Military Mistakes : The Helicopter is now being put forth as an all-purpose vehicle

[Before we go any further , we advise all our Faithful Readers without a sense of humor that this is Satire --- look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's] :

Another bit of foolishness has just been announced in an article in the New York World Telegram by the Department of the Army . Apparently at the behest of some thinkers from Cloud Cuckoo Land at the highest levels, our military services are ordering the design, development, and construction of a new device {apparently concocted by an inventor with the suspiciously Czarist Russian name of Sikorsky} called a HELI-COPTER --- when you hear the specifications and a description of the lifting mechanism, you will think it an April Fool's joke by some younger members of the General Staff . Unfortunately, this is no joke :

This device , instead of depending upon lift generated by wings (bad enough !), is supported in the air by making the wings rotate at high speed --- over 100 revolutions per minute . (NO, REALLY ! )The wings , called rotors  --- sic ---  are made to spin by a gasoline-powered engine , despite the very well-known propensity of gasoline to burst into flame at the slightest application of, or even proximity to , a flame.

Just picture our doughboys, relaxing after a sortie over the Hun army defenses, lighting up a well-earned cigar or cigarillo . In order to light this cigarette , one of them casually strikes a Wax Vesta, which bursts into flame and the entire aircraft, crew and all, explodes in a horrible fatal blast and fire .

Worse is to come : If one of our aeroplanes loses its motive power, it glides (more or less) safely to earth using its wings much as a bird does when returning to its nest .  If a Heli-Copter loses power, nothing can save it from a terrible uncontrollable flight to earth, resulting in death to its entire complement of fly-boys (as they are coming to be known) .

To what end ? With what capability ? We are told that this device (we refuse to call it a flying ship) holds promise of carrying as much as 500 pounds. As this is almost the entire weight of its crew of three men and their equipment, nothing is left for cargo or transport ... a total waste of money, energy, and effort.

We are informed of its ability to hover in one place, as though it were an advantage . Just picture what would  happen to it if it were to hover over the enemy lines . Immediately, one of the Huns, who has honed his skill as a shootist by hunting wild boars in the Austrian Alps, fires a single shot into the general areas of its tank containing refined petroleum (rated at 80 octane, a measure of its flammability on a scale of  100) . The bullet, red-hot from its passage through the closely-fitting barrel of the enemy weapon, will leave a long trail of ignition as it passses through the aerial vehicle , whose petroleum will burst into flame; the engine will stop, the "rotors" will cease to turn, and the entire craft will , again, plunge to earth .

Where are we obtaining this sort of advice regarding advances in technology ? Is this what our fine colleges and military academies are teaching our youth ? Another total waste of money and talent, and an example of the total lack of leadership and basic military experience of our current President, who, we learn too late, has spent his career as Professor (!) and President (!) at Princeton University (!?) , a "sleepy little college in a sleepy little town", as it has been described [TRUE !] by                     Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University in New York --- a Man's Man in a Real City  !  Wake up , America !

FLARE GAS NOW A PRODUCTIVE CONTRIBUTOR TO THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY

Wärtsilä, a major engine manufacturer in Finland, has developed the GasReformer, a new product that converts gases that have in the past just been burned off in a flare that is a very visible symbol of air pollution into usable fuel for dual fuel engines. Not incidentally, the device produces Hydrogen at no additional cost as part of the process. This should put an end to carping critics of the cost of a Hydrogen economy AND to those who contend that hydrogen is too expensive as a lifting gas for lighter-than-air airships . Here is a chart adapted from an article in the April 2013 issue of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News :

GasReformer by Wärtsilä : Real Case Performance

        Input Gas Composition                                                      Output Gas Product

Methane           78%                                                      Methane           79%                                         

Ethane                9%                                                      Ethane                0%

Propane              7%                                                      Propane              0%

Butane                3%                                                      Butane                0%

Hydrogen         0%                                                     Hydrogen       10%

Carbon Dioxide  2%                                                      Carbon Dioxide  10%

Water                0%                                                      Water                  1%

Composition of Flare Gas changes from pollutant, to be burnt off, changing useless waste products to useful fuels.

