Dr. Barry Prentice is an academic who has --- for many years --- been studying the Arctic for its role as a source of strategic resources and for its continuing need to be supplied with necessary products, services, and the necessities of life, during which time he has been organizing and directing authoritative programs on the Arctic, as a Supply Chain issue from his strategic vantage point in Canada .
The solution proposed by Dr. Prentice for the difficult task of travelling across the mix of tundra and intermittently frozen lakes, and through storms of snow and ice, has been the use of lighter-than-air and hybrid airships*** as heavy-cargo transportation . He has been joined in this endeavor by a group of knowledgeable advocates , growing in number, concepts, and solutions , backed by much more than mere words by means of the airships they are investing in, constructing, and actually operating .
As the list and quantity of scarce and valuable mineral and biological assets grows --- assets which are becoming critical needs in our high technology world --- the support he is receiving is growing, as is, sadly, vocal criticism from people who clearly have little or no knowledge of the subject. We needn't note here the frequently repeated pseudo-factoids that are presented by these people to support their vapid remarks . The Internet, in particular, with its low-to-no entry cost and its availability to anyone --- credentialed or not--- has fostered , frankly , many reckless and foolish statements .
It is therefore very understandable why Dr. Prentice should find it necessary --- after reading one too many comments citing the 1937 disaster of the Hindenburg Zeppelin, whose precise cause is still being debated by experts, as a reason not to pursue the design, construction, and use of airships .
Dr. Prentice has very recently (and with the patience probably born of his academic background) gone on to explain, probably for the 100th time or more, that to judge modern-day airships on the basis of the Hindenburg disaster is cognate to judging aircraft safety based on the safety and flight performance of the Wright Brothers. Back in 1937, airships like the Hindenburg did not have the benefit of radar, much less experience in engineering this new kind of transportation, a minimum of weather-forecasting ability prior to its flight, and without the many new advances in material science and metallurgy. Prentice explained that modern airships, unlike the Hindenburg, are filled with helium, an inert gas, rather than flammable hydrogen . We liked his punch line, which like many aphorisms, are brief, to the point, irrefutable, and timely in this year of the anniversary of another disaster, albeit a maritime one :
"Why do we pick on the Hindenburg?" he asked. "We don't trudge out the Titanic every time someone mentions a new cruise ship."
We applaud Dr. Prentice's tireless refutation of the witless comments of the
uninformed . We are pleased that our military services and our security forces , as well as far-seeing manufacturers, soldier on in their continued use and support of this useful old-but-new means of transportation .
*** Hybrid airships : a relatively recent innovation in which the airship's lift is supplied not only by the lifting gas (hydrogen, helium, or other light gasses ) but also by Bernoulli Effect forces of the air travelling over exterior airfoil surfaces built into the design of the airship's envelope . Why "Hybrid" ? Because it results from the marriage of a lighter-than-air airship and an airplane . Congratulations to the parents on their Blessed Event .
No comments:
Post a Comment