Airlander 10 to Become Luxury Cruise Ship Test Bed

Airlander 10 is going to be converted to a Cruise Ship... link

This is a bad idea.. I see little success in this market. What if the Ultra Rich gain little from the experience?

In order for this to work, you need to combine gambling with a luxury hotel, otherwise these passengers will quickly lose interest. The only way to make a good profit doing this is by starting with the largest airship you can get. 10 tons is a tight budget to deliver all that in one setup.

Video of May 10th Airlander Flight

The Airlander Returns

Back again, the Airlander 10 has returned to the skies for it's 3rd test flight, this time without any problems.

80 year Anniversary of the Hindenburg Disaster.

80 years ago today the end of the Golden Age of Airships came to a crashing end. So much time has come and gone and the world is lesser for it. Still, as the song goes, the dreamers may die, but the dreams live on. And on this day that dream is alive with the fire of the phoenix about to rise from the ashes and be born anew.

We are closer now then ever to a revitalization of the Airship as a viable alternative for air travel and air commerce. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into this sector with analysis predicting billions in growth in the coming years.

Airlander 10 is ready to fly again, Aero's is still hard at work , Sergey Brin is building his secret Airhips, Solarship has contracts to build airships for Africa, and Lockheed is on the verge of showing us it's latest design of a 20 ton hauling sky freighter.

No longer will the limits of the past hold us back, the world is ours for the taking and we will live in a time and age where Airship will rule the sky's once more, proving to the world that we have been missing so much without them.

Let us never forget the brave souls who lost their lives pioneering this technology, but let us also not let the past hold us back. We are living in the future now, were the impossible is ordinary and the unthinkable is practical. Its time to live again in an age were our dreams manifest our reality and our reality feeds the imagination and heals our souls.

It is time to let loose the bonds that hold us to this earth, and break the mental shackles that keep our minds constrained to the mundane, it's time to fly again. Fly like we have never flown before. It's time for the dream to come alive.

Google Co-Founder building a Secret Airship

Well it appears we now are learning why Google decided to rebuild Hanger One at Moffett field. Sergey Brin one of the co-founders of google is allegedly building an Airship. The Why and How of the matter are all secret at this point but it's great to see that some of the big leaders in technology are finally starting to see the potential that Airships have to make the world a better place, and are actively doing something about it!

I can't wait to see what Brin has under raps. From the article, it sounded like they were building something with a variable buoyancy system. Dose this mean that they are perhaps building the next Aeroscraft at Moffett field? Aeros did announce on their facebook that construction of the next Aeroscraft was underway, yet we have heard nothing since then. Could they have made a secret deal with Brin?

Only time will tell.

Airlander Test Flight Imminent.

Airlander has emerged from it's hanger and is preparing for more test flights to come in the next few days. During the repair process the engineers installed extra balloon cushions to insure that when the Airlander comes in for a landing that it will have a much larger allowable angle of decent when approaching the ground.

These cushions are certainly an odd looking solution, but they are functional which is all that really matters at the end of the day. No doubt that when HAV develops the actual production prototype they will come up with a more elegant looking solution.

Whatever the case, lets all wish the Airlander 10 the best of luck and that it will have many hundreds of accident free flight hours ahead of it.

Airlander 10 Accident Details

It appears the problem was in an electrical fault with the generator that powered the winch for the mooring line on the ground equipment, and that the pilot was under the impression that the mooring line was only 1/4 as long as it actually was. This lead to the pilot snagging the mooring line on landing, when the mooring line got loose on a  second go-around as the ground crew replaced the battery in the ground equipment.

It sounds like they have made some redesigns so that if the pilot comes in at a nose low attitude again they will instead hit a cushion, rather then the cockpit, that will lesson the impact on the ship.

Still they added in their own internal report that: HAV identified the need to establish “effective stowage and control arrangements for a deployed mooring line, enhanced maintenance and fault reporting regimes for ground support equipment, and [to perform] a review of relevant static heaviness issues”, the report concludes. Read more here.

Hopefully with a little luck, Airlander will be back in the air soon with a great many hours of error free flying ahead of it.

Amazon Blimp Warehouse

Amazon has patented the idea to use giant flouting warehouses to deliver packages via drone. It's unclear at this time if this is just more patent trolling by a big corporation or if Amazon is actually going to invest resources in the idea.

Personally I feel that Patents have gotten way out of wack. The original intent of patents was to protect inventors ageist big corporations. Now patent laws protect big corporations against inventors. It seems to me that Amazon should need to actually build this Airship before they can be granted a patent on it.

Interview with Stephen MeGlennan CEO of HAV

What I found most interesting in the interview was the idea of using Airships for mobile hot spots. Yet another area of use I had not considered.