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Cargo Airships Are Happening

(www.elidourado.com)
220 points elidourado | 3 comments | 14 Oct 24 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.613s | source
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voidUpdate ◴[15 Oct 24 13:00 UTC] No.41848119[source]▶
> "But for air freight service, end-to-end delivery takes a week or more, involving multiple parties: in addition to the air carrier and freight forwarder, at both the origin and destination, there is a trucking company, a warehouse, a customs broker, and an airport. Each touchpoint adds cost, delay, and the risk of theft or breakage."

How does an airship solve any of those problems? Its still got to go through customs and such, and still go through local truck delivery

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1. scoofy ◴[15 Oct 24 16:54 UTC] No.41850533[source]▶
Longshoremen, lines at limited numbers of ports, etc., there a lots of problems that airships can solve simply by allowing airship ports to exist in, say, Kansas.

The need for specific geological features dramatically limits the amount of ports we can have, which seriously affects costs. If you could build a single, tiny airship point in every major city, you could save a bundle, and likely be close enough to the destination to unload directly to the customer at the port.

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2. cma ◴[15 Oct 24 17:18 UTC] No.41850776[source]▶
Is it for bulkier but lightweight stuff that trains can't handle or something?
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3. scoofy ◴[15 Oct 24 18:26 UTC] No.41851548[source]▶
I would assume that heavier stuff would be where the demand is. Air freight is expensive, because weight is expensive, because fuel is expensive, and it's obviously an environmental disaster.