Let us recall that hydrogen can also be used as input to fuel cells for the production of electricity in both stationary and mobile environments, with NO noxious waste products . It looks like the Hydrogen Economy has now taken another leap forward .         

May 2013 UPDATE TO Previous Blog "CHINA EYES GREENLAND'S NATURAL RESOURCES"

                
                       UPDATE concerning  CHINESE INTEREST IN THE ARCTIC

 

We know and understand that the country of Iceland, mentioned in this New York Times article,    IS NOT Greenland, which was mentioned and discussed in a previous recent BLOG, but it certainly raises a few eyebrows  and causes people who keep an eye on these things to smile knowingly .

One does not get to be a Chinese billionaire without intelligence, in both senses : focused knowledge AND  reasoning ability . It certainly places increased importance in, and raises interest among those keeping an eye on, developments in : 

1. logistics and Arctic transportation modalities

2. Airships to the Arctic and ISO Solar

3. Ice Road Truckers

4. the Canadian national government and its provincial counterparts, not to mention ... 

5. I imagine --- the intelligence community in the West.

It looks to this Blogger as though events of some major strategic geopolitical interest and importance are taking place in a very high-stakes game .

Gentlemen, start your engines (and your helium and hydrogen concerns), despite the naysayers who simply don't understand  the role of Lighter-than-Air airships . This could also explain the enormous upsurge in the number and sources  of Blog views that our counters are showing.      Stay tuned (and buy stock in companies that deal in rare and expensive lifting gases) .

THE UPDATE ITSELF, as published in the NEW YORK TIMES, one of the few news sources that one can trust these days, no matter what your political persuasion :

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4 May 2013

"Even to Icelanders accustomed to harsh weather and isolation," reported The New York Times in March, the city of Grimsstadir "is a particularly desolate spot." Nonetheless, Chinese billionaire land developer Huang Nubo has announced he intends to build a luxury hotel and golf course in the area for his countrymen seeking "clean air and solitude." Since snowfalls often run from September until May, locals are skeptical of Huang's motives, but he continues to press for a long-term lease covering about 100 square miles for a project estimated to eventually cost about $100 million.

[New York Times, 3-22-2013]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CAN YOU SAY "CLEAN AIR AND SOLITUDE" WITH A

STRAIGHT FACE, KIDS ?

Airship Lift Systems : A Fine Distinction

 

                                                                                                                                            We had previously defined and distinguished two principal means of operational lift for airships : aerostatic (where the principal lifting force was derived from the buoyancy of an enclosed lighter-than-air gas such as hydrogen or helium) and hybrids (where the aerostatic lift is augmented by lift derived from air passing over an airfoil, such as a wing or other curved surface, and which requires at least some forward motion of the airship).

My attention has been called to a still finer distinction which was thoughtfully drawn by Edward Pevzner, of Aeroscraft in Montebello, California, when he spoke as one of the principal presenters at Airships to the Arctic V, the fifth in the series of those first-rate conferences conceived and produced by Dr. Barry Prentice, on the faculty of the University of Manitoba in Canada.
                                                                                                                                    Pevzner distinguishes the source of lift for Aeroscraft --- his firm's airships --- from other hybrids. One can't do better than quote from that segment of his "Airships to the Arctic" Power Point presentation entitled "Combined Lift Air Vehicles (sic) Concepts" . Aside : Like most scientists and engineers educated in Europe, he does very significantly better in English than most Americans would do in the non-English engineering literature. A Danish woman of our acquaintance used to define "illiterate" as someone who could speak or write fluently in only one language.

