Could an airship make sense as a loading dock for drones making deliveries?
Laden drones which can drop down to their delivery point from above, and then return empty back to the air dock seem like they could operate much more quietly and efficiently than drones which need enough power to maintain altitude as they travel horizontally to their target.
Of course the drone would need the capability to throttle up and climb fully laden, possibly even minus one rotor, and the energy reserves to spare.
But the theory would be launching off the airship, and traveling horizontally (at altitude) above the target, then a controlled descent straight down to the drop point.
Presumably you would have two or three ships so one would be in position, while another was moving to/from the ground warehouse, while the 3rd was being loaded for the next batch.
The whole thing only makes sense if the energy density of the drone batteries doesn’t allow them to simply launch from a remote warehouse and proceed directly to their destination at altitude and return all on their own power.
Imagine how quickly those things would become the modern day Wells Fargo stagecoach to be plundered for our masses of under-employed and well-armed poor! Not to mention the conspiracy theories that would quickly pop up around anything like that; it's spying/vaccinating/etc.
This is exactly why I'm waiting for the new airship age, so I can quit my job as a software developer and become an airship pirate, just like in Crimson Skies. "When you hit the ground, tell 'em Nathan Zachary sent you!"
It seems like a much easier target to me, if the ship passes over a secluded area. I suspect a cargo airship is also more likely to be unmanned.
How: drone with a harpoon, or a particularly pointy model rocket. Perhaps you'd attach a tether, so you can bring the ship to a specific spot (and reel it in gently without having to compromize its buoyancy so much it crashes hard).
Does that really sound easier to you than hopping into a running UPS truck while the driver is delivering a package and driving away?
How far do you think you could drag a drone-filled zeppelin before you were detected? How long would it take you to gently reel in a floating warehouse while Amazon alerted authorities and private security about your multimillion-dollar heist?
I imagine it would be pretty hard to get away with airship plundering. everyone would see it go down and law enforcement would just have to camp at the crash site to catch the perps. plus other plunderers would probably show up to fight for the loot. it would be a lot less risky to just snipe individual drones as they make their deliveries.
US military tested airships extensively. They proved to have considerable advantages in certain naval operation roles. It all ended with the airship aircraft carriers (you read that right) crashing in separate accidents. They turned out to be extremely difficult to control (not crash) in extreme weather.
Northrop completed the first flying wing bomber in 1947, the YB-49. But flying wings are inherently unstable and there were two fatal crashes. Ultimately, criminal politics crashed it harder, but the B-2 is a direct version of it.
But now we have computer control stabilizing it in flight, making it vastly easier and safer to fly. Of course Physics hasn't changed, but advances in technology matter.
Yes, but the problem with airships isn't control - it's just that the useful mass fraction is tiny. You need something the size of a container ship to lift a few tons of net payload.
The only way that might ever change is if we develop a form of nanotubes strong enough to allow use of a vacuum rather than gas.
Nanotubes wouldn't really help much either I'm afraid. Hydrogen is 7% the mass of air, so even with a vacuum the best you can do is 7% more lifting power. Our only real hope is to terraform the Earth to have greater air density at sea level...
That's true, but vacuum has one big advantage: You can generate it in flight, whereas with lifting gas if you have to vent it you're NEVER getting it back.
Besides, even at just 7%, if the Hindenburg had been "filled" with vacuum instead of hydrogen, that would have been an additional 37,000lbs of payload capacity, which would have almost tripled it's lift capability (21,000lbs as flown).
Additionally, helium, which is probably the only gas the public will accept, is almost double the density of hydrogen, and we have a limited supply of it.
The engines on the new Zeppelin have much less volume to push around than on the USS Akron. The Zeppelin company also had the benefit of computer modeling during design to optimize the airflow.
> Of course the drone would need the capability to throttle up and climb fully laden, possibly even minus one rotor, and the energy reserves to spare.
I've put some thought into this from time to time and I see a few alternatives. One is to use a tow line with some sort of auto-belay, and shield the rotors so that the line can't get snagged under usual circumstances. Then a drone can be reeled in if the need arises. Another option is to have drones able to adhere to each other (magnets? velcro? carabiners?) so that functional lightly-laden drones can perform an in-air rescue of a malfunctioning drone before it reaches the ground. This assumes that a malfunctioning drone would still have some mechanism to slow its descent, which isn't unreasonable.
The unimpeded path required for a tow line would restrict the number of drones an airship could operate, since it would presumably need to be nearly directly above them. This would also make it difficult to operate in cities with overhead cables.
True, a tow line is a less than ideal solution. Perhaps a tow line could be rapidly deployed by a special purpose fast moving (catapult launched?) drone and affixed to a malfunctioning drone.
Laden drones which can drop down to their delivery point from above, and then return empty back to the air dock seem like they could operate much more quietly and efficiently than drones which need enough power to maintain altitude as they travel horizontally to their target.
Of course the drone would need the capability to throttle up and climb fully laden, possibly even minus one rotor, and the energy reserves to spare.
But the theory would be launching off the airship, and traveling horizontally (at altitude) above the target, then a controlled descent straight down to the drop point.
Presumably you would have two or three ships so one would be in position, while another was moving to/from the ground warehouse, while the 3rd was being loaded for the next batch.
The whole thing only makes sense if the energy density of the drone batteries doesn’t allow them to simply launch from a remote warehouse and proceed directly to their destination at altitude and return all on their own power.