Alaska to get Dibs on Lockheed's first Hybrids

Channel 2 news in Alaska has the story. The first of Straightline's Hybrid Airships will be heading to Alaska, while the rest of the 12 on order will be heading to different parts of the world to test feasibility.

It makes sense to try and get Alaska first, not just because it's an environment that's hard for everything else to work in, but also because Alaska is a sure market with wealthy customers who are willing to pay for the premiums of getting their stuff delivered on time.

Africa and Sybira are higher risk markets and while that will not discourage Airships in the long run, it makes sense from a business prospective to go after markets that are guaranteed to generate income first as to generate funding for higher risk ventures.

Africa is a market that badly needs airships, but the possibility of making a return on investment are very low at the start. Only after trade routs are established and after markets develop that are unaffected by the non-stop civil wars, Evil governments and lack of roads, then we will see a lot of money being made by Airships in Africa, probably more money then anywhere else really.

But in order for Straightline to penetrate that market, they need to have the capital to invest in the initial program that will definitely be running cargo at a loss to begin with. To support that endeavor they need money, and that means markets that are sure bets, like Alaska.

The next sure bet market is Canada, so smart money says their 2nd Airship will be heading there.

P.S. Did anyone else cringe when the reporter said "...the new vehicle is called, The Airship." That's kinda like saying to the DMV when they ask "What is your vehicle's make?" you answer "car." Geez reporting has gotten bad in this day and age.

Stingray

Sometimes I fool myself into believing I am the foremost expert on every airship program in the world. While I strive to know as much as possible about all Hybrid Airship programs going on, sometimes I miss things.

Today I'm pleasantly surprised to present Stingray:

It's a Swiss design that looks like it will be competing indirectly with Solar Ship. 

Between both designs I'm inclined to say that the Solar Ship is probably objectivity better, however the Stingray is targeting the right market I think, which may end up being more successful for them.

Solarship, needs to focus as much on their design being used for short city hops in the 1st world as much as it's going to be used to save lives in the 3rd world, I believe.

Really, Solarship has the design that is ideal for a personal flying machine in lieu of a flying car. If these things crash into each other, well, you saw what happens to the Airlander. Its highly likely the accidents will be more survivable and closer to car accidents then your typical mid air collision. That's something the Volocopter or even a Cessna 172 cannot say. 

Airlander 10 Crash is a Viral Video.

The Video posted by Lee Cordell has been a viral success standing in at 5,934,284 views as of writing. Other youtubers have been re-uploading in order to get free views and make money off the accident.

Interesting thing to note is that the dislike ratio is about 1 like for every 2 dislikes.

People were expecting to see the fiery explosion like with the Hindenburg, and then they dislike the video because the Crash wasn't spectacular enough for their frankly sub-mammalian instinct of wanting to see people die or stuff explode.

When we consider that this video is now the 3rd most viewed video on youtube when you search "Airships", behind two Flash videos; And we also consider that the first informative video is by James May who is more popular then Airships are in general and he's way past a bunch of minecraft videos...

Then we can be fairly certain that a lot of people who have never even heard of the Airlander or Hybrid Airships are seeing it for the first time.

And while it is an embarrassment for the industry as a whole that the AIrlander 10 crashed on it's second test flight, most people don't know that.

And there is a bright side...

A huge amount of people, frankly a lot of self absorbed people with too much TMZ on the brain, who don't care about world events or life saving technology, have just associated Airlanders/Hybrid Airships in their minds with boring crashes...

Think about that.

That might actually be one of the best things ever for the Airship industry. It's a reverse Hindenburg. This could actually be the biggest blessing in disguise for the Airship industry as a whole.

My current theory is that it was pilot error that caused the crash, if so, I'm certain they will never make the same mistake again.

Playing around in my Sky Tug in X-plane I remember actually killing the pilot one time doing a very similar maneuver, hitting the ground gondola first like in the video. In my limited experience it's a one timer, you make that mistake once, you never make it again (assuming you survive, and thankfully the test pilots did.)

But in a lot of ways, had the crash of the Airlander 10 not have been as bad as it was it would have never "qualified" as a crash. Leading to people clicking on it because they want to see a train wreak. On top of this they all come away disappointed and upset they didn't get to see anyone die or stuff explode.

Some of the top comments read:

"The most gentle crash humanity has seen" -Gyrolox 915 likes

another read:

"Oh my god!

That crash was so slow! Do you think someone might have spilled their coffee?" -Kunzite Universe 1112 likes

Comments like this are gonna leave a lasting impression in peoples minds, especially when we consider how early we are in the development of Hybrid Airships as a viable industry.

