Posted on 02/01/2008 5:11:43 PM PST by Stoat
She looks a little wooden to me.
Admittedly she has her physiological flaws, but in my view she makes up for them with spectacular hats, a dual-rearaxel Rolls with a machinegun behind the radiator and an ex-con chauffeur :-)
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WHOOPS! Actually, that’s a dual FRONT-axle Rolls...even better :-)
Sounds good to me, as long as they buy tickets and prove it to be a viable venture, which will spur more R&D and investment :-)
There’s just something majestic about a craft that is larger than most aircraft hangars moving almost silently overhead.
What about the removal of waste from the ship during flight?
They had a lot of Blimps in WWII which were used for exactly this. They were demobbed after the war, naturally.
Agreed on all counts...I would be delighted if this airship and more like her were to become a reality.
Re your mention of hangars, if you ever get to Tillamook, Oregon, they have the Tillamook Air Museum there which is housed in the largest wooden structure in the world...a WW2 dirigible hangar!
Helium? In case this Einstein hasn't checked, helium is NOT a fuel. It is inert and absolutely refuses to react with anything.
They have quite an impressive payload capacity, so they may possibly be able to accommodate even the waste-disposal needs of Michael Moore in holding tanks :-)
The technology of launch and recovery of UAVs from an airship is pretty straightforward. The trick is in finding the tactics that would make this better than ground launching.
That is, the UAV would have to do something other than what the airship could do, such as being a weapons platform to deliver air to ground weapons, and it would have to be out of the typical range of a ground launched UAV, which is pretty large.
An alternative would be that the airship is used not to send UAVs down, but up. Very high altitude UAVs are a thing unto themselves, and are like slow moving SR-71 Blackbirds. They might act as ECM, preventing enemy satellites from communicating with the ground, or to target satellite receivers.
Airships might also launch balloons or small rockets for atmospheric research, or become stationary platforms if someone eventually fabricates carbon nanotube cables, such as would be used for the space elevator.
Long before such an ambitious thing was done, much shorter cables of only a few miles in length would allow for very stable operations at high altitude. A tethered airship at altitude, no longer to a great extent at the mercy of the wind, and able to stay on station without using fuel.
LMAO!!!!
No, actually the Hindenburg disaster was caused by using essentially solid rocket fuel (aluminum powder in lacquer) as paint for the fabric. Best evidence is that the fabric was ignited by a lightening discharge. Eventually the hydrogen "did" burn, but it wasn't the cause. This is evidenced by the huge clouds of black smoke coming off (hydrogen burns with an invisible flame).
It reacts pretty funny with vocal chords.
1) Fire fighting. Unlike planes and helicopters, airships can carry much more water to a wildfire. Plus, they can not only drop it all at once, but they can “rain” for an extended time on a fire and the surrounding area, which strongly inhibits such fires. It can also land directly on a body of water to quickly recharge its tanks.
2) Communications. High altitude airships can act much like communications satellites, and transfer wide bandwidths of information. Even a single airship high over Kansas could handle much of the satellite traffic of the United States.
3) Combat surveillance. Airships could make high detail video record all outdoor movement in a combat area. Thus, any enemy attack could be traced back to its source, and where it retired to after the attack. Not just people, but vehicles could be monitored. It would be far higher than all but advance surface to air weapons.
4) Anti ballistic and cruise missile defenses. At high altitude, able to see both high flying and below the radar attacks from far away.
Well not quite... lots of talk but not much action.
Isn’t the largest actual flying airship the Zeppelin tourist one doing trips up and down Lake Constance (Boden Zee)?
We always hear bellyaching about peak oil, how we are running out, the need to conserve blah blah blah...
But helium is a resource that is far far less abundant, lost when used, already very expensive. There are inexhaustible alternatives for almost all our uses of oil, and second quality sources, but not helium. We just can’t keep wasting it forever on sky yachts. There are too many necessary things that are impossible without it.
LMAO!
As well as the ecological disaster ( I will spare readers my hypothetical descriptions of the specifics pertaining to a Michael Moore crater coupled with massive holding tanks full of his effluvia......this is a family site, after all and I have no desire to scar anyone psychologically )
((((snicker))))
Get hi-hi-high,
way up in the sky.
Gonna get, yes sirree,
if ya come and rock with me.
Have you heard? What’s the word?
It’s Thunderbird.
-ZZ Top
-ZZ Top
OH! Is THAT what Grizzled Bear was referring to earlier in this thread? A ZZ Top song? Lawd, I missed that entirely.
<<<< standing in corner
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