>>16922893
weather balloons/UFOs

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>>16922895
>he doesn’t know

>>16922893
Off the top of my head (some of these could be wrong) there just isn't a market for them. They're slower than airplanes, require a bigger crew to operate, scale poorly and require more infrastructure.
Though I was delighted to see that some conspiracy theorists already came up with some bullshit about how plane lobbyists set the Hindenburg on fire to end the Airship or some shit like that.

idk I feel like with modern materials you could probably achieve some crazy results with blimps, maybe even some kind of personal vehicle that combines buoyancy with drone tech for improved safety and battery life and less risk of terrorisms

>>16922893
They are kinda just bad. They theoretically have a niche but it's just so limited that there's not a big enough market to justify anyone to build a bunch of balloons. They are mostly useful for the 2 purposes they are currently used which is aerial advertisement and leisure rides around landmarks or vistas.

They should make a blimp filled with vacuum for extra lift.

>>16923167
Actually feasible. Just use some kind of ultra low density foam containing microscopic vacuum bubbles so you don't need tons of steel to stop it from collapsing.

>>16923169
It would be even better if instead of bulky foam you just shot some high energy particles in there and they would bounce off the walls and each other supporting the walls and the vacuum between them that way

>>16923105
>require a bigger crew to operate
I think this is the real killer. it's pretty much 1:1 crew to passengers, whereas with an airliner it's more like 1:50 (at least in the US)

>>16923105
>scale poorly
I think this one is often overlooked. I did some back of the napkin math a while ago and decided that if you put as many passengers on a a380 as the Hindenburg, each one would get more space and pay less per ticket. that's on top of getting to their destination in a quarter the time.

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>take a trip on a vacuum airship
>you know the ship could implode and kill you instantly at any moment
>but at least it's not gas that can burn and smoke and hurt the environment :)

>>16923105
>require a bigger crew to operate
What does all that crew do? Do modern blimps really need that much? Can modern technology replace them?
>scale poorly
They scale fairly well in fact, because volume (and lift) increases faster than linear size or surface area.
>and require more infrastructure.
More than 2+ km long 60m wide landing strip, ideally two, pointing in different directions?

Being slow is really the biggest issue, weather dependence is another one.

>>16923217
Directly comparing economy of the tech 70 years apart has little meaning. You can compare specs though. For example, Hindenburg had an average weight of 215 tons and experienced around 90kN of drag force at 125 km/h cruise, this yields an L/D ratio equivalent of over 23 which blows every modern airliner out of the water with only a few coming close. A modern, properly aerodynamically optimized design with more efficient turboprop engines would have the fuel economy no airplane has any chance to ever reach. So even if it had smaller passenger capacity and longer travel times, it could still be very much competitive.

>>16923272
>For example, Hindenburg had an average weight of 215 tons and experienced around 90kN of drag force at 125 km/h cruise, this yields an L/D ratio equivalent of over 23 which blows every modern airliner out of the water
not when you account for the four-times-longer journey.

>>16923274
>four-times-longer journey
More like 7, but it doesn't matter. Fuel economy is per distance unit travelled.

>>16923278
Fuel-economy per distance unit travelled is irrelevant because no one will pay for a 20h flight that could be 3 hours with a plane, one which is dozens of times more vulnerable to bad weather cancelling the whole thing

>>16923278
yes so you're burning 90kN of engine power for seven hours instead of one hour for the same "distance unit travelled", thus you use seven times as much energy to travel the same distance.

>>16923291
>no one will pay for a 20h flight that could be 3 hours with a plane
People ride trains perfectly fine even when they can take a plane.
>dozens of times more vulnerable to bad weather cancelling the whole thing
That is a valid concern

>>16923299
Work = force * distance
When travelling twice as fast against the same drag force you're doing twice the work and burning twice as much fuel, i.e. the same amount per unit of distance
lrn2physics

>>16923291
>no one will pay for a 20h flight that could be 3 hours with a plane
51% of airliner passengers are traveling for personal leisure. Most of those would likely be fine with a 20 hour trip, maybe even prefer it if conditions were nicer and prices lower than planes.

>>16923300
>People ride trains perfectly fine even when they can take a plane.
It's often much faster and more convenient to take a train. I can ride a train from the city center where I live to the next city over in 2 hours. A plane could do that in 30 minutes but I would have to go to an airport, check in, fly, check out and then go to the city again with much higher total cost and actually higher total travel time and I can't take as much luggage with me. Now if the plane was replaced by a blimp that 30 minute flight would be over 3 hours long and more expensive and the going to an airport and the luggage issue is the same with a blimp as it is with a plane.

