NASA and ALASKA OFFICIALS SEE NEW USES FOR AIRSHIPS

Published August 23, 2012 Copyright by the Associated Press

                                                                                                                                                    with COMMENTARY IN FOOTNOTE by HAL (HYBRID) PELTA

A California company will fly its airship up Alaska's Inside Passage and all the way to Anchorage next year if it can line up sponsors. Lighter-than-air aircraft advocates say such vessels may one day be a common sight, delivering fuel or construction material to remote Alaska villages or food to hungry people on another continent.

S. Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, said his agency is offering its expertise and technology to the fledgling industry, which has important applications for science and for delivering cargo to hard-to-reach destinations.

"Airships appear to us to be an industry about to take off, if you'll pardon the pun," he said. Worden spoke Wednesday at the second Cargo Airships for Northern Operations Workshop, which brought together airship builders and representatives of mining, petroleum and communication companies who operate off the grid in Alaska. 'Airships appear to us to be an industry about to take off, if you'll pardon the pun.', Worden commented.

NASA's roots, Worden said, are in aeronautics and helping develop new industry. Working with Airship Ventures, whose 246-foot helium-filled Zeppelin is based at Moffett Field outside San Francisco, NASA has concluded that hovering airships are a valued tool for climate studies, earth science and astrophysics research.

They also fit the bill for a major new NASA initiative — developing "green aviation" that puts fewer greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than cargo jets, Worden said.

Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell said the state is a "ready-made market for airship technology." Alaska has 200 villages off the road system that need lower-cost cargo deliveries. Airships also could provide alternative transportation for industries that want to cross environmentally sensitive wilderness.

Industry expert Ron Hochstetler, who helped organize the conference, said airship cargo delivery is not competitive with trucks on interstate highways or cargo ships. Airship cargo's per ton cost fits between cargo airplanes and surface transportation.

The industry is at a tipping point, Hochstetler said. Airship cargo technology can deliver tens of tons, and customers have indicated that they are interested, but both sides need to connect on specifics.

"We're bringing that market closer and closer to the providers of the ships and the services," he said.

Francis Govers, special missions manager for Airship Adventures, said his company has planned a tentative route to fly its 246-foot helium-filled Zeppelin airship to Alaska next June and will decide by the end of the year if it lines up industry partners. Cruise ship companies and documentary makers are possibilities for joint ventures, he said.

Editor's Note by Hybrid Pelta :

We know that this is old news, but it's worth reprinting here in this little publication, as

1. it is an important and significant bit of news .

2. not everyone receives Fox News or the Associated Press .

3. So much other significant news has gotten lost in the daily press .

4. We would like to formally recognize the years of ground-breaking work along the same lines by Dr. Barry Prentice, the Founder of ISOPolar and on the faculty at the University of Manitoba

HNP : Sadly, the program failed, even with all that support and a first-rate well-designed, operational airship. Our analysis : Airship ventures dependent on passenger traffic are doomed to failure (well, maybe "doomed" is too strong a word). We remember all too well the red ink that flowed in gallons recording the sad tale of railway passenger service . In this cognate transportation scenario, airship passenger service, with few exceptions, cannot support a profitable enterprise, primarily because transportation passengers are rarely willing to pay enough in fares to cover the true costs of service. How do airlines exist ? Our take : because the Federal and state governments are willing to support the huge cost of the vast infrastructure required to support airline traffic, including the air traffic control system and the cost of runway and airport construction and maintenance.  The railroads now exist primarily on the income from freight traffic ! We all watched in wonder and disbelief as existing railroads skittered away from acquiring AMTRAK ; just look at the history of abandoned rail lines !

AIRSHIPS VERSUS AIRPLANES --- AN EARLY (1931) COMPARISON

Where have we Airship enthusiasts and advocates failed ? By forgetting that the Medium is the Message, and that we have not placed sufficient effort into teaching the public --- for, in essence, that's what Public Relations is (are?) --- teaching the many advantages, benefits, and the true story of the Airship.

Advocacy, Education, Leadership ! That's a start !

