MY CHOICE OF AIRSHIP IS ... and the Undisputed Winner is ...

After all the long dissertations that seem to stretch on about this wonderful new era in Airships ---- let's call it the Airship Renaissance ---- here's our firm's pick for the Airship of the Future, one that encapsulates all the best features of What's Coming Next, together with the rationale that dictated each aspect of the choice :

A Hybrid Craft --- where the lift is provided by a combination of
                     static lift --- lift provided by a lifting gas displacing an equal amount of heavier air , and
                     aerodynamic lift --- where some lift is provided by airflow over a suitably designed                        airfoil, using the Bernoulli Effect  

1. Unmanned (Shocked?)
Training of controllers is much shorter and less demanding than selecting only pilots of general aviation or military conventional aircraft and then training them in this entirely new skill. The necessity of the usual crossover from pilot has not been proven to our satisfaction, as demonstrated by current military requirements. The military services don't have the luxury of time, and the fact that their controllers are better than just good enough is good enough for us. Amusingly enough, one of the indicators of success as a controller --- NOT a requirement --- is that applicants for the training have previous experience as a ... hold it for this one ... radio-control model aircraft hobbyists. That tells us something !

2. Lighter-than-Air Dirigible --- that is, an aircraft that can be Directed (steered) rather than flown subject entirely to the winds

3. Lifted by Hydrogen, not Helium, as the lifting gas (now there's a surprise)

4. Powered by a Fuel Cell --- a relatively recent development in eenergy circles, converting the fuel which varies, directly into electricity throgh the use of catalysts and "dry" chemical processes

5. Providing electricity to the electric motors (rather than diesel or gasoline) very efficiently

6. Provided with the capability of snapping on the accessories that perform the mission, so that the airship has great flexibility in mission type

7. and Rented or Leased out (rather than sold) to the ultimate user so that, in effect, you sell the same product over and over --- a much easier accomplishment for expensive equipment, and ensure that the Operator is highly trained and experienced, and repossession of the asset is relatively easy, if necessary. 

The Economic Value of Airships

Yesterday's post began a critique of an article in ScientificAmerican.com, a usually sober and authoritative source . Quoting from the on-line article :

"In 1950, Theodore von Karman, one of the founding fathers of ... aeronautical engineering, published a paper entitled What Price Speed ? Specific Power Required for Propulsion of Vehicles.
[now updated by faculty at Imperial Colleege, London].
von Karman showed that if you take a vehicle's horsepower divided by its weight and speed , yoou can see how efficient that vehicle is compared to other vehicles."

The article goes on to argue, essentially, that the reason for the lack of progress in airship development is due to their comparative inefficiency as transportation.

Well, there's a lot more to that story than the author provides his readers. First, some brief background on the situation :

Dr. Barry Prentice, of the University of Manitoba, is to be strongly commended for his tenacity in pursuing vital North American concerns in the North circumpolar regions. He began his crusade to wake up international interest in the once-forbidding regions that stretch around the North Pole for such an enormous distance north of Canada, through areas which were once considered of no interest because they were so unnavigable, so difficult of traverse, and so seemingly bare of value, of resources, and of people.


BUT, time and paradigm shifts changes all things. Three critical variables shifted :


1. the brutal economic facts of the discovery of priceless mineral resources in that area,

2. the realization of the sudden accessibility of these areas because of the opening of the Northwest Passage attributable to climate change, and

3. the interest of the area as a geo-politically and strategically important region.


Travel requirements and political control exerted their inevitable influences. Suddenly, the Middle East, with its almost Biblical politics and its quasi-monopoly on oil, has begun to diminish in importance. Entrepreneurs in other countries began to dig their giant globes of the Earth --- with their three-dimensional perspectives on trade routes --- out of the executive offices where they had served as room decorations for centuries.

Suddenly, these peculiar-looking vehicles called Airships began to make a great deal of sense. Why?


1. They didn't need roads

2. They didn't need a complex infrastructure like long runways, often impossible to construct in the Northlands

3. They didn't require the huge initial cost --- in the billions --- to construct the spider web of access roads which ground travel appeared to require. Furthermore who would provide or finance them ?
That's a very large dollar figure that is rarely factored into developmental planning or assessment . Remember that mining companies are in the business of locating and extracting minerals, not in the business of building roads.

4. Airplanes --- even great ones like the DeHavilland Beaver ---- have limitations on the size and weight they can carry and require major construction of runways, landing strips, and airports, as well as refueling and repair facilities.

5. Can you say "broken truck axles"?

6. Native settlements, as they increased in complexity, have come to depend on external resources --- even to outboard motor parts for boats used in arctic mammal hunts

Where is the concern for Efficiency now?) .


