Airship Market will be worth 50 Billion in the next 20 years

Hybrid Air Vehicles has started a crowd funding campaign that you can invest in if you live in the UK. You only need  £100 but if anyone in the UK has a few hundred thousand this may be the best chance you get to grab some equity in the company.

What is even more interesting is that if you log in to the link I provided, there is a section talking about the predicted market for airships. HAV writes:

Market

The aviation market has been seeking alternatives to overcome the limitations of existing technologies.  Helicopters are expensive to run, and are limited by their existing lift capacity and range.  Aeroplanes don’t have an ability to fly at a wide range of speeds (which is useful for surveillance tasks), and typically need costly infrastructure at airports. Unmanned Air Vehicles have limited range, endurance and/or payload capability and many are constrained in their use by regulation. The operating performance and low cost of Airlander 10 means it can fulfill roles in surveillance, communications, advertising and filming, remote resupply, leisure & tourism. The airborne surveillance market (covering communications and other forms of survey, search and rescue, maritime patrol etc) is estimated to be worth $19.23 billion. The luxury tourism market is worth in excess of £2 billion. The annual cargo market has been calculated by Boeing to be 200 Billion Revenue-Tonne-Kilometers growing to over 500 billion RTK's by 2030. Industry estimates for the value of aircraft deliveries to military and commercial customers annually are in excess of $400 billion. This gives an indication of the size of the aerospace markets which the Airlander can enter. To calculate the likely share of this market for Airlander 10, over the last few years, there have been 4 market studies on hybrid aircraft – 3 of which have been independent, and all of which have put the market at between 500 and 1000 aircraft. The most recent independent market study, commissioned by an Aerospace major and the Company, was by Renaissance Strategic Advisors (RSA). RSA is a leading independent consultant to the aviation industry. RSA validated potential demand for 556 hybrid air vehicle platforms between 2015 and 2035 worth over $50 billion and identified an upside of a further 100+ aircraft. The early adopters of Airlander are likely to be military and governmental agencies interested in border control, maritime surveillance, force protection and search & rescue. There is also strong potential for early adoption from the luxury leisure and tourism market. The RSA report stated that Airlander 10 has multiple civil applications including tourism/leisure flights with associated advertising, oil and gas people movements and pipeline security, commercial sensing e.g. geological surveys in support of the mining industry, remote logistics e.g. for wind turbine blade movements and communications relay.

The diversity of product usage is summarised by the segmentation analysis which you can see uploaded in the images section to the left *bottom*.

So 50 billion in the next 20 years is a good starting point, but I imagine it is only the beginning. This market valuation doesn't seem to include the possibility of public transportation systems like the one I wrote about last year in my examination of using a public transportation solution here where I live in California.

In that analysis, I found that one could make good profit running the airship as a mid range transportation solution just in the area where I live. I didn't even do feasibility tests in places like Los Angeles, New York and London where they would be even more profitable.

There is even the possibility that hybrid airships can compete with the airlines in long range transport by offering the services of staterooms, shopping and other leisure activities like gambling while passengers are transported to their destination at a decreased cost. Yes it will take longer to get there then airlines but for travelers that don't need to get to there destination quickly and would rather relax on an airship sun tanning and drinking champion for a day or two instead of being cramped into a small seat for 8-14 hours there is the possibility that it could be competitive.

Only time will tell, but I feel like 50 billion is probably only the start for this industry.

Solarship more promising then ever, yet nobody is paying attention?

It seems that the Solarship has fallen off the radar of the mainstream media. If you go to their facebook you will find that all sorts of activity has been going on, but too few seem to be paying attention and it seems I was the only one who has reposted this playlist on facebook.

There are a few holes in the Solarship dream in that it is unlikely they will ever be able to have solar panels light enough and efficient enough to maintain powered flight in the day all day anytime soon. And should solar panels be made that are efficient enough to keep an aircraft like this airborne our energy issues should be solved at that point.