Here is a copy of an interesting comparison in a book published in 1931 by Hugh Allen, whose thesis was the natural advantages and dominance of LTA airships over airplanes. It's an interesting twist on the usual criticisms hurled at airships. Quotes follow :

.... The airplane is a dynamic craft, deriving its lifting power from its velocity alone. The air pressure and suction on its wings give aerodynamic lift only as long as flying speed is maintained.

The airship is primarily aerostatic, that is its buoyancy arises from the fact that the lifting gas it contains is so much lighter than air that it will support, without other assistance, not only the balloon-like cells in which the gas is contained but the metal frame of the ship itself and the weight of crew, motors, fuel, and a pay load.

The airship continues to remain aloft even though its motors are shut off.

The airship, however, has an additional buoyancy, an aerodynamic lift resultant from motors and control surfaces.

[HNP comment : SO FAR, SO GOOD! Then the analysis and predictions start]

The airship and the airplane differ again in that the airplane is primarily a fast short distance craft, while the airship is slower and comes into its full efficiency only on long voyages, particularly across oceans.

The cruising speed of most transport or mail planes carrying a pay load is 100 to 120 miles an hour with a radius [RANGE] of about 500 miles. Though naturally a specially built or special purpose plane can fly faster and farther if pay load is replaced by fuel.

The airship, having a speed of 80 miles an hour and carrying ten tons of useful load, has been flown more than 6,000 miles in 69 hours with a comfortable fuel reserve at the end of the journey.

While the transatlantic flights of the R-34, the Los Angeles, the Graf Zeppelin and the R-100 have indicated transatlantic flying as a logical field for the airship, there will still be controversy as to whether the airplane may not challenge the airship here.

In discussing the subject before a meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers in New York in May, 1930, former Commander J.C. Hunsaker, U.S.N., who had charge for the Navy of the design both of heavier-than-air craft and lighter-than-air craft during the war [WORLD WAR I] stated his belief that :

"All successful Atlantic airplane flights may fairly be discounted as having been made by overloaded planes, without payload, by abnormally courageous pilots, and in the most favorable summer weather that could be found. The unsuccessful airplane flights give mute testimony that good luck cannot be depended on.

"We do know, however," he continued, "that the modern airplane can fly the Atlantic provided that one of several things does not happen. The things that must not happen re : first, persistent head winds causing exhaustion of fuel supply at sea; second, engine failure from any cause; third, loss of visibility with consequent loss of control and course; and fourth, failure of any structural part or function of lifting, stabilizing or control surfaces.

"Each of these contingencies may be fatal to the airplane, and in this I include the flying boat or seaplane in the North Atlantic, as its chance of survival there on the surface of the sea is at best precarious. In low latitudes both in the Pacific and Atlantic, the flying boat has a very fair chance to remain afloat, but due to the infrequency of passing steamers many days may elapse before rescue. In general, a forced landing on the high seas cannot be tolerated by a commercial enterprise.

The chance of a forced landing at sea due to exhaustion of fuel is measured by the margin of fuel carried versus the weather to be expected. We know that even with an overloaded start and no pay load and with favorable weather there has been practically no margin for those airplanes that have successfully negotiated the eastward crossing of the North Atlantic.

We are building larger airplanes but their endurance unfortunately is not increasing... There are gains in aerodynamic and structural efficiency due to changes in design made possible by very large airplanes, yet the effect of such gains is largely absorbed in overcoming the relative weight increase due to size itself."

End of quote from book "The Story of the Airship"

[GEE, DO YOU THINK THAT THE AIRPLANE WILL EVER CATCH UP TO THE AIRSHIP --- THE EXPERT ENGINEER WHO WROTE THAT LITTLE PIECE IN 1931, QUOTED VERBATIM ABOVE, ASSURES US THAT IT COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAPPEN but it's certainly an interesting twist on the usual blather by the negative nattering anti-airship nabobs. ]

 

FOLKS, WE HAVE FAILED TO TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUE VALUE OF AIRSHIPS

Airship Intelligence

Folks, we have failed the Airship, and thereby the American public !

How can that be ? We have failed to get the true story of the Airship across, and with it the many lost opportunities to educate people about what it truly can do for us.

How do we know ? Three Signs :

IF the media still flash the terrifying image of the Hindenburg going down in flames at Lakehurst !

