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Cargo Airships Are Happening

(www.elidourado.com)
220 points elidourado | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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voidUpdate ◴[] 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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danw1979 ◴[] No.41849317[source]
It doesn’t. The author is dreaming that airships might be able to just drop cargo off anywhere and I guess customs just happens in software somehow.

Nor is it clear how they are refuelled, or how they are immune from the same fluctuations in fuel cost as conventional cargo aircraft.

But what is clear is that you should “possibly invest” in his syndicate which is funding all this…

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mananaysiempre ◴[] No.41849440[source]
Customs in software is already a bit of a thing, judging from what postal tracking reports on occasion. I guess that doesn’t obviate the need for physical inspections, but it should make them faster.
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loeg ◴[] No.41850020[source]
Sure, but why does that only benefit airships and not conventional airplanes?
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mananaysiempre ◴[] No.41850320[source]
I don’t expect it will, I’m just surprised whenever my parcel shows it’s been cleared by customs before it has even left the origin country. (And that’s not a timezone bug, it’s explicitly described as a remote authorization, a preauthorization, or something like that.) Customs (partly) in software is not an absurd idea, was my point, I have no opinion on airships other than acknowledging their inherent coolness.
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1. ErrantX ◴[] No.41851079[source]
Manifest approvals has been a reality for a while. But that works because, not despite, the bottlenecks.

Countries know goods must flow through certain choke points so they can essentially quality control the manifests.

Remove that and pre-authorised customs will go again.