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Cargo Airships Are Happening

(www.elidourado.com)
220 points elidourado | 7 comments | 14 Oct 24 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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xnyan ◴[15 Oct 24 00:04 UTC] No.41843568[source]▶
The (biggest) problem that keeps airships from practical use is that they are huge sails. Big sails mean even small amounts of wind can be powerful forces acting on the airship. In the air a big push from the wind might be safely managed, but if you're near anything solid such as the ground, you can get smashed to bits.

To safely operate a suitably efficient (large) airship, we'd need both huge specialized docks with extremely strong mooring structures to keep wind from smashing the airship into whatever is near it, and a system (such as a 3-axis propulsion system on the airship) that is capable of counteracting wind force acting on the airship when it's near the ground or other solid objects and not docked.

Despite the many attractive advantages of airships, there's yet been anything like a good solution to this problem. There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?), this is just the biggest.

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dylan604 ◴[15 Oct 24 14:56 UTC] No.41849279[source]▶
Just cover the thing in solar, and run it on electric. Add a couple of wind turbines too. I mean, the whole concept is preposterous, so why not just lean into it?
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bee_rider ◴[15 Oct 24 15:16 UTC] No.41849497[source]▶
Solar powered airships floating around the world, following the prevailing winds, accepting durable goods by… catapult or something, delivery by chucking it out the window over populated areas. Paint them some nice pastel colors and we’re in Solarpunk world.
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1. jandrese ◴[15 Oct 24 16:49 UTC] No.41850503[source]▶
Wouldn't delivery be done by quadcopter drones? There have already been pilots projects where Amazon does delivery by drone in a couple of places. I don't think they were a success, but an airship adds some constraints that might make the more viable. Downside is the copters needs to return to whatever altitude the ship is currently cruising at, which might be close to their ceiling.

But on a side note my first reaction to the headline of this article was "no they are not". Airships have a number of fundamental drawbacks that I don't think we are any closer to solving. Ultimately they're as slow as a cargo ship, can only carry a relatively small and light payload like an airplane, require specialized ports like ships and airplanes, and are expensive to build and operate. They just don't have a viable niche.

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2. dylan604 ◴[15 Oct 24 16:55 UTC] No.41850545[source]▶
> Wouldn't delivery be done by quadcopter drones?

But if you drop them via cheap parachute, you wouldn't need anything to return. I bet they'd only be slightly less accurate delivery than what their "don't give a damn" delivery system in place now.

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3. jandrese ◴[15 Oct 24 18:08 UTC] No.41851308[source]▶
Maybe, but as you point out you lose your pinpoint accuracy and also it consumes a parachute for every delivery. Your customers end up with a whole bunch of cloth to dispose of and you have to store enough for every delivery. The beauty of the quadcopter is that it is reusable. It can also use air brakes to help slow the descent and really only burn power on the very last bit of the delivery and then on the ascent back up, where it is no longer burdened by the package.
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4. dylan604 ◴[15 Oct 24 18:27 UTC] No.41851556{3}[source]▶
You seem to be losing the spirit of the conversation, and that spirit is the idea is preposterous. In that spirit, being reusable is irrelevant. I'm sure if they wanted, they could figure out how to make a disposable parachute that can be composted or recycled. At that's a far as practical as I'm willing to go
5. wh0knows ◴[16 Oct 24 14:02 UTC] No.41859144[source]▶
The copters can fly into a net suspended from the airship, rather than needing to gain all the altitude themselves.
6. yellowapple ◴[17 Oct 24 03:11 UTC] No.41866083{3}[source]▶
> Your customers end up with a whole bunch of cloth to dispose of

We're coming up on Great Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo pretty soon [citation needed], so we could just do the same thing our ancestors did with flour sacks back in the day and turn them into children's clothes. Or maybe even tents for the ever-growing homeless camp-cities. The dystopian possibilities are endless!

7. yellowapple ◴[17 Oct 24 03:13 UTC] No.41866091[source]▶
Why bother with a parachute? Just redesign houses with bungee-net drop zones for packages. It'd probably result in less damages than the average FedEx delivery anyway.