Diaster relief. I just saw something on TV about Switzerland sending an air hosptial jet to Haiti and it not being clear if it would even be able to land.
Yeah, but these things look too expensive to build to just let them sit around waiting for the occasional emergency. We can adapt an existing plane for mobile hospital use, but no one is going to finance the design and construction of an entirely new model of aircraft solely for mobile hospital use.
Yeah, you may be right. Ships have a 125-1 capacity advantage, the Aeroscraft beats it 7-1 on speed (using numbers in this thread, plus a 400-ton capacity for the airship). Strictly on tonnage, you’d need 18 Aeroscrafts to replace one ship. So, would the savings in cargo handlers offset the number of people you’d need to fly 18 airships? There could still be niches where it makes sense.
I wonder if the auto companies would be interested. They have a product that’s bulky, can’t be handled with automatic equipment, and takes up lots of expensive real estate at the ports. They probably couldn’t fly the cars directly to each dealership, but they could have a few receiving centers around the country.
Ice road truckers territory for starters.
By the way, I had to download a malware program to get rid of the “Security Tools” program that the Aeroscraft website infected my computer with (Microsoft Essentials didn’t do such a good job after all.) Be very wary of going to that website.
I fucking hate the sterile (not germ-free, but aesthetically sterile), soul-sucking experience that is modern air travel, so I’m definitely intrigued by this. Give me a choice between a 6- or 8-hour drive and flying, and I’ll drive 99 times out of 100, but for something longer than that, I think I’d prefer the manufacturer’s vision of this thing over an airliner.
That said, I don’t think that experience will ever be cheap enough for me to seriously consider it as an alternative.
I think **Quartz **is right: they need to position themselves as a better option than trains for passenger travel, and a better option than ship (with the benefit of being able to pick-up and deliver closer to wherever you’re starting or ending) for cargo.
How hard can it be to present oneself as a better option than Amtrak outside the Northeast?
The prototype has flown as of this year - http://www.aeroscraft.com/
Anyone know of any news beyond January? God I hope this takes off, I’ve always loved such machines.
How could this operate without ballast?
*The system gets around a major drawback of traditional airships which have difficulty controlling lift, and need ballasts to reach the correct altitude, and ropes and docking stations are needed on the ground to stop a vessel floating off.
Instead, the Aeroscraft uses large bags, or bladders, inside a rigid structure. When the pilot wants to descend, the vehicle needs to be heavier, so the helium in the main body of the craft is compressed and put into storage chambers. That creates a relative vacuum inside the body, which draws air from the outside. Air is heavier than helium, so the vehicle sinks. To rise again, the stored helium is released back into the body of the aircraft, pushing the air out of the bags and replacing the volume it filled with lightweight helium.*
What happens if the compressors lose power at altitude? Are they stuck up there? Are there mechanically operated valves to dump Helium? A guy with a BB gun, maybe? Lower a rope and get a bunch of people to haul on it?
Novel, “The Big Lifters” by Dean Ing. Describes the concept in a near-future setting (and, since it was written in 1989, that future is our past! But so it goes in sci-fi!) Fun tech, and fun sociology. The Truckers’ Union guys are nicely parodied.