It may just be that what this industry needed most was a crash like this, at this moment. The Hindenburg set in stone in peoples minds Airships Crashes = Massive explosion, huge death, unsafe. This has set in peoples minds Hybrid Airship Crashes = Boring, nobody dies, super safe.

That's exactly what we want people to think.

Good Can Come of the AIrlander 10 Crash

HD Video of the Crash

So the Good News is that it looks like there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with the Airlanders design from what I can see.

As you can see from the HD Video above the thrust vectoring really shows what the pilots were doing before the crash, and it seems they may have been a bit overly ambitious to get the thing back on the ground, as the intensified angling of the nose going down (at the 11 seconds mark) was clearly induced by them with thrust vectoring. When they realized they had gone too far they angled the thrust vectoring back up (16s mark) but cut the power at the same time, which is the exact wrong thing to do in this situation as the thrust vectoring cannot vector the ship without power. This lead to it crashing gondola first (at the 25s Mark, a full 9 seconds later.)

Clearly this is similar to when Helicopters were first invented and nobody even knew that Ring Vortex State was a thing. This lead to a number of unfortunate deaths and even today it is the bane of all Helicopter pilots as they must train hard to never induce the problem in the first place.

In this case the test pilots both survived, so that is a win for airships in it's own way. The only real change that needs to be made seems to be in the procedures of how the Airship is operated, particularly when landing.

Much in the same way that helicopter pilots must never do certain things when they are landing, Hybrid Airship pilots must do the same.

In this case the big problems seem to be:

1. The Pilots allowed the Airship to be pitched too much on landing.
2. The Pilots did not add power when the Airship entered it's "Soft Stall" state to allow the thrust vectoring to pull the nose up out of the stall, and or angle the nose up as to not hit the Gondola First.

It seems that what might have been going on here is that the test pilots may have been instructed to try and find out how steep they can land the craft as part of the test phase. This is all speculation on my part, but I think they didn't do this because someone had to go to the bathroom real bad and 9 seconds is too long to not react to the problem (The human mind can only be stunned for 7 seconds max.)

It's an unfortunate hiccup but the reactions I'm seeing on social media seem to indicate this is actually a win in some ways.

Lot's of random commentators and some reporters are pointing out that if Airplane crashes looked like this they would feel a lot safer flying in them. That's actually rather interesting, and while it is something I was aware of for some time now this Crash actually shows it happening in reality and can be shown as proof Hybrid Airship crashes are a hell of a lot safer then any airplane or helicopter crashes.

Had the craft been an experimental helicopter or osprey, it's most likely the test pilots would be dead right now, instead they escaped without a scratch on them, and they happen to have been in the part of the Airship hardest hit and most likely to get them killed.

In a lot of ways the Airlander saved their lives today, and that is no small feat. Hammering that fact home might change a lot of peoples opinions about Hybrid Airships.

Airlander 10 has Crashed.

I really wish I didn't have to write this story today, but the second test flight of the Airlander 10 has ended in catastrophic failure.

As you can see from the video it looks like the pilot losses control and fails to keep the nose up, leading to a heavy nose down crash landing. Both pilots were not hurt in the incident.

However unfortunately the gondola is completely cracked and it will probably take months for them to repair it, assuming HAV doesn't go defunct in that time.

This has really upset me and I'm not thinking very objectively at the moment, I need some time to think this over, figure out what went wrong, hope that the damaged isn't as bad as it looks and pray to whatever higher power might exist out there that this crash doesn't kill the Second Golden Age of Airships before it has even started.

I'll have a more detailed report and analysis latter. 

Point to Point is 10 times faster?

"... the average rate of transit for the conventional mixed transportation system using lorries, railway and a cargo ship stands at 8kph to 10kph, while the average speed of an airship is 100kph." (link)

In the above article from The National, it's pointed out that the time it takes for Cargo to be transported from Train to Ship can be as much as 7 days in some cases. The cargo just sits stored in a warehouse the whole time, leading to a much lower average transport speed of cargo by current methods then I had originally estimated.

Obviously this is good news for Airships, as the time on delivery is 10 times that over the average ship + train + truck delivery time. Airships can also make warehouses obsolete meaning there is a bigger possibility that Airships can compete directly with our current cargo transportation infrastructure in area's already dominated by ship + truck, or ship + train trade routs in addition to servicing remote locations not currently serviced by anything reliable currently.

KNARR the largest Hybrid Airship Proposed So far.

I have always felt that massive 10,000 Ton or even 50,000 Ton behemoth Hybrid Airship Freighters are a real possibility in the future as the point to point convenience of Hybrid Airships can save costs and time.
Imagine massive Sky Freighters running nonstop from Central USA to Northern China. They would be the biggest flying machines ever constructed, dwarfing the Hindenburg at almost 4 times it's size.

