"Airlander". Here we go again
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"Airlander". Here we go again
Back in the 80s, when I had an electronics business, I built and supplied some equipment to "Airship Industries". At the time PR from this company was trumpeting their airship design (new & improved) as finally on the brink of revolutionising air transport. Blink of the eye - exit Airship Industries.
This appears in today's Independent:
Airlander 10: 92m-long aircraft to fly in UK skies for first time | Home News | News | The Independent
I'm keen to hear the opinions of interested parties here at the parish pump.
This appears in today's Independent:
Airlander 10: 92m-long aircraft to fly in UK skies for first time | Home News | News | The Independent
I'm keen to hear the opinions of interested parties here at the parish pump.
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Airship 500
How strange, I used to supply them in the late 80's with control cable 7x19 in various diameters in 100 meter rolls, perks were getting rides with them at Cardington, arrived one morning with cables also expecting a ride in the Airship 600 - big shed doors closed, Airship Industries gone - defunct, such was life,
how many times have they risen from the ashes since then to start again, is it just pie in the sky that they will ever become an alternative craft company with a future ?. PH.
how many times have they risen from the ashes since then to start again, is it just pie in the sky that they will ever become an alternative craft company with a future ?. PH.
For a claimed cross between a helicopter and an aeroplane, it doesn't appear to have any of the properties of either. It looks exactly like a bog-standard dirigible.
I too worked on the Airship in the 1980s - trying to make the Fibre-Optic Fly-by-Wire system reliable. The technology was relatively new, and fragile fibre and a flexible airframe was not a good combination.
I too worked on the Airship in the 1980s - trying to make the Fibre-Optic Fly-by-Wire system reliable. The technology was relatively new, and fragile fibre and a flexible airframe was not a good combination.
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They will need to demonstrate that their dirigible is capable of withstanding turbulence and Cb. On the face of it the lifting body design will make it more prone to problems from vertical shear when compared to the normal dirigible designs.
I've been watching the project for a while, know a few people inside the company, and have studied a bit of airship design and flight testing over the years.
On the whole, I think that it might just succeed.
Not because it's especially new and exciting - although the more aggressive use of aerodynamic (as opposed to hydrostatic) lift is mildly innovative, and the hull structure is quite clever. Not because it has a very good team - I think that it probably does in many areas, but so have previous projects.
No, I think it might succeed because they've got the mission right. They're not trying to lift heavy cargo payloads - which is a daft thing to do with lighter-than-air. Not because it'll carry fare-paying passengers reliably - it won't.
They're designing it as a slow, long-loiter, electronic payload platform. That in my opinion is a viable use of an airship: not unlike the WW1 and WW2 use of airships for hunting submarines. Modern microelectronics make it more possible than ever before.
Historical precedent says that it has a good chance of failing. But, so far as I can see, the thing does actually have a very good chance of succeeding, because they're designing and marketing it for a viable mission that it can deliver on.
On the whole, I think that it's got as good a chance of success as any airshop project ever has, and I really hope that they do.
G
On the whole, I think that it might just succeed.
Not because it's especially new and exciting - although the more aggressive use of aerodynamic (as opposed to hydrostatic) lift is mildly innovative, and the hull structure is quite clever. Not because it has a very good team - I think that it probably does in many areas, but so have previous projects.
No, I think it might succeed because they've got the mission right. They're not trying to lift heavy cargo payloads - which is a daft thing to do with lighter-than-air. Not because it'll carry fare-paying passengers reliably - it won't.
They're designing it as a slow, long-loiter, electronic payload platform. That in my opinion is a viable use of an airship: not unlike the WW1 and WW2 use of airships for hunting submarines. Modern microelectronics make it more possible than ever before.
Historical precedent says that it has a good chance of failing. But, so far as I can see, the thing does actually have a very good chance of succeeding, because they're designing and marketing it for a viable mission that it can deliver on.
