Assessing New Markets that Hybrid Airships can be used for is something I think can be very easy in a way.
Just imagine the world of your most fantastic imagination where everyone uses Airships for everything and nothing else, and pull out ideas from that and try to fit them into the real world. In a hypothetical world where Airships are used for everything, all cargo is transported by Airship because, somehow, the price is cheaper then all other forms of transport.
In reality this is hardly the case. Sea going ships will always have an insane amount of weight they can take compared to airships, allowing them to take massive super efficient engines and move cargo at a fraction of the price. Trains, it's much the same story. Although trains require massive infrastructure that in this day and age make them impractical for a huge amount of work.
Trucks on the other hand are a little bit closer to airships, as they must be constrained to the size of the road, which is like 8 feet I believe (2.4 meters.) So the engines on a truck cannot be as efficient as on a ship or locomotive.
Airships and Trucks essentially use the same engines. But the Truck can take twice as much weight with 1/4 the number of engines.
Airships however can go anywhere and they can do it about twice as quickly as a truck can, they also shouldn't be delayed by air traffic as they can land anywhere there is space for them.
The question becomes will people pay a premium for cargo by Airship. It's about 4 times as expensive to move something by Airship then truck but you get it quicker and you don't really need to worry about (pay for) logistics as much.
I think the rise of Health Food Stores like Whole Foods prove that people are willing to pay more for higher quality food, and for stores like them, Airships might actually bring prices down because ideally they can deliver from the farm to the stores lot or very close by.
In that same token, one trade rout I know will be profitable for Airships right now would be fresh Pineapple from Hawaii to California and fresh Beef on the way back.
Beef in Hawaii frankly sucks, it's all been frozen for 3 days before it even arrives, so you are always eating sub par beef in Hawaii. In Cali, it's been refrigerated for maybe a day so it still tastes great.
It's the same case with pineapple the other way, there is no fresh pineapple in California, but Hawaii has fresh pineapple in such abundance you can sometimes find it flouting in the ocean.
If Airships can deliver fresh produce in less then a day and still be relatively efficient then I feel that the rise of health food stores like Whole Foods prove there is a market of people willing to pay for that luxury.
If I'm right, we could see as much as a 3rd of the current food market switching food fright currently shipped by truck or ship to Airships by 2050.
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