I believe It's a real possibility. Hybrid Airships can never fully replace Ships or Trains, but I think it's very important to stress that time savings is money savings in business, and it could be that it's overall more expensive to move something from Northern China to Central USA via train and ship if the cargo is time sensitive, then it would be by a Massive Airship.

It's not something I anticipate seeing in my lifetime. Maybe if things had been different and the U.S.S. Macon and U.S.S. Akron had both been Hybrid Airships instead of traditional Airship we would already be living in that world. Sadly, that is not the case.

Still I am Thankful to people like Roger Monk, who took the time to sit down and think how they would make Airships work. Without forward thinkers like him, dreamers like me would still think practical Airships are impossible.

When the truth is anything but, and the dream is turning into a reality.

Best Report on Airlander 10's First Takeoff

New Helium Deposit Found in Africa

I was looking at my older posts and realized I had missed posting this. A New Helium Deposit was found in Africa last month.

This should put to rest fears of helium shortages. The reality is Helium is the 2nd most common element in the universe. The idea that there isn't more Helium deposits in the earths crust is silly. We will probably not need to worry about helium shortages for 50 years if we don't discover more deposits, and it looks like it we will probably discover more deposits by then.

We Will Pay an Airship Premium for Fresh Foods

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.

BBC Video of Airlander 10's First Flight

Well, technically it's the 2nd test flight for the Airship formerly known as LEMV... but hey it's a great day none the less.

We have lift off!

Airlander 10 just took off about 17 minutes ago, fallow their Twitter for more detail!
https://twitter.com/AirVehicles?lang=en

Putin Pushes Plan for Airships in Siberia.

I remember that Igor Pasternak said that he is on Putin's bad list (a sad thing to hear), but love him or hate him both Igor and Putin seem to be on the same page when it comes to airships and their potential to exploit Siberia.

The sanctions and Russia Phobia Sentor McCain keeps spewing over the annexing of Crimea, may be justified, but I hardly feel this is a realistic long term strategy.

Now we must consider that Putin, Tyrant, Dictator, or Statesmen (however you feel,) is presenting a seriously good solution to Russia's highly inadequate infrastructure to further growth in Russia.

If we believe we are in the right, and we probably are, the USA needs to lead by example.

We really need to compete with Russia on this front. Instead of building more war machines to fight some hypothetical war that will only end with everyone on the face of the earth dead or dying, A better way is to win on a cultural level by providing more prosperity to the world at a better rate.

Putin is going to build a fleet of Hybrid Airships and they will give untold benefits to not just the Russian economy, but his friends and allies as well.

This includes Iran.

Think about it...

Do we really want the Muslim world to see Iran as a nation of prosperity with Flying Machines that would seem almost like magic to them, before they see us doing it first?

The Tech is sound, the plan is logical and we ~Need~ to be first.

We need to beat Russia culturally by building Bigger Airships with More Cargo capacity to impact the world on a cultural level and have a deeper impact on cultural affairs then they do.

The more Airships we fly and the bigger they are, the more the people of the world will see the US as a force that they should ally with, and the more they will listen to us in world affairs.

CO2 emissions go down, globule prosperity goes up and we all benefit.

On top of this it fulfills our geo-strategic goals as it's an effective weapons platform in and of itself.

The problems in Crimea will hopefully be solved by having more prosperity for all people globally, and airships allow us to do just that.

I'm not saying that the Annexing of Crimea was justified, the "election" hardly seemed fair, but trying to compete with Russia in another Cold War is just going to send both our economies into the tank even more, and that inevitably leads to war.

There is a better way.

We really need to start thinking about what's best for us as a globule citizen. Dictators and Tyrants will fade when the people are free to live their lives the way they see fit. And the only way for the people of the world to do that is with economic mobility.

Airships can do just this, and in a lot of ways fulfill the ideological destiny of freedom our nation was founded on.

Yes, Putin may be as bad as they say, but nobody I know today says Iraq is better off with Saddam gone.

We cannot compete with Russia Militarily, everyone will end up dead.

We can compete economically and culturally.

Hybrid Airships will allow us to do just that. We should do it.

Are Battle Blimps Practical Now?

I have a lot of ideas swirling around my head. Mostly around the idea I talked about in my last post about the Anarchistic Mobility of the Airship.

As you may or may not know, Airships are a highly durable platform on the battlefield. They can take a lot of bullets before they will lose any noticeable amount of helium. Hybrids are even more durable then that, because even if they lose a good amount of helium they can just point the nose higher to compensate for the loss of lift and keep flying.

