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.
"... 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.
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.
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.
