But Pasternak and his team remain optimistic. Without any further issues, the Aeroscraft will be up for certification by the FAA in It might not bring back the glory days of transatlantic zeppelins — but it might at least prove that airships can be more than floating billboards. This article is from the CityMetric archive: some formatting and images may not be present. Contact us. White papers from our partners. Siemens Smart Infrastructure. New criteria for a new, smart building era. Microgrids — the future of energy management.
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How we build can change how we think about city life. Monitor websites in our network Tech Monitor Capital Monitor. Listen to this article. You might think that the tragic end of the Hindenburg disaster in marked a clear end to the airship era. The famous footage of the German airship plunging in flames became the overwhelming image of a seemingly doomed technology. For decades, the Goodyear fleet of blimps have been the only working airships most people had a chance of seeing in real life.
But a handful of companies are looking to bring back the spectacular dirigibles. The government of Quebec will be pitching 30 million Canadian dollars 23 million in U. The plan has been derided by opposition parties, not as a flying whale but as a white elephant. But cargo airships may actually make a tremendous amount of sense. They are relatively cheap, they can carry enormous amounts of material, and they emit significantly less greenhouse gas than other modes of transportation.
The compelling arguments for dirigible travel put these airships in a class of technology, with nuclear power and lunar colonization, that is experiencing an unexpected modern renaissance.
If all goes according to plan, the company hopes to get the first airship off the ground in The R airship, circa Library of Congress.
While the most famous airship may be the Hindenburg, it was hardly the first—nor was it the last. For a time in the first half of the 20th century, airships were fashionable, practical, and futuristic. But their calamitous track record ultimately soured the public. Less remembered, perhaps because its downing was never immortalized on an album cover , was the English airship R The R was constructed as part of a state-sponsored competition, pitting government engineers against private-sector workers.
The opulent socialist airship was rushed to flight, even amid a variety of problems. It took off, en route to British India, just as its capitalist competitor set off for Canada. The government airship sagged and crashed into the French countryside just a day into its voyage, killing 48 of the 54 onboard—including the aviation minister—while the private airship conducted a celebrated tour of Montreal and Toronto before heading back to London. Most airships of the day took off using the highly flammable hydrogen—thanks mostly to an American monopoly on helium, its nonflammable alternative.
The USS Akron carried out several successful flights across the continent, but it was ultimately pushed down by strong winds in and crashed into the Atlantic , killing 73 people on board and two rescuers. President Franklin D. But it was the Hindenburg disaster, made famous by the newsreel footage of the zeppelin bursting into a ball of flames as it tried to dock at the Lakehurst air base in New Jersey, that really scuttled the industry.
The ballonets act like ballast tanks holding "heavy" air. When the blimp takes off, the pilot vents air from the ballonets through the air valves. The helium makes the blimp positively buoyant in the surrounding air, so the blimp rises.
The pilot throttles the engine and adjusts the elevators to angle the blimp into the wind. The cone shape of the blimp also helps to generate lift. As the blimp rises, outside air pressure decreases and the helium in the envelope expands.
The pilots then pump air into the ballonets to maintain pressure against the helium. Adding air makes the blimp heavier, so to maintain a steady cruising altitude, the pilots must balance the air-pressure with the helium-pressure to create neutral buoyancy. To level the blimp in flight, the air pressures between the fore and aft ballonets are adjusted.
Blimps can cruise at altitudes of anywhere from 1, to 7, ft to m. The engines provide forward and reverse thrust while the rudder is used to steer. To descend, the pilots fill the ballonets with air.
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