CBS News: "Airships to lift off again? Firm engineers comeback"

CBS news gets to go for a quick test flight of the Aeroscraft, and has a well written commentary about the past and future of airships. This report has the possibility of going viral, I hope the fact the Vatican has a lightning machine doesn't top this story.

The future of passenger air travel?

What if you could fly at 32,000ft, going 750 mph for as long as the sun is up, using solar energy to power massive turbofan engines?

It's sounds in impossible, but the concept being put forwerd by French industrial designer Daphnis Fournier is not just possible, it's actually practical thanks in part to hybrid airship design principles.

In this case, the designer is essentially talking about building a scaled up version of the same concept as that of the Solarship, but it would be used for high altitude, high speed passenger air travel instead of humanitarian relief. There is really nothing technically speaking that says this cannot be done, the only issue I see is the claimed 750 mph, I imagine the turbofans on this thing would need to be massive and power hungry to achieve that kind of speed, but even if it get's half that speed it's still worthwhile investment for the airline industry.

What would make it even better is if the 4 turbofan engine's thrust could be vectored down to give the craft true VTOL capabilities like other hybrid airship designs out there. Maybe Daphnis isn't aware of the other hybrid airship projects out there, or he just believes it's impractical to give this thing VTOL capabilities, which may be true for all I know. It might not have enough helium in it's cell to lift the craft even with the thrust of those massive turbofans vectored down. Most hybrids are built to have the helium support most if not all of their empty weight. This one might not generate enough combined lifting power to takeoff vertically. It could still have engines vectoring up to 60 degrees in that case for a slower stall/takeoff speed, but would mean it would still need a runway.

Do you believe the Aeroscraft will have full VTOL at max payload?

Now that I feel a little silly after LEMV failed to deliver near it's capabilities in terms of endurance, I have felt somewhat skeptical of airship designers claims lately. One such claim by currently trending worldwide Aeros corporation is that their Aeroscraft will be able to takeoff vertically with maximum payload on all versions. I can tell you already this is one claim I would not relay on, it's probably an embellishment of the facts, a little white lie to sell the Aerocraft to investors. Like maybe it can take off vertically with max payload, but only under the condition of little or no fuel, which is probably closer to the case I'm thinking.

The claim on their website that the Aeroscraft could takeoff vertically with 500 tons is the one that sounds really fantastic, I just can't imagine them putting an engine on it that's powerful enough to lift that much weight without being too heavy itself. According to what I have read in the media, the Pelican's (Dragon Dream) internal bouncy system is only able to displace 2,000- 4,000 pounds of lifting capability. That indeed dose make it revolutionary in terms of airship technology, but I have now learned from Russia Today that the Pelican only has 365 horsepower engines for a combined total of 1095 horsepower. If the Pelican is indeed only half the size of the ML866 and has a maximum lifting capacity of 10 tons, this makes it possible to take off vertically but just barely. The ML866 and ML868 could take off with maximum payload and some fuel, but the ML86X taking off with Max payload would need 54,740 combined horsepower.

That's just about half the horsepower of this diesel engine which weighs in at 2,300 tons. So if the engines are diesel which makes sense for airships, that's about 1,150 TONS of engine! Twice what the specification's claim it's cargo capacity is, and we are not factoring in the weight of fuel or the weight of the frame. the Pelican's weighs about 16 tons including engine weight. So scaling that up by 50, the ML86X should weigh in at 800 tons with engines. Now aviation diesel engines are lighter then marine diesel engines. The best diesel aviation engine I have heard about can give 500 horsepower and only weighs 800 pounds, so if we scale that up to meet the demands of the ML86X that gives us only 44 tons of engine now, which makes the job very double, but what are the complications in making an aviation diesel engine that can deliver 18,247 Horsepower and only weighs 6 tons? Can it even be done today? This dose not sound like an easy engine to make, and realistically I imagine the real weight of the engine will come in somewhere between these two extremes. So the average of these two numbers is 597 tons, and taking into consideration that the engine will fall more into aviation diesel category rather then the marine diesel category, lets say the engine weight of all engines will come in at around 300 tons.