>>16923308
>Most of those would likely be fine with a 20 hour trip
Not for a 3 hour flight. Only the absolutely poorest people take these sort of long distance train or buss rides and not by choice, that isn't going to cut it for the luxury air travel market that any blimp is going to have to pursue. People who care least about travel time are the people who are just looking to fly to look around and that market is already served by blimps right now in various sky tour services.
>maybe even prefer it if conditions were nicer and prices lower than planes
Blimps are going to almost certainly be more expensive than planes. There's theoretically a niche there for some sort of comfort experience but in reality that's not true either. You might be able to get some more leg room since volume is easier to do on a blimp than plane but you won't get any extra amenities.

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As much as I like the idea of airships, they don't seem to be viable for passenger travel beyond the few niches already mentioned. The place where they do seem like they'd be useful is bulk cargo transportation to areas with limited road/rail infrastructure. There might also be a niche in prefab home delivery. Right now prefab homes end up being either shitty trailers or have to arrive in so many pieces that much of the advantage of prefab is lost. Roads have both dimensional and weight restrictions that severely limit what can be moved over them. If you're delivering an entire house to a prepared slab, issues like weather aren't a big deal since you can wait for a calm period to do the delivery. Passengers on the other hand get angry about even a short weather delay.

>>16923511
>It's often much faster and more convenient to take a train
And just as often it is not, especially for longer distance travel and if it's not a high speed train. Security and associated delays is getting cranked up on the railway lately anyways.

>more expensive
That's a baseless claim

>and the going to an airport and the luggage issue is the same with a blimp as it is with a plane
Except a blimp doesn't need long runways and even larger approaches and traffic patterns, and doesn't make nearly as much noise as an airplane, so you can put it right next to the train station inside the city just fine (or on top of it actually).

Anyone have any insight into the current state of airship companies?

I see >>16923563

HAV Airlander has a fairly mature prototype they plan on launching into service in 2028 (we will see if this actually happens)

LTA Research (https://ltaresearch.com/) has a fairly developed R&D department but doesn't seem to be ready to release anything anytime soon. This is probably the most realistic option for a company to take airships seriously as a functional vehicle, the others are basically just toys

Lockheed Martin and a startup called A2 have this: https://www.at2aero.space/
which honestly I am fairly bearish on, no reason for lockheed to innovate at this point

Oh, and there's a few more:

Airship Industries is a very early stage startup in LA that will likely fail soon: https://www.airship-industries.com/about

Flying Whales is a French company, working on an airship, will also likely fail because Europeans are not serious people: https://www.flying-whales.com/en/home/

british company which looks like it already failed: https://www.varialift.com/

>>16922893
Helium's other property like being inert and cryogenic are in higher demand now than just bouyancy.
Hydrogen can be made safe if double hulled with co2 or n2.
The use of balloon to lift whatever electronics will stay and probably still the cheapest way to get disposable things airborne. Endurance without survivalibity can't win speed.

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>>16923897
>Hydrogen can be made safe if double hulled with co2 or n2.
Hydrogen already has only a VERY slight lift advantage over helium and it's totally shot when you have to do shit like this

not joking about that - the lift of helium is only like 8% less than hydrogen! it's a fucking miniscule difference!

the difference in cost is basically immaterial when you consider the total cost of producing and using a LTA airship. it's a drop in the bucket compared with the 100s of millions being spent on R&D. it won't even be a serious line item when it comes to the manufacturing of these things.

helium is:
1) safe
2) easy to handle
3) slightly bigger molecule so don't need complicated scaffolding

it's just better in every way

>>16923931
It is for disposable balloons. Huge bag of gas floating high in the air moving slowly is not survivable no matter what gas you use.
Helium is not distributed evenly and had been be subject to trade ban. The other two competitor to US is algeria and Qatar which are shitholes with no navies to prevent blockade from US either.

>>16923975
Sounds like the US would be the center of the airship world, which depending on where you live and your politics, could be a bonus or a reason to avoid airship use. The thing about the US is that it has high amounts of research capital. If someone comes up with a good PoC, implementation could happen rapidly. As others have noted, there is some product research happening on a somewhat limited scale.

>>16923931
The issue is that lifting gas is a consumable for a blimp. Helium leak through any realistically usable gasbag material for a mid-sized airship can be measured in $ per hour. And it's only going to get worse because helium is not renewable, the supply is limited, and it can't be recycled when used as a lifting gas. Once it leaks it eventually makes its way into space and is permanently gone.
Hydrogen also leaks even worse, but it's at least an order of magnitude cheaper and is very easy to make. In theory you can even achieve unlimited flight time if you use solar power to capture air moisture and produce hydrogen on board in flight.
Yes it's flammable but so are many other things we use every day just fine.

