Speculative History : Gasoline vs. Fuel Cells for Airships

As long as there exist different viewpoints about a topic (e.g., are Hydrogen or Ammonia safe, economically sound, alternative fuels?), there will be naysayers. Many of these conflicting viewpoints may may even be held by bright, well-meaning people who have been exposed --- at an early stage in their education --- to facts or firmly-held conclusions that may or may not be accurate or in accordance with latest scientific theory or Best Practices.

As long as academics are paid in job security, in promotions, and in research grants, for workable ideas and real world products, little progress and few practical, functional, usable products will result.

As long as crporations are judged on or valued for their profits --- or more precisely, their payouts (dividends, stock prices, capital gains, bonuses) to stakeholders (Boards of Directors, officers, staff, employees, speculators), products with public benefit will take a back seat.

As long as there is disagreement, people will delight in ever more complex lines of reasoning and even more contentious disputes, so that arguments will contine forever and little progress will result.

BUT, suppose history were reversed --- that is, suppose NH3 or H2 were the prevailing fuel and someone proposed using petrol (gasoline) in an internal combustion engine, I am confident that a whole new body of controversy and nay-saying would arise. It might go like the following Speculative History :

1. Gasoline is dangerously explosive; a mere spark will set off a whole tank.

2. People would make comments like "Dagnab it ! Can you picture my wife lugging around a 40-pound can of petrol to refuel her auto-mobile ? ... will never happen !"

3. ... or comments like "Do you think our government could ever persuade some desert dwellers 6,000 miles away to dig in the sand for that disgusting, greasy goop and then peddle it to auto-mobile owners in the United States?" OR

4. "Gasoline is one of the most hazardous substances in existence. Our government --- the EPA especially --- and our port and harbor facilities would absolutely ban its import, transportation, and storage ! AND

5. "I'll bet that the moment you introduce this "gasoline" into an enclosed space like the cylinders of an engine --- which will be running very hot after just a few minutes, 'way above gasoline's ignition point, the entire engine will explode and burn, and the whole auto-mobile will go up in flames" AND

6. "The horse-and-carriage has proven to be the cheapest, most sensible transportation method ever known. Even the waste products can be used to nourish the soil and improve the crops. Let's see you try that with gasoline. I'm convinced that the United States will continue to grow its own fuel instead of depending on strange foreign countries" AND

7. "I'll be darned if I will store an explosive substance in my barn, or subject my family to the many possible hazards thaat go with petrol storage"

8. "Those 'gasoline proponents' never mention that burning petroleum produces an incredible array of air pollutants, like carbon monoxide --- a deadly poison, tasteless, odorless, undetectable by modern science outside a laboratory. You think that horse manure is bad for you? At least you can always dump it on your crops. This other stuff will kill your family and your corn".

9. "How are those gas-proponents planning to bring the stuff all the way from Araby ... or even from Texas, where I understand some poor misguided souls are trying to find oil by digging in the ground ? How the heck are they gonna get it from Texas to my farm in Iowa? OR

10. "Nonsense ! Might just as well try to fly in heavier-than-air ships. which we understand some fools are trying to do, even though our leading scientists have proven ---- beyond a shadow of a doubt --- that this is impossible.

11. "The only activity crazier than that is trying to fly to the moon by --- now get this --- having even bigger fools sit on top of what amounts to a huge Fourth-of-July skyrocket. It's been proven --- and published in the New York Times by its Science Editor [Editor's note : true] that in empty space there's no air --- nothing to push against . The 'rocketeers' will just shoot a few hundred feet in the air until they run out of atmosphere to push against, and then drop right down to the ground like fireworks do. I'll take the word of an authority like the New York Times over the rantings of some overeducated foreigners" AND

12. "If that petroleum stuff ever spills out of its container and gets into our ground water, it'll kill every fish from our lakes to our oceans. Even worse, it won't be safe to drink your own well water"

13. The only thing that pouring our good U.S. dollars into the Near East will fuel -- and the pundits say that it could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of time --- would be to fund the imperialist schemes of the Ottoman Empire. They'll move into the Balkans again and then into Central Europe, just like they did before, all the way to the Gates of Vienna." AND FINALLY

14. "Just picture the construction you'd need; them auto-mobiles can't travel over regular roads like my horses. Why, if I wanted to visit Cousin Abner over at Sellersville by auto-mobile, somebody would have to spend a fortune to smooth out a path from our house all the way to Sellersville. It'll never happen ! Who's gonna pay for all that ? ... and supposin' my wife gets ino a tussle with Abner's wife (they're always fussin' at each other) and we decide not to see them anymore; why that road would sit there --- unused --- for years . The criss-crossin' roads of everyone's travel dreams would make a spider's web look simple . Nah ! Never happen ! We'd wind up with more 'roads' than farmland . My Holsteins can't eat asphalt !"