With this weight we figure the frame weighs about 500 tons, the engines weighs 300 tons, and it can take off vertically with 500 tons. That is again, very difficult, but possible. However now the problem is fuel. These engines are going to consume huge amounts of fuel, especially in a maximum throttle vertical takeoff, or hover. So while it's all well and good if you want to hover for 3 minutes with 500 tons, but how much fuel are you going to need to hover for 20 minutes? An hour? Even if we imagine that it's getting the great rate as that diesel engine I posted above, that gives us 1696.94 gallons of diesel fuel consumed per hour, or 6 tons of fuel per hour at 75%. Now in a hover the engines will need to be at or very close to maximum output. That means we can estimate an extra 66% fuel consumption rate or 9.1 tons of fuel consumed per hour in a hover. That's not a deal breaker, yes it will be able to hover with 500 tons, but how much of the weight is going to need to be fuel?

The claim on their page is that the ML86X will be able to take 500 tons, 5,300 nautical miles at a speed of 100 knots. That means the ML86x will spend 53 hours to get there and use 318 tons of fuel! There is no way it's going to be able to take of vertically with that and 500 tons, and 800 tons of airship, it's just not possible. It might be able to take off, but it will need to take off conventionally, without VTOL. Which is probably where the embellishment of the facts rests.

This page makes it seem like the Aeroscraft can take off with full VTOL, at full payload and go maximum range, which unless the engines do come in at 44 tons, this is simply untrue. You can ether take 500 tons, 5,300 nautical miles without VTOL, or you can hover 500 tons of cargo for a few hours, not both.

Ultimately I'm sure this also applies to the ML866 and 868, but to a lessor degree as smaller airships benefit more from aerodynamic lift.

Petition to RECOMMISSION THE RIGID AIRSHIP AIRCRAFT CARRIER PROGRAM.

I have started a petition to recommission the Airship Aircraft Carrier program:
link

Sign it, if it's not too much trouble.

Best photo of Aeroscraft Prototype

It's not every day an Airship is born, this photo captures the moment better then any I have seen so far, and also reminds me of those old photos we would see of airships being built during the first age of airships around the turn of the 20th century.

Thinking about it now, this airship has an uncanny resemblance to that of the Hindenburg. It looks like it's made out of the same materials and it even has the same red color on the lettering "Dragon Dream" which I assume is the crafts name, although I have been told that is not the case.

Maybe this is because airship technology has been stuck in 1936 for so long that when it got picked up again that's all they had to work with; The Technology really got hindered by the Hindenburg (chuckle ^_^)! Thus, maybe it's not surprising that the technology in 2013 looks the same as that of where it left off in history in 1936.

December 21st, 2012 The Age of Airships?

So the world did not end yesterday. I imagine, like the rest of you, I was not surprised that nothing happened. However, I should state that I did want to believe that something would happen; Jesus comes down and saves us all, Man-Eating Reptilians from planet X invade or some such nonsense. As such, I was perhaps mildly disappoint that seemingly nothing happened, but again, not surprised.

I guess, I think it would be cooler to live in a world with dragons, and epic adventures like in the Lord of the Rings, then it is to live in the world we currently live in, which is filled with a lot of pain and suffering, and not a whole lot of fun for the underclasses.

So it was just perfect this morning to wake up and find, that for me at lest, the Mayan prophecy came true in a very personal way, but in a way that effects us all. As you know, I'm a huge fan of airships, their like my favorite thing. Something about having a ship that can fly appeals to me greatly. It offers that same kind of feeling of adventure that one might get if we lived in a world with dragon slayers or something cool like that. You can go anywhere, land anywhere, and take all your belongings with you, thus, allowing you to live a whole different kind of lifestyle, that is unimaginable without such capabilities.

That's just so fantastic that the only place Airships have existed, aside from small blimps here or there in the last 50 years, is in fantasy video games mostly. If your a regular reader you know this has been changing for quit some time now, and we are now living in the world where the fantasy of having a ship that can fly is becoming reality!

So what happened yesterday and what's it all got to do with airships and the Mayans? Aero's the company building the highly anticipated Aeroscraft, which has what could be called the holy grail of airship technology, completed it's prototype and it's now ready for flight testing.