I can't imagine this would have any war value in the modern world whatsoever. A $5 dollar drone could take one out.

>>16924026
Drones only work right now because there's no efficient and cheap enough air defense against them. I cannot imagine this situation will last for longer than a few more years. After that a $5 drone would only be shot down on horizon, and once again you'll need much more complex and expensive solutions to get to your target.

>>16924027
Stopping a fast moving drone from hitting a large slow moving target is orders of magnitude more difficult than using a fast moving drone to hit a large slow moving target. Then you add in the fact that the attacker has the element of surprise and they can send a swarm of thousands of the things on you, it's an unsolvable problem.
>j-just use emp
Good luck with that.

The only real counter is to not have large slow moving targets in the first place.

>>16922893
They can't go very high and get pushed around by the weather. They're a hog to land.

>>16923200
>>16923169
The lift gain is negligible over hydrogen or even helium.

>>16924030
#1 I don't think a foam that's less dense than hydrogen or helium is physically possible even if it's riddled with "vacuum bubbles"
#2 if it did exist then of course you'd fucking use it, you wouldn't require all the reinforced scaffolding of a gas blimp, it'd be lower maintainence, you could basically shape the thing however you want, you could even shoot holes through it and you'd just lose a tiny amount of lift proportional to the amount of destroyed foam rather than an explosion or massive leak that'd force a landing

>>16924032
Blimps are very hard to shoot down with bullets. The gas inside is only atmospheric pressure.

>>16924028
>slow moving
Blimps can do 100 km/h no problemo, enough to outrun a lot of cheap drones in fact.

>they can send a swarm of thousands of the things on you
Drones can't just appear out of nowhere, it's a huge operation to move and launch even a hundred at once, especially with cheap drones having limited range and speed and control capabilities (or it becomes anything but cheap). The enemy won't be sitting idle either, and obviously nobody would launch a blimp they can't afford to lose over the enemy territory without sufficient surveillance and defences. If anything there's a big chance the drone operators are getting surprise buttblasted instead.

>j-just use emp
Automated turrets using common cheap ammo or lasers

Fact: the name "blimp" was invented by Horace Short, of the Short Brothers engineering firm. Upon seeing the first prototype airship built by his company, he named it "Blimp", adding, "What else would you call it?"

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>>16924345

>>16924379
Amusing and fast

>>16924029
I think they can go high enough to enter atmospheric rivers and jetstreams that are blowing at 300mph or more

>>16923813
I'd rather fly with an unserious Airbus than a serious Boeing

>>16923931
Incorrect, hydrogen is a bigger molecule, so it doesn't permeate through the material as fast.

>>16922893
Helium is running out, lighter than air = escapes atmosphere and doesnt come back.

>>16925646
how is that possible

space is a vacuum you fcking brainlet retard do you just believe everything you read? do you think helium is lighter than space too?

so helium is lighter than air so it will sit on TOP of the air. it still exists. it's not just gonna fly into space and disappear

>>16925637
it looks like you are right
that's really strange...why is helium smaller than hydrogen

>>16925649
Monatomic He vs a dimer molecule H2

>>16923931
>Helium
>slightly bigger molecule
Helium is a single atom

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>>16925648
The solution is to send up our own vacuum to vacuum up the helium that space wouldn't vacuum.

Graphene is completely impermeable to helium and is stronger than steel. It solves the issue with airships. Its just expensive.

>>16925724
If you had a very silly amount of money you might be able build a graphene fabric LTA with solar panels and ion drives and it would be able to get to space.
>stronger than steel
>impermeable to helium
>has no melting point

Space blimp!
Graphene is incredibly expensive but should become cheaper in the future.

>>16925648
>so it will sit on TOP of the air
No it won't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape

>>16923105
>I was delighted to see
Why? What an odd thing to say

>>16923272
It may be valuable for cargo, if the displacement problem is ever solved (how you are much more boyuant when you release cargo).

>ctrl+f luxury
>only one mention
You could possibly use them as a sort of luxury air cruise liner which is kinda what they were used for in the past. For straight up transport they are not good compared to modern solutions except in some niche situations. I'd rather enjoy a fine drink and a (relatively) slow cruise through the air from point A to point B then pay even more to travel down to Titanic in a shitty carbon tube and get imploded but there are people who are (or at least WERE kek) willing to pay for that. So there you go, maybe try assessing the market and make your own luxury airship company. Just make sure you don't end up like Rush.

After WW2, the ideology of labor was imposed by the world Government so "low work" vehicles like airships were memoryholed. To some extent, this is what happened with public transport too, it was sabotaged in favor of individual vehicular cretinism.