The people who say, "Ice Roads? Why don't they just travel when they can?" must be living in an ivory tower world. Immediate need and unexpected emergencies constantly intrude into our Real World . It's a world in which, every day, conditions are evolving that force new realities upon development and support in the circumpolar regions, which in turn force the adoption of new modalities on the planners.


The hard-nosed, gimlet-eyed businessmen and investors associated with mining, logging, and natural gas exploration companies ask "What is the best way to do that?" and suddenly find themselves becoming strong supporters of airships to meet arctic heavy lift needs.


These questions must be answered, and sooner rather than later :


1. Who will pay for access roads?
2. Who will fund the initial capital costs?
3. ... with no clear Return On Investment? Who will wait the 10 to 15 years for this ROI ?
4. Who will own and control these part-time highways ?
5. Who will deflect the impatience of the shareholders?
6. Who will determine the priority of appropriating the building costs?
7. Isn't it the truth that the need for investment capital is often inversely proportonal to its availability, often with self-appointed naysayers arguing that it's all unnecessary and inefficient.


When you ask "Why is it taking so long to get flying, viable airships to market?" , please add to all those impedimenta the following major considerations :


1. The very long certification times for new modalities of air travel.
2. The uncertainty of the certification processes and requirements for these unfamiliar airships
3. The lead time to educate pilot operators in an unfamiliar operational process
4. The resistance and mind-sets of legislators and bureaucrats
5. ... and, finally, the opposition of theoreticians concerned with efficiency who can prove mathematically and (in Captain Queeg's memorable phrase) " beyond a shadow of a doubt that the strawberries were stolen".

The clearest determinants for reality checks on aeronautical progress, customer acceptance, and widespread use are not mathematical equations for efficiency, but rather the purchasing practices of the military and paramilitary (police) services. They choose the best tools for the job, test them with infinite care, and back their bet with billions of dollars. For proof, just check the latest airship procurements; you'll find them under "Purchases" in Defense Industry Daily, NOT in 60-year-old theoretical engineering texts.

Helium Hokum Revisited and Ravaged

There is an on-line periodical named "ScientificAmerican.com" that I'm sure many hold in great regard. However, they recently published an article by an independent design and systems engineering consultant, which continues the history of bad reasoning and misguided information that has dogged airships ever since the days of Santos-Dumont and that, unfortunately, will furnish still more authority to those who oppose airships.

The article, Helium Hokum, is subtitled "Why airships will never be part of our transportation infrastructure".

It contains such vitriolic statements as that, during the author's lifetime, roughly five billion dollars (in today's dollars) have been spent chasing airships for transportation, money that could have been spent building a lot of road and a lot of track, of which the only result has been a vast mountain of paperwork --- most of which ended up in local landfills.

Whew !

He goes on to say that the Airship Renaissance has always been just around the corner since about 1945, but that the only result has been the employment of a bunch of engineers who just don't get the simple fact of engineering science that, in his words, the only true measure of the result is efficiency ---- how fast can you go for how cheaply you want to get there.


In Jan Huss's penetrating phrase, "O Sancta simplicitas !" ; in this article, what a gross oversimplification .


Judging all means of transportation solely on the basis of "efficiency" --- and a very narrowly construed expression of efficiency at that--- is equivalent to judging all vehicles solely on the basis of miles-per-gallon.

If you're a suburban housewife driving on average American roads, perhaps that is one criterion by which you might want to choose the best transportation for you.

If you're in an army tank under fire, assigned to destroy an enemy emplacemenet, NO.

If you're racing in the Indianapolis 500 , NO.

If you're driving the Queen of England to Parliament, NO.

If you're a teen-age boy trying to impress a girlfriend, NO.

... and on and on !

The British have a wonderful aphorism, "Horses for courses", that is, choose the tool to suit the job.

The presumption of the article, that all transportation can be judged by the single criterion of efficiency, borders on bad logic.

Let's consider the very real and present problems presented by the wide variety of missions undertaken by our military services, despite a wide variety of obstacles and environments.


1. They must anticipate that the transportaton infrastructure of the area to which they have been dispatched will be damaged or destroyed. The military unit might be required to carry and disembark a brigade-sized unit to the Point-of-Need in three-to-five days, with no facility prepared to receive it. .. and do it in the dark, silently, landing on uncertain terrain, land or water.

2.Consider the case where they encounter incompatible rail gauges, as in the Baltic States, or a single rail line that is blocked or destroyed.

3. ... or where access in mountainous regions is hampered by bridges and tunnels.