Check out their facebook announcement: Link

I think it's just perfect that Aero's completes their prototype on December 21st, 2012, because for me personally, I can now say the Mayan's were right!

3 second off astrological clocks, I knew you wouldn't fail me!

And just like Cortez where they still argue whether he fulfilled that prophecy (Which is a fact, Cortez did fulfill the prophecy.) People just don't like to admit he fulfilled the prophecy, because they understood how his technology worked, and thus to them, he was not a god. Yet the effect was the same, what the prophecy predicted, and what Cortez accomplished, it was the same thing, thus wasn't the prophecy fulfilled?

The Aeroscraft is much the same, it's a technology that we understand, so there's no magic about it, Yet 15 years ago, the idea of having an airship that could hull 20 tons of anything, land anywhere, control ballets, go for 3000miles on one tank of gas, need no ground crew, etc. It was unthinkable, and it existed only in minds of children's fantasy and the drawing boards of visionaries like Roger Munk, where it was believe it would remain forever. So if we look at it from the prospective of people 15 years ago, it really is magic, from that prospective, because it was unthinkable! Yet, now it's reality! It's so real you can tuch it.

So even if the Native Americans didn't understand that Cortez had technology like cannons and that's why he could shoot fire from the sky and blow up houses, that didn't matter to those people, because to them the effect was the same, he was a god, it didn't matter to them ether way because even if you didn't call him a god, they still had to deal with his god like powers. And just like those Native Americans, people 15 years ago thought Airships where just a bad idea, good for fantasy, football, and nothing more. Now, the fantasy has become reality, and the effect is no different from magic in my opinion. That's at lest, the way I see it.

Airship Outlook: Hybrid's no good for spying.

Unfortunately the military seems to be in a sad state these days. Military contractors always do one of two things, they overstate the capabilities and expected delivery of their product or they undercut the projected costs to fractions of the real costs that ultimately the taxpayer ends up paying. Everything is made by the contractor that overstates their product's capabilities and flat out lies about the costs to the point of fraud. It would seem telling the truth about your product's capabilities and real costs to develop said capabilities is a type of ritual suicide in the defense world, and thus never happens.

LEMV now unfortunately appears to be one such endeavor. MAV6 had posted a scientific study about the likelihood that LEMV would be able to stay in the air for 21 days on their blog. The study concluded that LEMV was unlikely to stay in the air even 5 days and that the Blue Devil 2 was more likely to achieve it's projected 6 to 7 days because it was a traditional LTA craft. It did state that Hybrid Airships would still be undoubtedly better at cargo operations then LTA airships but the stated 21 day surveillance was highly questionable because there would never be enough fuel to carry the fuel needed to stay in the air for 21 days.

Well, now LEMV is apparently 6 tons overweight, and somehow, as if by magic, this changes it's projected operational duration from 21 days to 3 or 4 days (Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/blimp/)

This seems to be rather convenient, especially when we consider that the real projections done by a scientist concluded that the 21 day endurance was probably the result of inflating the blimp with super-powered-ego-particals created by Northrup broad members. This indicates to me that Northrup lied to get the contract in the first place.

This is a clear and present danger to the United States Of America. We now live in a country where government contractors who lie are rewarded for their lies and government contractors who tell the truth are shown the door. When do the higher ups in the military plan to correct this problem? Shouldn't there be some type of good conduct initiative? Where contractors who live up to their contracts are rewarded with more contracts and contractors who don't are penalized by not participating in the next set of contracts?

I have been critical of the military for picking the Grumman/HAV team over the Lockheed team because Lockheed already had a working prototype that was much bigger then the Grummen/HAV team. They also showed a great amount of initiative by building the prototype P-791 on their own dime. Realisticly the Army should have picked Lockheed, but because Grummen had overinflated their projections to something beyond reality, Grumman won the contract. And now we are paying the price.

The Army is thinking of flying LEMV at 16,000ft where it might be able to stay up for 16 days. But I would not count on the 16KW of electrical power for that whole time, something tells me they probably got that one wrong too.

Fortunately this is not a deathblow for the airship program as a whole. Hybrid airships are still the most efficient option for transporting air-cargo, they just aren't as good at surveillance as the military had hoped for. And when we consider the ever growing police state we now live in, that might not be a bad thing.