>>16926368
>this is what happened with public transport too, it was sabotaged in favor of individual vehicular cretinism.
Public transport was sabotaged by giving equal rights to black people

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tell me a real reason why vacuum balloons wouldn't work

>>16926632
Vacuum sucks.

>>16922893
The air shit as aircraft but can function as tall towers for radio relays / transmitters or high altitude wind turbines.

>>16926632
They do work, the hard part is making a tank that can withstand 14 psi lite enough.

>>16926632
No material can withstand the pressure and also be light enough.

>>16927211
What if you integrated high speed molecules moving around inside the vacuum chamber to dynamically support the sides.

>>16927444
>high speed molecules moving around inside the vacuum chamber
They also should be light to add as little weight as possible. Like hydrogen, or helium maybe.

>>16926632
the same reason light bulbs and crt televisions don't float away

>>16926854
>>16927211
Light bulbs don't implode and they're made out thin glass. Just make a bunch of light bulbs without the metal parts so they're really light.

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>>16922893
>redpill me on airships
the kirov airship in red alert 2 has unlimited ammo and high hp because hidden within its helium chambers is an anti inertia device .

the airship will be inefficient until this is created at scale
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/27/indoor-blimp-sails-through-the-air-using-ultrasonic-transducers/

where you create a cymatic inside the ballon that vibrates a special hull which creates directional thrust

>>16927477
>Light bulbs don't implode and they're made out thin glass
They don't quite float in the air either

the real answer is that they aren't very safe in adverse weather. A routine thunderstorm would fling an airship around like crazy because they're huge and bubble shaped. Whereas a modern airliner could avoid or fly through it. If you've seen videos of airliners landing in extreme crosswind, you understand. An airship subject to the same crosswind would just get blown away. They're large, slow, and fragile. But yes, very cheap. Humanity collectively decided that it wasn't a good idea to rely on air travel technology that was inferior in every way except being cheap. Perhaps in a world without organic fuels, it would be the only way to fly (electric propellers on an airship) but we do have organic fuels.

>>16927477
Light bulbs are filled with argon, not pure vacc. And again, the problem is having a material light *and* strong enough to enclose a vaccum and not be crushed by air pressure *and* overall density lighter than air. Such a material does not exist yet. And a larger vacc pressure vessel = more tensile stress. I saw a paper where they did tiny vacc bubbles using graphene but these are microscopic size.

Or instead of unobtanium vacc bubbles, you can use helium or hydrogen like a sane engineer.

I will say, if/when they ever figure out mass produced graphene structures, they have an ideal aerospace material. Ive seen a company claim their graphene is *hydrogen* impermeable which solves so many problems in aerospace. Graphene composite structures make SSTO possible. By 2040s it wouldnt surprise me if small businesses could 3d print SSTO spaceplanes.
Materials science is improving rapidly w ai tools, all the knowledge work and physics design being rapidly ai enhanced + robotics improving productivity rapidly.

>>16927684
That problem can be ameliorated by giving the airship a lifting body configuration.
The biggest problem airships have is gas leakage. New materials science fixes that. Theres several materials that are hydrogen impermeable now.

>>16927751
even with advanced hydrogen impermeable materials and a lift making fuselage, it's still a big bag of hydrogen in the sky. the first accident would be a roll-over in harsh crosswind on landing, igniting a hydrogen fireball killing everyone aboard, and that would be the end of the experiment.

>>16927762
Hydrogen, especially hot, will rapidly escape upwards, and unless trapped inside the cabin or something will at most cause burns through thermal radiation to unprotected people.
Hindenburg's big issue was that it was essentially painted with thermite, obviously nobody would make that mistake now.

Air weighs about 1.2 kg/m^3
Hydrogen weighs 0.1 kg/m^3
Helium weighs about 0.2 kg/m^3
So all that fucking around with vacuum and miracle materials, just to gain less than 20% more lifting power at best.

>>16927953
Hydrogen is dangerous, helium is expensive, vacuum is (mostly) free and safe

okay but how much buoyancy do you gain if you figure out how to make a bubble that's not only vacuum but even excludes quantum foam?

>>16928134
I daresay your miracle envelope material is expensive too.

What if the entire blimp was made of vacuum, including the superstructure?

>>16928603
>(your) material
I'm not even the one shilling the graphememe lmao

In any case it's not that big of a problem as long as it doesn't somehow degrade fast or is otherwise depleted like helium

>>16928152
Either none or it explodes with the force of a thousand suns

You retards are thinking about this wrong. You just need to increase the density of earth's atmosphere.

>>16929306
Move to Venus. Problem solved.