However the airframe is a wonderful platform to develop small airships for personal consumption all over the world.

Maybe what Solarship needs to do is refocus their operations on building small to midsize family airships with better VTOL capabilities and a high degree of safety features that they could sell to the general public. It would be a hard market to penetrate but likely has a better return on investment in the next 60 years, and can help generate revenue for their ultimate goal of delivering supplies to Africa.

Aeros sues the Navy

Very unfortunate that Aero's is forced to take these measures in order to remain out of bankruptcy:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/navy-653939-aeros-roof.html

I think it would be best if the US Government spent some serious money to pump out a fleet of these airships as the potential increase in GDP would make the effort well worth it in the long run.

I don't really know who is at fault here, and really it shouldn't matter as these airships are too great to pass up and it's unfortunate that the Navy doesn't see itself in a position to fund a technology which historically has been in it's repertoire.

As much as I self I identify with libertarian philosophy, at the end of the day the government needs to be the institution to spend money on innovation when no one else is and this is a case where corporate welfare really dose have a place in politics.

If the US government was spending the money to buy the two XL-250 Aeroscrafts that they indicated they would buy if the Dragon Dream was successful, and it was, then Aeros would have all the money they need to start mass producing Aeroscrafts, as it stands the government is being stingy in an area it really shouldn't be given the huge benefits to globule GDP and cost reductions in logistics for the military that this technology can bring.

All the money spent on these airships will save a lot more money in the long run, yet it seems that the government is deadlocked when it comes to seeing this as the situation. And it's unlikely that the privet sector is going to pick up the pieces any time soon.

Now is the time for self sacrifice on the government's part to push these airships out and kick start this revolution into overdrive. It would be an injustice to humanity if Aeros went bankrupt right at this critical point when it's just about to change the world forever, hopefully the big wigs in the government will see that.

New Twitter Account

I have created a twitter account, you can fallow it here:
https://twitter.com/AirshipGuy

Is the End of The Airlines Dawning?

A moment of irony happened to me the other day, I have been a little out of the loop on Aviation news as of late so it was odd when out of nowhere I had a thought that said something along the lines of "General Aviation is going to be the wave of the future, the Airlines are living in the past."

It's something I have thought about before, but this thought inspired me to look at AV Web again, which I haven't checked in a few months, and ironically enough on the front page there was a story about how Airbus is patenting a new seat design that will allow for more seats on an airliner at the expense of passenger comfort.

The article states: "Recognizing that modern airline passengers will endure almost any indignity in return for cheap fares, the design calls for seats that look like old-style, wide bicycle saddles mounted on a thick, horizontal bar."

Yes that's right, if the TSA groping wasn't enough to make you stop flying airliners forever, now you get to have the pleasure of sitting on an uncomfortable seat just so the plane can pack in more people into an increasingly more unpleasant environment.

I honestly think this will push it too far for a lot of people and if Airbus starts implementing these seats they will find out that most people will be unwilling to suffer yet another indignity just for a cheaper ticket.

The reality has become that Airlines are now the least pleasant, most uncomfortable, most degrading method of travel, with the only advantage over their competition being speed on delivery. All the glamor of flying on the airliners is gone, and I think people are starting to gauge whether or not it's really worth the time gain to travel by air.

Realistically though, people don't want to lose the speed advantages of flying which opens the door for new opportunities and new markets, in fact there have already been inroads made in this sector.

Cirrus came out with it's idea of Flying 2.0 where passengers would book flights on small GA (General Aviation) aircraft instead of big passenger jets. NASA also came out with its idea for a Small Aircraft Transportation System back in the 80s which bore fruit in the 2011 Green Flight Challenge producing small electric aircraft that got 400 passenger miles to the gallon.

Engineers have made big improvements in the safety of GA aircraft with the introduction of glass cockpits, GPS systems and ballistic parachutes, this makes GA flying arguably as safe, if not safer, then Commercial Aviation.