15. "Have you ever heard the racket them internal combustion engines make ? ... and every scrap of oxygen would be used to burn that infernal mixture . Living conditions in our cities would be unbearable !"
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The best proof-of-concept is a working model ; successful working models using both H2 and NH3 power have existed for many ears. Our military services are practical people and, ignoring all the contrary talk, are having such modalities designed and built, and are using them all over the world for a wide variety of tasks that nothing else can do as well. The entire LTA concept, enhanced by using fuel cells instead of diesel engines to generate the electricity used for propulsion and high-technology instrumentation , is proving itself over and over around the world .

If we had poured the enormous investments of time and money spent on the development of internal combustion engines and on fixed and rotary wing aircraft into the development of LTA airships and fuel cells, I am convinced that we would have already solved the problems and issues that have been raised, as well as quieted the contrarian voices raised against them .

If we place fuel cells into LTA airships --- or apparently, even better --- into hybrid airships combining both aerodynamic lift (produced by the airship's body shaped like an airfoil) AND static lift (provided by light substances like helium and --- yes --- hydrogen displacing heavy air), the practical issues now being raised would be resolved.

H NILS, June 2011

LTA CARGO --- The Systems Approach

The Systems Approach to a Transportation Issue : Airship Cargo
The primary question of a Systems Approach should always be :"What are we trying to accomplish?", NEVER "How can we do this better?"
Here's an example of a critically important transportation situation :
Importing goods from Asia, current volume in the billions of dollars. cargo containers are safe and secure;
Means have been devised to stack them aboard specially-designed ships, solving the problem of traversing the primary barrier --- the Pacific Ocean.
The difficult leg : getting the goods to distribution points in the Heartland and cities on the East Coast of the United States.
Barriers :
a. the central cordillera of mountains running down the spine of North America
b. a long (read "costly") and hazardous voyage around Cape Horn
c. Getting through the Panama Canal
d. sadly, crumbling infrastructure in our Western Waterways
e. The Mississippi River, the primary north-south artery in the midsection of our country, is a winding waterway of greatly varying depths and difficult navigation
Current solutions :
A. land the ships at West Coast ports --- primarily Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, then transfer them to containers-on-railroad-flat-cars (COFC) or large diesel-powered motor trucks to their destinations, necessitating the long, arduous, and costly route over the Rocky Mountains OR
B1. take the ships through the Panama Canal (for a fee), perform the container-on-railroad-flat-car transfer at Gulf Coast or East Coast ports, then by U.S. railroads or motor truck to their destinations OR
B2. navigate the ships through the Panama Canal, then to COFC intermodal ports, then by US railroads or trucks to their final destination.
The real issue is how to transport goods most expeditiously and inexpensively (competitively) from one place to another at the lowest cost --- most competitively. All too often, bright minds in science, engineering, and technology devote their time and energy to materials and manufacturing methods, neglecting applying new technologies or approaches to their transportation.
We believe that the problem has been solved, but solutions have rarely been applied because of the peculiar rewards system existing in academia. Faculty are rewarded ( granted tenure, promoted) based on quantity of research and number of publications, rarely based on the solution of real-world problems. This can --- and often does --- result in the constant re-invention and presumed improvement of the wheel.
Variations of this approach also exist in industry, in two guises :
1. Extracting the maximum number of papers from one topic to extract the maximum benefit from public relations and customer anticipation
2. Pursuit of the Perfect Solution displacing the Acceptable Solution, sometimes referred to as the "Perfect being the Enemy of the Good".
These add luster to researchers but accomplish little in the real world. A relevant example in the LTA world :
For some years, a conference called "Airships to the Arctic", originally sponsored by a very reputable Canadian university in the prairie states but now produced by an independent non-profit agency, has considered the problem of transporting cargo to remote areas in Northern Canada. Most reasonable folks agree that LTA Airships could provide an ideal solution. Such "heavy-lift" LTA craft have been designed and brought to a reasonable and competent level, as much as one could hope in the early stages of a new and evolving technology.

BUT, there is no avenue, program, or academic department to actually build an airship with that capability. Most LTA airships that have been produced, are the products of small manufacturers in rented industrial buildings, and oftgen have difficulty funding and marketing. SO, the university and its successor non-profit organization continue each year to roll out the same techniques, the same encouraging speeches, frequently presented to the same audience, at yet another conference ... but these wonderful plans are not put into effect or action.
... and yet, several reputable manufacturers of LTA airships build high quality products that have not gained widespread market acceptance, perhaps because of price or unwarranted public fear generated by the Hindenburg disaster . These companies are relatively unknown, and therefore their products are underutilized for transportation, primarily because transportation has held an ultra-conservative viewpoint regarding acceptance of radical change.Tomorrow (Blog # 3) will continue with a solution which attacks the problem head-on.