On the whole, I think that it's got as good a chance of success as any airshop project ever has, and I really hope that they do.
G
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This was the airship canceled by the USA and sold back to England for less than .1% of it's original reported cost, as in one tenth of one percent. Naturally, batteries were not included. Also know as Northrop Grumman HAV 304 Airlander or Hybrid Air Vehicles HAV-3. There are several videos of it in flight online.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_HAV-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_HAV-3
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On the whole, I think that it's got as good a chance of success as any airship project ever has, and I really hope that they do.
U.S. Army Orders Huge Airship to Aid Combat Missions
I went to have a look at it in it's hangar a year or so ago, a very enthusiastic team offering a vehicle for long term station keeping.
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The solar films that coat the various high altitude long endurance drones will have obvious uses for such an airship, and the ever reducing weight/power requirements of avionics and sneaky tech will obviously help.
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It does also have the advantage over previous designs that materials and drive technologies have kept advancing.
The solar films that coat the various high altitude long endurance drones will have obvious uses for such an airship, and the ever reducing weight/power requirements of avionics and sneaky tech will obviously help.
The solar films that coat the various high altitude long endurance drones will have obvious uses for such an airship, and the ever reducing weight/power requirements of avionics and sneaky tech will obviously help.
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Big target?
Given that millions of dollars of the development costs were absorbed by the US military back in 2010 and the vehicle was 'retained' by the current owners for a 'small sum' they have the resources available now to take it forward.
U.S. Army Orders Huge Airship to Aid Combat Missions
I went to have a look at it in it's hangar a year or so ago, a very enthusiastic team offering a vehicle for long term station keeping.
U.S. Army Orders Huge Airship to Aid Combat Missions
I went to have a look at it in it's hangar a year or so ago, a very enthusiastic team offering a vehicle for long term station keeping.
However the other observations here about the increasing efficiency of solar energy capture etc do make a lot of sense. The cynic in me recalls, though not in detail, similar enthusiasm about the obvious benefits of airships every time they re-emerge from hibernation.
Which also reminds me, whatever happened to the Optica?
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Very big, very slow, target for military applications isn't it? I guess that depends on the operational ceiling of Manpads etc in any given theatre.
Irrelevant really as it never survived the spending review.
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Seems to me it's a very niche-y mission (even more so than other non-airliner aircraft). Basically it works if you want to spend a long time up there without actually going anywhere. For sure such missions exist, just not many.
The previous "revolutionizing air transport" effort was German, and spent a couple of years down the road here at Moffett. The racket it made flying over our house all the time (3 x IO540s at 1500 feet, going veeeeery sloooowly) made me investigate it - actually I had a brief chat with the captain (a lady, and a Brit at that) courtesy of Palo Alto tower.
Bottom line is it cruised at 37 knots. It had about the same payload and fuel consumption per hour as a Trislander. Awful the latter may be, but it flies at about 100 knots, so fuel/passenger-mile is about three times better.
For the latest one, they talk about 48 passengers. REALLY??? The German one, which was seriously huge, carried 10, in a tiny underslung cabin.
The previous "revolutionizing air transport" effort was German, and spent a couple of years down the road here at Moffett. The racket it made flying over our house all the time (3 x IO540s at 1500 feet, going veeeeery sloooowly) made me investigate it - actually I had a brief chat with the captain (a lady, and a Brit at that) courtesy of Palo Alto tower.
Bottom line is it cruised at 37 knots. It had about the same payload and fuel consumption per hour as a Trislander. Awful the latter may be, but it flies at about 100 knots, so fuel/passenger-mile is about three times better.
For the latest one, they talk about 48 passengers. REALLY??? The German one, which was seriously huge, carried 10, in a tiny underslung cabin.
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1. Can a manpad even find it? It's not exactly a big heat producer, and if in electric drive practically none.