4. ... or if the transportation is over the untracked Arctic tundra


Clearly one could go on forever --- exaggerating for effect --- reciting the vast number of impediments that they may encounter, where the ONLY means of transportation is designated "advanced lift platforms that are not dependent on improved airports and seaports". Why on earth (literally) then, would one even begin to discuss efficiency. Cost per mile ??? Miles per gallon ?!?


OR consider the need for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) of an area, as when the U.S. Coast Guard was assigned the task of persistent surveillance of our southern borders, often hovering in one spot for days on end. Efficiency ? A textbook engineer with little imagination would probably slide-rule it at INFINITY ... or ZERO .


Too military for you ? Stay tuned for discussions of the logistical support of oil and precious minerals exploration in the Arctic, an ongoing responsibility that Dr. Barry Prentice, of the University of Manitoba, has kept our eyes focused on for many years ... or the logistical and humanitarian support of people in the Arctic ... not just food and fuel, which can be determined in advance, but also the evacuation of injured or ill personnel in the event of a medical emergency.

These ---- and many other real world needs --- exist for which considerations of efficiency must be set aside . Stay tuned.

Of Geopolitics, Climate Change, and the Growing Importance of the Arctic

Many years ago, Air Force Officer cadets had to take a full-year course in a new subject called Geopolitics. It was so new that it was fresh material even to our instructors, who were able to make it interesting, never realizing how important its application would become to all the nations of the world.

At that time, the Arctic and the Canadian north were largely unknown to Americans. But Canadians were informed, and did realize how relevant it was, and --- fortunately --- kept track of the geopolitical changes, climate change, the resulting shifts in ice patterns, the growing value of its mineral resources, the increasing difficulties of moving critically important machinery and supplies to outposts of exploration and exploitation ... and incidentally to the original inhabitants (at that ethnically insensitive time, we called them Eskimos). That supply function is being furnished by what we call today, thanks to popular TV reality shows, Ice Road Truckers (IRT). They utilize large, heavy tractor-trailers traveling on frozen water, frozen tundra, indeed on any hard surface that they can find, and even then only during climate seasons where the firmness of the surface is maintained.

Then came discoveries that for political reasons and disagreements are still being discussed : regional temperatures began to rise slowly; the snow pack started to melt earlier and earlier each year. The roads began getting mushy and unusable for longer and longer periods of time, the pace of resupply in the supply chain began to be threatened, and, it seemed that suddenly the fabled Northwest Passage by water up and around Northern Canada became a reality that didn't require icebreakers, as proved by its transit by sailboats. Trucks carrying critical supplies began to fall through the ice or tilt to one side until they fell over on their backs, wheels in the air; areas like Newfoundland and Labrador started to achieve importance and flex their muscles; despite the crowing of some politicians that the mighty Russian Empire had collapsed with the fall of Communism, Russian interest gathered its strength once more and began to refocus on those slippery (in more than one way) political boundaries; tiny Denmark began to reassert sovereignty over long-claimed territory, even Japan got into the intellectual fray over where, what, and how hegemony over arctic seas was exercised.

Suddenly, it seemed that transportation that had seemed impossible, became critical. Two far-seeing academic types from two very different geographic climate zones ---- Manitoba and Florida --- started to focus the world's attention on the importance and the ability to traverse those areas. Despite the negative publicity attached to the perceived dangers of lighter-than-air craft, sadly, the several accidents incurred by Navy airships and, of course, the Hindenburg, hung like a permanent shroud over the future of the airship.

Professors Barry Prentice of the University of Manitoba and Richard P. Beilock of the University of Florida launched a seminal series of conferences called "Airships to the Arctic", in which they proposed using LTA airships to transport materiel to where it was required, thanks to a new field of study that had been dubbed Supply Chain Management.

It wasn't only machinery and supplies headed north that were the subjects of these conferences. The original inhabitants who lived in those areas needed food; fuel for the outboard motors that powered boats they used for subsistence hunting; and emergency medical services for both workers and residents that required their rapid evacuation to large, well-equipped hospitals further south .

As governments and military services began to discover the advantages of airships in observing, participating in battles, communicating, and transporting in otherwise uninhabited areas, without (here comes that over-used but critical word again) infrastructure, large quantities of funding suddenly became available.

As scientists became aware over the last score of years of the great advantages attached to the use of airships ---- silent, unobtrusive, non-destructive of the terrain; as remote sensing became a growing, important part of exploration and research; and as the avoidance of dangerous situations to personnel became apparent, airships assumed a more and more important function in those activities.