IF we still have folks cry out, almost in glee "Oh, the Humanity" every time that image appears ... and NOT ONLY then. There was one poor Navy enlisted man working at an airship hangar who got a chorus of that phrase every time he walked across the hangar floor, from the (inevitably watching) gang of non-Airship sailors .

.. and IF we, meaning the Collective Semi-Conscious can gasp in horror at the thought of one airship accident in 1937, but barely glance at a picture of a helicopter accident in the latest news. Unconvinced ? Here are the statistics SOURCE : Helicopter Annual 2009

 

Number of civil helicopter accidents  Number of fatal helicopter accidents

accidents between 2004 and 2008 ;     

                                                                     

         2004 --- 180                                2004 --- 33

         2005 --- 93                                  2005 --- 26

 

         2006 --- 162                                2006 --- 25

 

         2007 --- 175                                2007 --- 23

 

         2008 --- 140                                2008 --- 29

 

 

Pretty nasty statistics when compared with the single 1937 Hindenburg disaster !

Five Reasons That Airships Are Superior to Quadcopters

AN  IMPORTANT AND INTERESTING BLOG FROM HELIOS AIRSHIPS :
Thursday, September 1, 2011
                                                                                                                                                 

 

10:32 PM Helios Airships

Airships are better than quadcopters in almost every single way. There, we said it, and it feels great. The world's current obsession with quadcopters as UAVs for purposes ranging from surveillance to carrying aid to remote villages is completely ridiculous. Something inside me tells me that it has something to do with man's obsession with toys. The fact is, an airship outperforms a quadcopter in 99% of situations.

1. Mission Duration
Easily the biggest advantage over quadcopters, whose flight times are usually limited to about 20 min or less, a solar-powered airship can keep on trucking for (literally) weeks without stopping for anything. Try adding some humanitarian aid weight to that copter, and it'll get across your front lawn before puttering and crashing onto your poodle. We really have to laugh when we read articles like this.

2. Payload Capabilities

Mission duration is directly impacted by the weight of the copter and its payload, but an airship doesn't care about the weight of what it's carrying because if more payload is needed we'll just simply make the airship larger for the client. We could carry an M1-A1 tank from Kansas to Iraq without stopping at Shell if we wanted to. Quadcopters simply do not have the power to carry a heavy payload over long distances. At least until scientists create far denser lithium-ion batteries.

                                                                         BLIMP

 

3. Less Maintenance
Airships have far fewer moving parts than quadcopters, therefore they receive less wear and tear per working hour. The biggest problem with any airship is to keep the helium inside the envelope. However we're very close to being the very first ones to solve this issue, and we're very excited. Anyhow, the rate of loss is not so much as to make airship not viable for market.

4. High Altitude Missions

An airship can be made to fly in the outer atmosphere for scientific, tourism, and surveillance without any issues. You can fly our surveillance drone so high that it is barely visible by the naked eye from the ground, but it's still able to count the hairs on your head (apologies if you're bald). It's well out of range of small arms fire, and hitting it with a flak cannon would be like trying to use a carnival BB gun to shoot a tic tac off of your head at 1,000 paces. Not to mention that it's got an almost non-existent radar signature.                                                                                 HYBRID AIRSHIP

5. More Flexibility
While you can use a quadcopter to do a variety of things, an airship can do more, because it's able to fly higher, longer, and carry more. And they can be made into all shapes and sizes. You can make it fly across the office to grab a stapler, or to deploy a missile from 50,000 feet onto your target's head. Carry 10 tons of water and release over a forest fire? No problem. Cell phone tower? Sure. You tell us what you need it to do, and we can build it for you .  .               

                                                                                                            QUADCOPTER

What You Can Take Away
We've outlined the biggest advantages above, but most of them are inter-connected; a quadcopter simply doesn't have the capability to do anything useful unless you're a soldier needing an instant battlefield overview. And even then, if an area is known to be a hotspot, military personnel could simple deploy an airship overhead for the duration of the entire war, and give it light maintenance once a month. If you're thinking about using a quadcopter for anything practical, call us instead. If you're looking for a cool toy you can chase your poodle with, buy a quadcopter.