2. Not sure that a manpad is really optimised to take down this sort of target. Big balloons full of helium are surprisingly good at taking damage from teeny tiny warheads
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If you had spent a little while in Iraq or Afghanistan over the last 15 years, you would notice that this is almost the only thing that the military does!
Bottom line is it cruised at 37 knots. It had about the same payload and fuel consumption per hour as a Trislander. Awful the latter may be, but it flies at about 100 knots, so fuel/passenger-mile is about three times better.
For the latest one, they talk about 48 passengers. REALLY??? The German one, which was seriously huge, carried 10, in a tiny underslung cabin.
For the latest one, they talk about 48 passengers. REALLY??? The German one, which was seriously huge, carried 10, in a tiny underslung cabin.
Last edited by Tourist; 9th Feb 2016 at 17:13.
I am acquainted with a development engineer on tis project who worked all through the old Airship Industries days too. This isn't another Airship Industries revival, it is an entirely new product (imported from USA) and a new company altogether though inevitably many of the AI people are there.
The project is hardly new, it's been going at Cardington for at least 3 years though only now coming to inflation and flight. The engineer I know is very enthusiastic about it and reckons it has a far better chance of being a success that AI, who if you recall made a number of ships before their demise, but this thing has features like self mooring (a sort of air cushion like a hovercraft) that set it apart.
We'll see, but it looks clever enough to succeed.
The project is hardly new, it's been going at Cardington for at least 3 years though only now coming to inflation and flight. The engineer I know is very enthusiastic about it and reckons it has a far better chance of being a success that AI, who if you recall made a number of ships before their demise, but this thing has features like self mooring (a sort of air cushion like a hovercraft) that set it apart.
We'll see, but it looks clever enough to succeed.
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I flew in a small airship at Cardington some years back. It needed quite a large ground crew to stop it moving about. As I recall they used teams of Air Cadets or Scouts? Boarding passengers took awhile because it was one on, one off, one on, one off... to keep the weight reasonably stable.
It was nice to take a slow pleasure flight around the countryside but I'm not sure about application beyond that. Perhaps as a replacement for sea freight?
It was nice to take a slow pleasure flight around the countryside but I'm not sure about application beyond that. Perhaps as a replacement for sea freight?
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I flew in a small airship at Cardington some years back. It needed quite a large ground crew to stop it moving about. As I recall they used teams of Air Cadets or Scouts? Boarding passengers took awhile because it was one on, one off, one on, one off... to keep the weight reasonably stable.
It was nice to take a slow pleasure flight around the countryside but I'm not sure about application beyond that. Perhaps as a replacement for sea freight?
It was nice to take a slow pleasure flight around the countryside but I'm not sure about application beyond that. Perhaps as a replacement for sea freight?
A little thought will show a huge number of military ISR and maybe Strike applications.
All you have to do is think through each military aircraft type and then think whether enormous loiter at slow speed would be useful or not.
Example.
Is it better to orbit a B1B over a point in the desert at a squillion $/hr waiting for a CAS mission, or have a balloon loiter there for three weeks carrying Brimstone?
Is it better to have a Rivetjoint/Shadow/Reaper/insert other sneaky plane of choice loiter in an area sucking up wiggly amps for 5/10/20 hrs or a balloon for three weeks?
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You have no idea what the military does, do you.
The US military has evidently already rejected the idea, presumably because they prefer to spend their money on things that go faster (e.g. the said F35).
Loitering over enemy territory in something that may even be bigger than a barn strikes me as a seriously undesirable idea. It may be stealthy, but during daylight you'd have to be half blind not to see it with the naked eye. And given that it presumably needs to transmit to be useful, it can't really be stealthy anyway (unless, I suppose, it send everything upwards to satellites).
Autonomous drones strike me as a much safer way for that particular mission.
Airships are one of those ideas whose success is always just around the corner. They had a brief window in the 1930s, until the Hindenburg put paid to it, and then along came WWII to make large aeroplanes a practical reality.