Just a few years ago, ISOPOLAR was formed as an independent non-profit organization focussing on these areas, and assumed the leading initiative in coordinating and providing information on Polar matters. About that time, the concept of hybrid airships, which had been kicking around intellectually for some time, started to dominate the field of serious LTA operations. As electronic sophistication increased, the possibility of unmanned hybrids became apparent. Police and security agencies learned of the advantages of this approach, and appropriate equipment began to be produced for the open civilian market. Their ability to overfly agricultural areas without disturbing crops, to cruise slowly above migrating marine mammals without frightening them or disturbing their ancient pathways, the utility and new capabilities of sophisticated remote sensing in a wide variety of sensory areas, such as magnetometry, the very broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, temperature sensing at a distance, side scan and other sonars, all became invaluable, relatively inexpensive, and safe.

It would appear that, finally, all the considerations mentioned above have finally begun to be taken quite seriously by professionals, although it still appears to lurk below the radar of our oversensational media and the underinformed public .

Keep an eye out and an ear open for the dramatic changes in transportation technology that will be occurring over the next few years, all attributable to the increasing dominance of
1. increased government involvement and funding
2. increased use of unmanned and autonomous hybrids, as GPS systems demonstrate their accuracy and as electronic remote control mechanisms become more dependable
3. increased consideration of (yes, even hydrogen) as a lifting gas
4. increased use of airships in marine and maritime activities
5. increased possibilities for the use of airships in dangerous areas such as geologic research, not just for oil and strategic mineral exploration, but even for, say, volcanic lava sampling and analysis
6. interdiction of illegal immigration and narcotics
7. search-and-rescue operations in storm situations with dangerous wave heights
8. first-on-scene situation evaluations in disaster response,      and so on.

Whoever would have thought that a dismal science (an old canard formerly applied to economics in general ) like supply chain management could breed such exciting research and life-changing influences ?

We would like to leave everyone with our small but growing clamor that future ISOPOLAR and other LTA conferences be held in Florida, perhaps anchored by the presence of Dr. Beilock at Gainesville, perhaps independently at one of the many beautiful venues on the Gulf of Mexico designed specifically for comfortable professional conferences, during that period of perfect climate predictable there between Christmas and Easter each year, so that a much larger, more international, certainly much more comfortable audience can travel there, attend, contribute, and extend the benefits of this approach to a much wider world. It is obviously much easier to invite participation, attendance, and media attention to a venue on the Gulf of Mexico in winter than to a Manitoba conference at any time. Consider that travel from the Washington, D.C. area to Florida --- and therefore attendance by a critical mass of interested parties --- becomes much simpler and less expensive on those expense account audits. Consider that Disney's expert planning staff chose Orlando, not Ungava Bay, for location of its premier and iconic complex, making it the premier airline destination in the United States. We would like to leave you with the classic comment of one of our Advisory Council members with major business experience, when he was challenged about the choice of a marine biological laboratory in Bermuda for a forthcoming meeting : "Where is it written that meetings, conferences, and planning sessions must be held in the most uncomfortable, unreachable, and miserable places available?"

It's something to think about... Incidentally, if staff conference planners protest that some Johnny-on-the-Spot is required for planning an international conference of any size or consequence, let us suggest that sponsoring institutions such as ISOPOLAR can take advantage of the many experienced professional conference planning firms in that area. Disney World (and it ain't just Mickey Mouse anymore ! ) has remote conference planning and production down to a routine; after all, if we're going to maintain that "remote" is a good enough adjective for "sensing" in our professional lives, we have to concede that the technologically less-challenging function of meeting planner should be a shoo-in for remote control.

Airship Lift Systems : A Fine Distinction

In a previous posting, we had 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, faculty at 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 (S & E) educated in Europe, he does very significantly better in English than most American S & E's would do in the non-English 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 aerodynaic 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 for that purpose to the airship.

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 in the assumption ; 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 roads ; lack of High-Speed Rail ; or the occasional .50 bullet flying by . As they used to say in the old-timey adventure serials on the radio, stay tuned.

Tomorrow's (more or less) Blog 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 mineral resources and in light of the fabled "The Northwest Passage", a new path between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans which can influence every aspect of international trade. Does the name "Panama Canal" ring a bell ? Maybe Denmark's legitimate claim to Greenland-and- environs no longer leads to a hand over one's mouth to suppress a chuckle in polite company.

"Global Warming" ? Nonsense ... except for the uncomfortable evidence in high-altitude photographs of those 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 complacent, geographically illiterate Americans realize.

Maybe those Airships to the Arctic people can be persuaded to move their conference to the comfortable climate of Florida's Gulf Coast, where it will attract (on the order of) ten times as much attention ---including Internet Pundits and the all-important world press, as well as its usual cold-hardened S & T attendance. As I recall they used to have a Professor Richard P. Beilock from the University of Florida (yes, we know that the U of F is not located on the Gulf Coast!) on the staff . More to come ...

