designers thought for themselves. Barnes Wallis did
proper stress analysis for the R100, and invented a superior gas-bag
restraining harness based on geodesic curves.

~~~
gozur88
Well, that's true. Britain could make airships, too, and had used them during
the war. And _eventually_ the US would have been able to do that as well. But
we were far behind at the close of the war.

We had a huge advantage, too. In those days if you wanted helium you had to
deal with the US.

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searine
>Helium Airships

Sure. Great idea. Make a vehicle dependent on a rare non-renewable resource.

~~~
LouisSayers
Except you're not burning it and turning it into something else. You can reuse
it. It may not be renewable, but it is reusable.

~~~
marcosdumay
Once helium gets on the atmosphere, it evaporates away from Earth.

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notliketherest
Are you telling me a blimp will hold up in a storm like a plane?

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nefitty
FYI: This is not about getting high on helium, it's about airships.

~~~
furyofantares
So, getting high on helium.

