When Chaulks was flying Mallards, I think thier prices were reasonable (not the cheapest, but not extreme either). But I could be misremembering.
Brian
When I say “Flying Boats”, I’m talking British Empire Airways and Pan Am Clipper style flying boats operating long distance, multi-stop routes between the far corners of the world with stopovers in exotic places where one can either wear a pith helmet or swim in a coral blue sea.
I would love- love- to fly from Australia to London aboard a Short Solent flying boat, stopping off in places like Singapore, Bombay, Cairo, and Marseilles on the way. But even then, the cost of a flight was something insane like $10,000 in modern currency and it took a week and a half at least. It’s the sort of thing you’d do once for the experience, but seeing as neither British Airways nor Air France were able to keep a plane that could cross the Atlantic in three hours commercially viable, how many people- realistically- would regularly pay $10,000 plus for a one-way flight to London or Sydney that’s going to take over a week? Not many, sadly.
This might be the next best thing to actually taking a zeppelin trip: http://www.clevelandfilm.org/festival/films/2011/farewell
The Atlantic magazine on the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg’s loss - some great pics: 75 Years Since the Hindenburg Disaster - The Atlantic
Thanks!
Yeah, but they’ll hover much more fuel-efficiently than helicopters or Harriers. So all we need to do to justify them is to think of “hover-intensive applications.”
As an item of interest, I have a book on rigid dirigibles that contains the information that the Hindenberg could cross the Atlantic on $37 worth of fuel. If challenged on this, I’ll see if I can look up the reference tonight.
Also the Germans during WWI developed a series of “high-flying” airships that could cruise at 20,000 to 27,000 feet (or thereabouts). I understand that this was not too pleasant for the crew.
After World War II, the Navy continued messing around with airships, running blimps out of Lakehurst (N.J.) Naval Air Station (the dirigible base, and site of the Hindenburg crash):
http://www.naval-airships.org/Default.aspx?pageId=993560
I can remember these babies flying over the Jersey shore – the crews in the gondolas would wave to us kids.
And! Just last year:
Too cold? Air too thin? Too much bucking up and down? Something else?
I’d like to see that reference. The Hindenburg used 4 Daimler-Benz 16 cylinder DB 602 diesel engines. Even at the price of diesel in those days, you probably couldn’t power those suckers up for $37, let alone fly across the Atlantic.
Airships.net claims that:
That’s around 10,000 kg of fuel.
Elsewhere on the site a poster claims that it also consumed consumed 1305 kg of lube oil on a trans-Atlantic flight.
Answers.com gives a different set of numbers that are even higher, but I suspect Airships.net is more accurate.
You might want to read a book called “Syd’s (or Sid’s) Pirates”
He was one of the original pilots for Cathay Pacific, flying DC3s on the transatlantic route. Really lovely guy…and some great stories to be heard
But they’ve already been built, and are currently sitting empty. At Lakehurst, New Jersey, Mountain View, California, and Akron, Ohio (this one is still used sometimes by Goodyear for their blimps). You could probably rent those for a cheap price.
DC3s on the transatlantic route? When was that? I wouldn’t have thought they had the range.
Just curious, but instead of using helium or hydrogen, would it be possible to use heated air like in a hot air balloon? That way, the cost would be much less if this were possible…
It seemed to be a combination of extreme cold and thin air - no pressurization.
These high flying airships were known as “Height Climbers”.
Here are a couple of interesting links:
The reference came from a book entitled “Ships in the Sky”, copyright 1957, by the rather well-known author John Toland. I’ll type out the relevant paragraph here (my $37 memory was off by a factor of 8). Toland was talking about some of the economics of dirigible travel.
“The season had also been a revelation to investors. The ship, twice the size of the Graf Zeppelin and more than three city blocks long, was as cheap to run as a Ford car. A scant 300 dollar’s worth of crude oil was needed to carry a trip payload of seventy passengers at 400 dollars each, plus 26,000 pounds of freight at a dollar a pound. Air flight, reduced from the 2250 dollars charged per passenger by the Graf Zeppelin, was no longer for the rich alone but well within the budget of the average traveler.”
The figure of 10,000 given earlier for fuel consumption on a typical Atlantic crossing works out to 22,050 pounds. Figuring 6.5 pounds per gallon, this comes out to3,392 gallons. So at $300 per crossing for fuel, we have a cost of 8.8 cents per gallon. I have no idea what oil cost back in the middle thirties, but this might be in the ballpark.
BTW, my inflation calculator says that $400 (the passenger fare) in 1937 would be $6,008 in 2010.
I can’t see that being feasible, for something the size of the Hindenburg. Heated air provides much less lift than H or He, so you would need a much, much larger ‘balloon’. Looking at hot air balloons, it seems like you need several times the volume of balloon vs. payload. Seems like it would take a really big balloon!
Then there is the cost of heating the air. Buoyant H or He stays buoyant; air must be kept hot to remain buoyant. That requires fairly frequent heating, possibly even continuous at higher altitudes. The cost of the natural gas (or other fuel) to keep the air heated would be pretty high. As well as the weight & space occupied by this fuel.
I don’t see this as being cost effective.
What was the fuel capacity for the Hindenburg? How much fuel did they typically have left over when they reached their destination? Did they have a (required either by German law or company policy) safety reserve?
That would indicate quite a reserve of fuel.