Infrastructure, Politics, and Hard Recommendations

First, let me define Hard Recommendations. We're not referring to difficult ones, but rather to someone just flat-out telling everyone what should be done . We need to be looking at, planning, and working with one well-defined methodology, utilizing the Systems Approach, when it comes to transportation, freight transport, and military uses of airships , that is, detemine the solution by working backwards from the problem --- What are we really trying to do ?

My recommendation :

A Hybrid Airship is needed to take advantage of its benefits in this situation --- esentially no infrastructure needed. This avoids the difficulties imposed by the will-o' the wisp mind changes of political fortunes and whims . Some wise man once commented that the advantage of the law was not so much that it worked in the best way in all circumstances, but that it was predictable . You could plan your life, your business, your courses of action, because you had a pretty good idea of what outcome would be achieved, given every eventuality. We see how lack of predictability kicks in with every change of administration in our state and Federal governments. Take New Jersey's rail situation. Years of effort and planning were all for naught when, very recently (2010-2011), the new Governor, operating with a slash-and-burn budget, just canceled what would have been a first-rate transportation program building new access rails into New York City. One stroke of the pen, and years of planning went (forgive the pun in this situation) Down the Tubes.

If we used hybrid airships for short-to-medium transport, infrastructure needs would be minimal. "Up ship" at almost any facility and carry on to the destination. Exaggeration for effect, but essentially true.

Why hybrid? Land on almost no runway, or on water, or ice, or snow. Why hybrid? ... because that airship does not depend on hydrostatic lift alone, that is, only on the displacement of air by a lighter-than-air substance. It takes advantage of aerodynamic lift, so that even slight forward motion adds to the lifting moment using Bernoulli's Principle over an airfoil. Why hybrid, ? ... so that those electric thrusters built into the design assists with takeoff, with lift, with directional vectoring, even with landing utilizing suction of the up-down thrusters to stick to the surface and minimize the need for a ground crew grabbing on to the lines. In other words, a hybrid airship takes advantage of every benefit it has over the conventional dirigible.

Second, powered by fuel cells generating power for operation. Advantages here :
1. all the electric power that might be needed, for onboard power, for almost instantaneous control response, for operation of the modalities needed to accomplish the mission, for lighting and comfort of the passengers, providing comfort, silence, stealth, greatly diminished vibration, for an absolute minimum of noxious emissions, and, finally, of course, for the Classic --- dependence on foreign oil ---- or even on Texas oil or Alaska oil shale, or ... well, you name it.

2. backed by batteries in the event of sudden catastrophic failure ... the flexibility of electric power is required .

3. A variety of fuels and a variety of catalytic materials are available, and new ones are being developed and tested almost monthly. We can leave it to our inventive chemical engineers and materials scientists to offer us the best choices. Hydrogen is very widely available or can be manufactured easily and cheaply. We had to laugh when a challenge was issued by a Member of the Unread who claimed that the very high temperatures required to catalyze water into H2 and O2 are very expensive to produce; he seemed to forget the ease of achieving extremely high temperatures through the use of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). Supply of water ... essentially infinite ... same for supply of solar power, or so it appears in contrast to oil or botanical fuel sources.

4. Infrastructure --- all that's really needed is a not-very-large flat area. Transportation hubs ? Anywhere to anywhere. Dr. Barry Prentice, a faculty member at the University of Manitoba, has for years been beating the drums for a program called Airships to the Arctic, encouraging the use of airships in place of the dreadful ice roads that are used to transport goods vital to the survival of settlements in Canada's for north; climate change is metamorphing these into thin ice and water. An entire TV reality program has been developed on the strength of the major difficulties encountered in trying to provide vital transportaion in very difficult situations. Year after year, although the presenters seem to offer one solution after another, none ever appear to be implemented.

Clearly, airships traveling over those routes without the need for ground support appears to be a viable solution. Although the need is there, and the path is clear, there is a good deal of discussion, but --- until very recently --- little progress in implementation.

What does seem to be driving the transformation of talk into action is, sadly once again, the needs of military services in response to the requirements of war. The Pentagon has entered into a contract on the order of $150,000,000 with a British firm (interesting, given the plunging value of the U.S. Dollar against the British Pound) to produce airships (if I may insert a chuckle here, a trial balloon) .

More to follow soonest. Next time, the occasional victory, like the production of remotely operated airships by a Swiss firm and sale to some unusual clients. Inexpensive, off-the-shelf,
pragmatic !

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