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I think a better luxury air yacht could be done better:
Make a lightweight house boat. Attach a n airboat drive. Fly a pioneer aerospace parafoil off the deck and sip mimosas on the deck while cruising at 28mph over the Amazon basin.
Certain types of freight are already expected to travel slowly… but mostly heavy/bulky items that don’t make sense to put on an aircraft where weight and space come at a premium. That calculation isn’t really going to change with airships, it will still make more sense to put those items on a train, a truck or a boat at much lower cost.
Really the only reason to ship cargo by air is the speed… if you can’t get the speed why bother with air at all?
That’s because we’ve been stuck with an irrational mode of production that requires too many people and goods to get far places quickly while burning lots of fossil fuel. A more logical system would only have people traveling by jet and helicopter on an emergency basis. People traveling on vacation or non-emergency business should be able to slowly cruise in relative comfort on battery and solar power. Airship ports can be built along the paths of the atmospheric streams and then rail can be used for the next leg of travelers’ journeys.
As far as capacity goes that’s just a matter of building bigger airships and using relatively cheap hydrogen instead of helium as the lifting gas.
Realistically, the current air travel infrastructure wasn’t built on tourism, it was built on serving business needs - freight, personnel movement, meetings, sales. You’re talking about replacing that infrastructure, or at least competing with it, while also being dependent on rail infrastrcuture…
In order to grow this airship system will have to offer some substantial practical advantage over the existing one. The thing is, if I’m shipping something and speed isn’t important then rail/truck is fine and I don’t see airship freight being cheaper than that. So if the airship doesn’t fit the fast/expensive use case, and it doesn’t fit the cheap/slow use case, then what is the competitive advantage?
As far as capacity goes that’s just a matter of building bigger airships
There’s a practical upper limit to how big these things can be. Regardless of fancy new structural materials, it’s a giant gasbag… the larger it is the more of a problem any crosswind is.
using relatively cheap hydrogen instead of helium as the lifting gas.
It’s going to be a long time before any safety oversight group gets on board with this.
People have been pushing this for awhile. It’s not going to happen.
and its cruising speed will likely be comparable to Pathfinder 1 at ~70 kph (dependant on relative windspeed).
By comparison, the Airbus A350F has a payload capacity of 109 tons and a cruising speed of 900 kph, and doesn’t care about relative windspeed.
So the airship might deliver 20% of the cargo at 8% of the speed. This isn’t useful. There is no use case in which this will make sense.
It’s a luxury air yacht pipe dream for rich people, a hobby for a bored Google founder who doesn’t know what else to do with his money.
I think a better luxury air yacht could be done better: Make a lightweight house boat. Attach a n airboat drive. Fly a pioneer aerospace parafoil off the deck and sip mimosas on the deck while cruising at 28mph over the Amazon basin.
As like a personal private yacht? Do you also own a private hangar and work crew for maintaining your personal air yacht? Are you Sergey Brin?
Houseboats don’t take much maintenance or hangars. Yes certainly my own private flying yacht. I don’t want to share.eith people I might not like.
Maybe people will accept certain types of freight not travelling at insane speeds?
No, shareholders would weep bloody tears.
Certain types of freight are already expected to travel slowly… but mostly heavy/bulky items that don’t make sense to put on an aircraft where weight and space come at a premium. That calculation isn’t really going to change with airships, it will still make more sense to put those items on a train, a truck or a boat at much lower cost.
Really the only reason to ship cargo by air is the speed… if you can’t get the speed why bother with air at all?
Have to end Just In Time delivery which basically every business works on now for it to even be suggestable.
Jammed In Trailers, you say?
That’s because we’ve been stuck with an irrational mode of production that requires too many people and goods to get far places quickly while burning lots of fossil fuel. A more logical system would only have people traveling by jet and helicopter on an emergency basis. People traveling on vacation or non-emergency business should be able to slowly cruise in relative comfort on battery and solar power. Airship ports can be built along the paths of the atmospheric streams and then rail can be used for the next leg of travelers’ journeys.
As far as capacity goes that’s just a matter of building bigger airships and using relatively cheap hydrogen instead of helium as the lifting gas.
Realistically, the current air travel infrastructure wasn’t built on tourism, it was built on serving business needs - freight, personnel movement, meetings, sales. You’re talking about replacing that infrastructure, or at least competing with it, while also being dependent on rail infrastrcuture…
In order to grow this airship system will have to offer some substantial practical advantage over the existing one. The thing is, if I’m shipping something and speed isn’t important then rail/truck is fine and I don’t see airship freight being cheaper than that. So if the airship doesn’t fit the fast/expensive use case, and it doesn’t fit the cheap/slow use case, then what is the competitive advantage?
There’s a practical upper limit to how big these things can be. Regardless of fancy new structural materials, it’s a giant gasbag… the larger it is the more of a problem any crosswind is.
It’s going to be a long time before any safety oversight group gets on board with this.