Goodyear-Zeppelin is Back
erco
Posts: 20,256
Goodyear's newest airship is NOT a blimp, but a Zeppelin NT from Germany. High time IMO, Goodyear-Zeppelin made the flying aircraft carriers Akron & Macon back in the 30's.
http://www.designfax.net/cms/dfx/opens/article-view-dfx.php?nid=4&bid=330&aid=2685&et=motion&pn=01 Click on the second pic for a video.
There is an internal carbon fiber framework which holds the two main engines & props on either side, and two more props at the rear provide pitch & yaw control. The avionics and engine controls in the NT are amazing. I visited Zeppelin in '95 and saw the first one under construction.
This is the same type of airship that operated out of Moffet Field, CA for a few years: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/143907-Bay-Area-Blimp-Bailout
Sadly, Hangar One at Moffett field (a historic register location) has been stripped to a skeleton and its fate is unclear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hangar_One_September_2012_-_2.jpg
http://www.designfax.net/cms/dfx/opens/article-view-dfx.php?nid=4&bid=330&aid=2685&et=motion&pn=01 Click on the second pic for a video.
There is an internal carbon fiber framework which holds the two main engines & props on either side, and two more props at the rear provide pitch & yaw control. The avionics and engine controls in the NT are amazing. I visited Zeppelin in '95 and saw the first one under construction.
This is the same type of airship that operated out of Moffet Field, CA for a few years: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/143907-Bay-Area-Blimp-Bailout
Sadly, Hangar One at Moffett field (a historic register location) has been stripped to a skeleton and its fate is unclear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hangar_One_September_2012_-_2.jpg
Comments
...and they have a name the blimp contest!!
If I don't win that, I hope you do, erco!!
How about "Flash"...no, the Zeppelin guys might not like that....
We still have our hanger in Akron
...and this from times gone by.......
...all six airships fit inside....it's an amazing building!!
You Ohio folks have all the airship luck!
I won't bother correcting folks who call this zeppelin a blimp. After 90 years of saying & hearing "Goodyear Blimp", it's part of our heritage.
But just this once.
I missed you by "that much" - I was at Wheel & Brake on and off from1985 until 1988. The building is amazing, it's really hard to describe it.
We get buzzed by the Spirit of Goodyear every so often. Our old dog used to start barking when she heard the drone of the blimp coming over her yard....she kept that blimp out of her yard for a good 10 years!!
Long before the Cold War got started, these were the USA's first line of defense.
If these were constructed of wood (it seems so), it may just be that they are really beyond repair at this point.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/05/future_of_tillamook_blimp_hang.html
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/aviation/usb.htm
Consider that the Empire State Building was actually supposed to be an airport for these, but after one tethered blimp or zepplin was up-ended, they abandoned any future docking.
Weather radar may help some, but in bad weather you might feel like your are on an elevator that has gone bonkers.. and you may not be able to get off until the weather calms down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMC-2
Why not? Ships can avoid bad weather and they can't go anywhere near 70 mph.
What century are you living in? The path of hurricanes can be predicted hours or even days beforehand. It's quite easy for aircraft to avoid hurricanes, and ships can do it routinely. No one in their right mind flies in tornado weather, unless they're chasing tornados. Hopefully no one in a LTA ship will ever do that.
That was absolutely fascinating...especially the use of Alclad and the wire-fed rivet "sewing machine."
Funny thing...the moment they mentioned the initial filling with CO2, I wondered how the thin skin would ever support the weight. Must be a genius. Of course, if I had been running the show I would have used hydrogen (with great care) and then displaced the hydrogen with helium until the resulting mix wasn't especially flammable. The Germans used hydrogen for many years without incident. Surely one temporary filling could have been done safely.
It was my impression that LTA airships are comparatively slow in terms of ground speed, and more difficult to land.. especially in adverse winds.
HIgher ground speed is a huge advantage with both aircraft and boats. One can out run bad weather to a safe port.
Fast aircraft are redirected to another airport if the weather changes intransit. Larger, slower oil tankers may have to sail through bad weather depending on where they are. It is one thing to be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but the South China Sea has less choice of where a large ship can go.
In some ways, returning to zepplins or blimps is going back in time.
And I really think that the prediction of a hurricane's path are rather broad. After all, Katrina hitting New Orleans was a surprise until a few hours prior to doing so. I live in a place that gets numerous typhoons (same as hurricanes) every year and nobody knows for sure if there is going to be a direct hit until it is here.
And yes Loopy, I've been in that Tillamook hangar: http://www.tillamookair.com/building.html The Cyclocrane was there, also in the video below, ~43:00.
Is any of this even remotely relevant to LTA ships? LTA isn't a method of transporting cargo, does not require huge loading docks, etc. The concerns are absurd. Even assuming transcontinental travel, which is doubtful unless you're talking crossing the English Channel or other such distance, there's virtually no way an airship would be caught in flight in bad weather given modern space-based weather prediction. No airplane, period, can be safely flown through hurricane winds.
LTA sees little use today because other forms of flight are less expensive. It has absolutely nothing to do with real safety concerns. Today they are relegated to research, aerial photography, publicity, and a few other narrow markets.
If you want to define it your way, no. On the other hand, more and more tourist venues have begun to support hot air balloons. The use of LTA might be experience something of a revival. Isn't that what the OP implied -- carbon fiber constructions and so on.
If you consider how much a D-9 Cat weighs (110,000+ pounds) and having to provide bridges for it, suddenly flying one in becomes very appealing. In fact, if you consider that you can fly in small bridge spans, the idea looks even better. A D-11 dozer is roughly 250,000 pounds.
The new Goodyear LTA is designed for a specific small scale task; the others are at this stage highly speculative, especially since helium is running scarce these days, and has seen a 50% rise in cost in the last 10 years. It's like worrying about cosmic rays on the moon for a permanent human colony. Yeah, it's a problem, but everyone knows about it. It's also not happening anytime soon. Overseas cargo shipping via LTA is likewise not happening RSN, despite the construction of some early prototypes for cargo.
You can find writers 60 and 70 years ago talking about using huge LTA ships in old Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines. The same worries are stated then as now. You raise good points about weather and speed, which is precisely why (in addition to its high cost) you don't see LTA in wider use. It's astonishing to think the backers of LTA wouldn't be aware of its limitations.
These days, I almost feel guilty if I buy a helium balloon.
And yet, there is something captivating about floating aloft seemingly effortlessly. So it is like a unicylce --- looks fun, but not quite practical.
"Slide Rule" by Nevil Shute.
Perhaps this explains the cult of safety that currently dominates the USA. It's a Catch-22. It's a form of constipation. We have no risk in our diet, and as a consequence molehills become mountains.