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Cargo Airships Are Happening

(www.elidourado.com)
220 points elidourado | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.402s | source
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Animats ◴[] No.41845699[source]
The article on the site is vague, but if you go to the company's site, and examine the images, you can get a close look at the airship design. The image on the web site [1] is higher resolution than the web site needs, and you can zoom in if you open the image directly.

The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU. This is comparable to a B-747 freighter. Current new price of a B-747 freighter is about US$400 million. Trips per unit time would be less but fuel cost would be lower.

Large container ships are now in the 20,000 TEU range.

It's not clear there's much demand for faster container shipping. Container ships tend to run slower than they can, to save fuel. Maersk has some 4,000 TEU high speed container ships capable of 29 knots, but due to lack of a market and huge fuel costs, they're mothballed in a loch in Scotland.

[1] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66b24fc3f58cf0...

replies(3): >>41845766 #>>41848750 #>>41848866 #
1. pier25 ◴[] No.41848750[source]
At some point in the future the real cost of operating with fossil fuels will catch up.
replies(1): >>41848815 #
2. Qwertious ◴[] No.41848815[source]
Battery cargo ships make a lot of sense, since you can slow-steam far slower without losing efficiency, with an electric motor.