The image is a computer generated simulation of the 50-ton net payload cargo configured hybrid aircraft, HAC SkyFreighterTM 50, the latest high-tech incarnation of a blimp, filled with helium and powered by airplanes engines.
Posted on 11/12/2006 8:57:42 AM PST by thackney
Imagine a giant, turtle-shaped aircraft, a combo of blimp, plane and hovercraft, filled with freight, quietly floating over the ocean.
It sounds like science fiction, but serious experts insist it could someday be a reality in Alaska.
Hybrid aircraft, or airships, modern incarnations of the blimp, travel faster than barges and trucks and are cheaper to operate than jets. Promoters hope someday they may haul freight and supplies to remote locations in Alaska.
More than 50 business leaders, students and academics gathered at the University of Alaska, Anchorage on Friday for a round-table discussion on the airships and a presentation from two companies, California-based Aeros and New Mexico-based Hybrid Aircraft Corp.
Alaska is a particularly good market for the airships because of the state's many remote freight needs, like delivering supplies to roadless villages, taking fish to market or hauling oil exploration equipment to the tundra.
The airship is no blimp, Frederick Edworthy, vice president of Aeros, explained to the crowd.
"It's a completely different animal."
A blimp is a slow-moving, low-flying, difficult-to-maneuver, bullet-shaped craft, most commonly used for advertising, famously for the tire company Goodyear.
Airships are designed to carry cargo or passengers. They use a giant bladder, filled with non-flammable helium, and an airplane engine to loft themselves into the air. They fly just low enough to avoid having to pressurize the cabin like an airplane. They are much faster and more maneuverable than blimps. They don't require long runways like jets or a large crew on the ground. They also don't need to be stored in a hangar. Aeros is currently building a test craft.
Airships by Hybrid Aircraft Corp., which have been developed in a partnership with aeronautical giant Lockheed Martin, are further along in development. The company has built one and has orders for others.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
The image is a computer generated simulation of the 50-ton net payload cargo configured hybrid aircraft, HAC SkyFreighterTM 50, the latest high-tech incarnation of a blimp, filled with helium and powered by airplanes engines.
Yeah, I saw this in Popular mechanics back in, I think it was, 1964. ;)
they should use the hot exhaust from a jet engine for lift, then controlled venting for propulsion :)
Looks like it would be really susceptible to wind shear, due to bulk, relatively low speed and low altitude.
I'm having a hard time visualizing an airship carrying 50 tons of cargo...since it's not just a helium lift device, it must maintain a certain airspeed to lift that much. Then would they have to land on a runway at slow speed, or dump the cargo at low altitude and suddenly gain negative 50 tons of lift? Yee haw! Ride em, airboy!
it does look really nice though!
They can use one to deliver your Flying Car...
Wind is light or scarce in much of Alaska much of the time. These aircraft could deliver bulk oil and gasoline to bush villages economically. Might be entertaining to test these aircraft in 60 below weather.
Might as well build zeppelins with modern materials.
Thunderbirds are GO!!!
Ucky.
Had a Thunderbird 2 diecast toy. Held a little yellow TB 4 in the cargo pod. Very nice.
OMG rack itt ROFL that cold MAN very funny
"Might be entertaining to test these aircraft in 60 below weather."
All sorts of surpising things gum up or even shatter at those temps. But, that's some pretty dense air, lol, so aerodynamic lift shouldn't be a problem. The other component of lift, helium, could be adversely affected, but I honestly can't say whether that would or would not be the case.
Helium is a very scarce element. It is found in only a few places, often as a biproduct of natural gas.
Among things that we are likely to run out of sooner, rather than later, helium is right at the front of the list.
Helium is a very scarce element. It is found in only a few places, often as a biproduct of natural gas.
Among things that we are likely to run out of sooner, rather than later, helium is right at the front of the list.
Don't know if it's dense, but it is shallow. Sea level is the same pressure. In the summer the ravens fly a mile up on a thermal, but in winter they rarely get over 200 feet up. A hard landing by one of those membranes might be more interesting than a mere sprung airframe.
They should figure out a safe way to use hydrogen.
Exactly. The Germans had great success with zeppelins because they took pains to avoid flying through bad weather, whereas U.S. and British captains made no such attempts, and lost most of their zeppelins to storms.
The zeppelin was a great and workable concept. With modern materials, radar, and satellite meteorology there's no reason it can't work again.
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The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed tells the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the airplane and the rigid airship--huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. It flies aerodynamically. It floats aerostatically. It carries bridges, buildings, fleets of trucks. It is a flying warehouse. It eliminates the need for roads, railroads, prepared harbors. Or so goes the dream. With an arching back and a deep belly, it looks like a tremendous pumpkin seed. Its early and secret experimental development took twelve years' time and one and a half million dollars. None of this capital was put up by the government or by a big aircraft company. It came from private individuals. Much of it was raised by the minister of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Trenton, New Jersey, who initiated the project. McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft 30's progenitors. Eight years after the founding of the Aereon Corporation, its tangible assets were the wrecks of many models and the wreckage of one eighty-foot-long triple-hulled rigid airship.
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The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
The book has some of the ingredients of a spy story, reads as smoothly as a good novel, and is totally true. Some six or eight characters are developed in the round. The first flight of a deltoid Aereon is achieved by a master builder of model aircraft whose talent goes beyond the kit builder's imagination. The twenty-six-foot, manned, proof-of-concept Aereon is constructed singlehanded by a rigger of naval airships who, of course, no longer has other airships to rig. The company is held together for twelve years by (successively) two theologians who dream separately of the missionary effect of the aircraft but share very little harmony together. The test pilot, an aeronautical engineer, has more courage than the front line of the Light Brigade, and a calculated disinterest. He works for pay. Extraordinary people. An extraordinary story. Its characters live on the page as in life.