I have pushed for the idea of the Government spending military funds on acquiring a Battle blimp in the past. But at the time, it was pointed out to me that the big problem would be in the maintenance costs of maintaining an envelope that keeps getting filled with holes on a regular basis.

No one questioned that it would be a good asset on the battlefield, but that it would be too costly to operate compared to an A-10C in the long run.

Well, as you may know from looking at my post about a week ago, Lockheed Martin has solved this issue with their spider repair bots. This make's me wonder, is the Hybrid Battle Airship feasible now?

I think the answer is, Yes!


These spider bots really open the door for allowing the envelopes of these blimps to take a beating and still grantee that a day or 2 later they will be back and ready to fight again with far cheaper maintenance costs.

This capability could allow the Military to transfer about 200 troops at a speed of 125 knots to an active war zone, maintain all the capabilities of an AC130 for CAS when they get there and, on top of that, it can have improved anti-air capabilities over the AC130 as it has more volume for defensive weapons compared to airplanes.

Combine this with it's extremely long loiter times and we are talking about a game changer in the way the a tactical battlefield is operated.

Plus operating costs are cheep, in the area of about $600-$2000 an hour to operate. Compare this to the $15,000 per hour cost of flying an A-10C and I think we can see why the Airship really is a game changer.

Right now the Air Force is talking about how they are going to replace the A-10c. In the game of close air support, it and the AC130 are sitting in the Kings Throne for keeping our solders alive when they are being suppressed by the enemy on the ground.

The Air Force has presented a plan of buying some A-29s for the short term and then building a whole new air frame or updating the A-10 or the OV-10 Branco. In fact the OV-10 has come out of retirement and been used in Afghanistan recently for CAS.

I do really like the idea of getting cheaper turboprop multi-role fighters like the A-29 or OV-10 with low operating costs to replace the A-10, but the Battle Blimp really represents a game changer and could make the whole process unnecessary if we invested in that over building a new air frame for CAS alone.

Still, I gotta admit, those A-29s look damn sexy to me:

Airlander 10 has Arrived!

At long last, Airlander 10 is out and about, ready for takeoff. It felt like Brexit woes might have slowed things down, but the political shock has passed, and the sky didn't fall...

Interesting how all these world changing events seems to happen around the same time. I think the explanation for this phenomenon lay in understanding the intricacies of fractal geometry; The cause and effect nature of reality.

Perhaps, in that sense Airlanders rise is symbolic for Brexit. The Airlander 10 takes to the skies with new capabilities, definitively it is a vehicle that can solve the problems of world hunger. What if Brexit is a manifestation on that same token? It was fundamentally after all, a question of freedom that was the deciding factor in the vote.

In areas of the world where rebel groups or petty dictators are committing ethnic cleansing by starving a seb set of people, doctors without borders or other altruistic groups can't help those people in need because the government wont let them in, or the rebels will kill them if they try to help.

The Airship allows for a certain level of anarchistic mobility. That is to say, it's a self contained system for supporting people in a country that it isn't allowed to be in. Troops armed with anything less then truck mounted fifty caliber machine guns will be able to do little to stop it. Even then, the Hybrids are highly durable.

Think about Johnny Quest the cartoon where the main hero would fly around on a jet that could land anywhere. The Hybrid Airship allows you to do that in real life, not in the fiction of a cartoon.

In a sense, the Airship is the ultimate underground railroad for a peaceful world wide revolution in libertarian expression. The more I think about it the more I am confident that the British very well may be leading the charge of spreading freedom on the backs of Hybrid Airships like Airlander to all the petty dictatorships of the world.

If the government shoots them down, most likely the crew will survive, and the government that shot them will look horrible in the eyes of the international community. It's basically a way that a nation can peacefully Harass bad actor nation, essentially,  Strategic Airship Harassment also know as the Gandhi way.

I'm feel a very high degree of confidence in saying this, but it is my belief that in the next 30 years the Britsh will have a cultural renaissance in libertarian ideology that, barring some major catastrophe (like a Hindenburg 2,) will muster a massive Armada of Airships that will rival the fleets of British yesteryear. Like during the age of sail, or the industrial revolution.

Maybe I am being overly optimistic, but if my theory about the fractal nature of reality holds true... we will see Britain rise again as a world empire, but this time it will be a peaceful empire of the clouds, not a tyrannical empire of the sea.

We will see, but if I'm right, Britain is going to be a powerhouse of job creation in the coming years. Just as it was in the industrial revolution. The EU will look like it's stuck in the stone age by comparison, and changes to the nature of the eurozone itself will be an outright necessity at that point, as the contrast between the UK in the EU and the UK out of the EU will be so vast that the political elites in Brussels will be seen as complete failures in the eyes of the public making change inevitable.

Time will tell, but things are looking up.