He explains that --- as we all presumably know --- our normative idea of an airship generates lift through the buoyancy of entrapped lighter-than-air gas (Archimedes Principle). It's the same lifting force experienced by a boat in the water, where it is called a floating force.

Our conventional idea of a hybrid airship adds to that "floating on air" static lift the aerodynamic lift provided by Bernoulli's Principle, which requires air to travel over a curved surface affixed by design onto the airship, either through the shape of the craft (the iconic "Deltoid Pumpkin Seed") OR by an alar --- wing-like --- surface affixed to the airship for that purpose .

Pevzner accurately distinguishes the design of the Aeros (although he brilliantly dances around any sort of disclosure of his company's proprietary Intellectual Property concept) by explaining that the Aeroscraft is a new approach using derivative airship concepts and a suite of technologies integrated to control lift at all times, independently of off-board ballast."

This achieves greater utility and fewer operational limitations.

Our technical people must confess that his explanation leaves them none the wiser as to the basic principles or techniques utilized by Aeros. As his firm begins to further delineate these methodologies, we'll be sure to sharpen up our explanations to our readers.

The advantages that Pevzner points out include elimination of the need to take on ballast during or after off-loading the payload --- always a pain ; eliminating or minimizing infrastructure ; the ability to operate from unimproved landing sites ; and, finally, lift control so fine that the Aeros can essentially perform vertical take-off and hover maneuvers.

All this arises from the application of the Systems Approach (which they refer to as the "Systematic Approach", a very reasonable variant translation of our in-house phrase), and which we uniformly and enthusiastically endorse .

Sounds good ; it is clearly evincing interest by all aspects of commercial and governmental transportation, especially those in hostile environments dominated by severe weather conditions; impossible, impassible, and non-existent  roads ; lack of decent rail service ; or the occasional .50 caliber bullet flying by . As they used to say in the old-timey adventure serials on the radio, stay tuned.

We will tread lightly around the geopolitical minefields of who-owns-what in the areas surrounding the North Pole. This is evoking major interest in light of significant discoveries of critical mineral resources and in light of the fabled "The Northwest Passage", a new path between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans which may influence every aspect of international trade. Does the name "Panama Canal" ring a bell ? Maybe Denmark's legitimate claim to Greenland no longer leads to a hand-over-the-mouth suppression of a chuckle in polite company.

"Global Warming" ? Nonsense ... except for the uncomfortable evidence in high-altitude photographs of clearly visible navigable lanes between the melting ice. Even sailboats are making their way through ! Maybe there's more to this Airships [in the] Arctic business than most complacent, geographically illiterate Americans realize.

Maybe those Airships to the Arctic people can be persuaded to move their conference to Florida's comfortable climate, where it will attract (on the order of) ten times as much attendance ---including Internet Pundits and the all-important world press, as well as its usual cold-hardened attendance. As I recall, they used to have on their staff  a Professor Richard P. Beilock from the University of Florida . Still, Florida is such a transportation hub that most people attending a conference like that will have an easier time getting there than getting to Manitoba, Canada or Anchorage, Alaska . 

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.

SOME OF THE MANY APPLICATIONS for which airships are safe, suitable, & sensible in addition to transportation of freight and passengers

1. Sporting event video coverage

2. Law enforcement: traffic surveillance and control; aerial views of traffic accidents;

3. Marine mammal population census and migration patterns

4. Design-and-Build surveys for planning & construction of bridges & roads --- carrying those first lines across the chasm.