There are also big improvements in diesel aviation with companies producing new lightweight engines with nearly twice the fuel efficiency of non-diesel airplanes.

Also there have been more and more flying car designs coming out in recent history, and other personal flying vehicles like the E-volo that are just on the tip of mass production.

Evolutionary ideas like the Synergy Aircraft show that small airplanes will very shortly be vastly less expensive to fly, costing the same as it costs to operate a car in the future.This not only means far cheaper fares but less pollution as well.

Designs like the Icon A5 are able to achieve what the FAA refers to as "Stall Resistances" a milestone for General Aviation and aircraft safety.

The list goes on and on of innovation and new ideas coming to the GA field. Not least of them, ideas like the Solarship that's also a hybrid airship. Overall it seems like the pace of innovation in GA is far surpassing Commercial Aviation.

With all these new designs and ideas going into GA, and with airliners stuck in thinking about how they can sacrifice personal comfort for their bottom line, it seems clear that a paradigm shift is on the horizon.

Airliners may become too bulky and too expensive to operate over the lightweight sleek designs in General Aviation's future.

I'm not suggesting that airlines will not evolve as well in the future, in fact, it seems like we are just on the cusp of building the worlds first real space plane, which if adapted to commercial aviation could mean airplane trips from New York to Sydney in less then 3 hours. Nevermind it can also go to space.

However, what I see in the future is a world filled with all sorts of different flying machines, kinda like looking at all the different types of bacteria a Petri dish. And just like bacteria they will all be competing with each other to be the best at their respective niches.

Helicopters and airliners will need to evolve just as fast to keep pace or they will simply become obsolete.

As such, when we look at the state of airline travel today, it could be we are really seeing the end of an era. They may well become an old fashion way to travel, and all the hardships we are putting up with today will be seen as the last dying breaths of the airliners as the globule leader in air travel.

Maybe those visionaries that saw the future where everyone had a flying car are not too far off from reality, with the variation of ideas and flying machines that are coming to the future, it would seem a new future is dawning on General Aviation, as the sun is setting on the airliners. 

A Very Well Researched Article on HAV

I've noticed a lot of articles with bad reporting on what is going on in the airship world. Props to the telegraph and Nail Tweedie for getting all their facts correct in this well written article.

Bruce Dickinson hopes to live stream airship flight around the world.

I was just reading this article today and found out that Bruce Dickinson lead singer of Iron Maiden and airship enthusiast has a brilliant idea, he wants to travel around the world on an airship and stream the whole thing live.


I always had a feeling that one of the things that will really make airships have a big impact in popular culture and help advance their return, would be their utility for the music industry and preforming live concerts from suspended stages.


Imagine Iron Maiden playing Flight of Icarus 200 feet above their audience on a suspended stage hanging from a hybrid airship. They could then move around the entire stadium and float above the crowds.

Their performance could start on stage in the normal spot, but then the stage could be lifted into the air and floated around the crowd. When the music gets to the point where he sings "fly like an eagle" the second time, the stage could rise up and fly out of the stadium over all of LA, allowing the entire band to be suspended 2500ft over LA playing one of their hit songs, giving a performance the world has never seen before.


It's really exciting to have someone like Dickinson being involved in the development of these airships, as it gives a really good chance that this will happen sooner rather then later. And when it dose happen, I think Airships will really make a huge return in pop culture as people will really start to realize what these new airships are capable of and it will start to get people thinking about what other things they could use them for that had been imposable before.


Other bands would likely follow suit and all of a sudden the music industry would be buying airships like crazy. Maybe even the "Airship Gig" might become a regular thing for every mainstream artiest out their. I could imagine all kinds of pop-stars preforming over New York and London as well.


I really hope Dickinson dose this in the future, their isn't any band I could think of that would be better then Iron Medan to attempt this stunt first.


Let's hope for the best!