5. Marine biology --- spotting red tides in coastal waters; monitoring the health of coral reefs

6. Fire fighting --- first-on-scene situation assessment in high rise fires, inaccessible areas, brush and forest fires, and involving hazardous materials

7. News organizations --- parades, ceremonies, sporting events, and in situations where danger to the news crew may exist

8. Radioactive and toxic waste sites --- photography & survey without risk

9. Geology --- Oil field exploration; survey and lava sample of volcanic eruptions

10. Federal & State Forest and Wildlife Services --- tree census; lumber poaching; game and fish poaching

11. Telecommunications --- surveying & designing fiber optic cable installations

12. Meteorological observations --- measuring wind speed, air pressure, air temperature, dew point, and humidity at various altitudes above ground level

13. Raising communications antennas to effective transmission altitudes during emergency situations

14. Fishing --- spotting big game fish for sport fishing, and schools of food fish for purse seining; seining schools of small fish and invertebrates visible from the air, for sale as bait

15. Monitoring railways, pipelines, and power lines --- a constant and ever- present requirement

16. Monitoring air pollutants for air quality standards determination

17. Agriculture --- Precision agriculture techniques using remote sensing technology to monitor crop moisture content; no-harm seeding from the air, in which the soil does not get compacted by heavy tractors, and therefore remains friable as a good seed bed

18. Archaeological site mapping; correlating aerial photographs with ground level excavations and discoveries

19. Commercial aerial photography for tourist and visitors’ bureaus, yacht brokers, school programs; realtors;

20. "Green" non-disruptive exploration of ecologically sensitive biospheres, such as rain forests and forest canopies

21. Lifting transmitting equipment into the sky for maximum range.

22. Radio antennas receiving and relaying Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) data from Ground Forces [military]

23. Long term recording in place by meteorological instruments    --- anemometers, humidity meters, thermometers, etc.

24. Air sampling for pollutants, particulates, insects, and pollen.

25. Acoustic sensors for detection of intruders, without the interference of loud noise from helicopter rotors and internal combustion engines

26. Radio relay and jamming for counter-insurgency purposes. [military]

27. Detecting of mines & other explosive devices [military and, for civilian use, detecting unexploded abandoned mines, a major cause of injuries to children in former war zones ]

28. Thermal imaging

29. Precise aiming of conventional ballistic weapons from a safe distance by Forward Artillery Observers [military]

30. Battlefield or distant control of ground forces [military]

31. Crowd control and detection devices [law enforcement]

CONCEIVED and COMPILED by HYBRID]  PELTA

 

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

Here is a copy of an interesting comparison in a book by Hugh Allen, published in 1931, 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.

[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. ]

FAILING THE AIRSHIP --- Public Education

Folks, we have failed the Airship !

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 just 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 (inevitable) gang of non-Airship Sailors .

If WE --- meaning the Collective Semi-Conscious --- can gasp at the thought of One Airship Accident, but barely glance at a picture of a helicopter accident . Unconvinced ? Here are the hard statistics :

Number of civil helicopter accidents ---- Total number of civil helicopter accidents between 2004 and 2008 ; SOURCE : Helicopter Annual 2009

 

        2004 --- 180

        2005  ---  93

        2006 --- 162

        2007 --- 175

        2008 --- 140

Total number of fatal helicopter accidents 33 26 25 23 29

        2004 ---   33

        2005 ---   26

        2006 ---   25

        2007 ---   23

        2008 ---   29

Total number of fatalities resulting from helicopter accidents

        2004 ---  68

        2005 ---  44

        2006 ---  43

        2007 ---  43

        2008 ---  75

Total number of serious injuries in helicopter accidents

        2004 ---  38

        2005 ---  44

        2006 ---  34

        2007 ---  34

        2008 ---  28

Pretty nasty statistics, wot ?!

We are put in mind of a quote from the Director of the Computer Center at a large university who commented about the time he spent in helicopters during his work for the U.S. Army : "During every flight, I could not help continually remembering that this chopper was manufactured by the Lowest Bidder on the contract".

Where have we Airship Enthusaiasts and Advocates failed ? By forgetting that the Medium is the Message, and that we have never placed any effort into teaching the public --- for that's what Public Relations is (are?) --- the many advantages, benefits, and the balanced true story of the Airship.

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

Shame on us ! What can we do ? More to follow !

(signed)                                                                                        Hybrid Pelta