In more than one science fiction world (the latest that spring to mind are Fringe, and Doctor Who) Zeppelins are seen as common in modern day. Usually it seems to help create an atmosphere of a more evil world (since I guess we associate Zeppelins with Hitler in out ‘collective subconscious’?).
My question is, are Zeppelins a viable means of modern day transport that has simply fallen prey to bad memories, and thus not being explored/used; or are they just not practical other than the Goodyear Blimp?
If they former is true, what would mass transit Zeppelin technology look like today?
They are very slow and very weather dependent. Trucks or trains would probably be cheaper. Other than the coolness factor, there isn’t really an upside.
Thank you. I must refine my doper searching skills apparently On the other hand, if we are only going to discuss things that have never been discussed before on this message board, things will get very quiet very fast from what I can see
One issue that wasn’t addressed by that thread. If I recall correctly, dirigibles were relatively good under flight conditions but they were very poor at taking off and landing. It was very difficult to maneuver them precisely at ground level and dock them securely.
If your engine and materials technology was stuck somewhere in the the 1920s to 1930’s era level and fuel was pretty pricy and the infamous Hendinburg didn’t happen, then yeah, IMO a sky full of Zepplins isnt outside the realm of reasonable possibility.
I find it hard to believe in a time when my car (well not my car, but whatever) can parallel park itself we couldn’t figure out how to dock and undock Zepplins without incident.
Plus, does the method of lift really matter? Wind under the wings or lighter than air ballast - you can still strap a jet engine to it and make it aero-dynamic. Momentum would go a long ways toward countering weather based effects like wind, too.
I guess I’m not really exploring the idea of classic slow moving Zepplins, as more wondering what Zepplins could have evolved into.
It’s not hard to create a plausible timeline where airships saw greater use, but planes will always win out in the end. Airships would never be the dominant mode of air transport. Give Hugo Eckener had better financing he could’ve gotten his transatlantic service started sooner and possibly built a few more zeppelins. If the USN had better luck with their program (or followed Dr Eckener’s advice about not taking risks), developed a clear doctrine for the flying aircraft carrie, and Goodyear had better lobbyists that would’ve led to a larger naval airship program and bled into at least one civil airship program (they had a bunch of designs for passenger models). And if the R101 hadn’t crashed the British would’ve built the R102 and the Imperial Airship Scheme could’ve gotten off the ground.
Then WWII would come along, all passenger service would cease, and not come back post-war. The Navy would’ve phased out rigid airships by 1960. With no major passenger diasters (at least not caught on film) we’d probally seen non-rigid and semi-rigid flightseeing airships more popular and at least one attempt to revive the rigid airship as a novelty vacation option. If you take away WWI things get really interesting. The Treaty of Versailles and economic disruption really hurt Germany’s program.
If you’re going to go with an alternate universe, perhaps the simplest thing to do is delay the development of the airplane. Then the airship will get a big headstart in development, so it would be the only/best form of air transport for quite a while. Even with that, the airplane will still win out in the long run, as you say.
And the simplest thing I can think of to delay the airplane is to have something, say a tragic bicycling accident, strike the Wright brothers so they give up research/development before they get their plane off the ground. As I understand it, none of the others trying to invent heavier-than-air flight at that time were going down the right path, so the invention of the plane may have been delayed until perhaps the 20s.
I find it hard to believe that stopping the Wright brothers would have delayed heavier than air flight for more than a few years. Too many people were working on it, and it had just become technologically feasible at a time when inventing and new technology, not to mention society’s attitude towards newfangled machines, was at an all time high.
There is a great book for children/young adults called Airborn by Kenneth Oppel that gives an excellent depiction of an alternate world where lighter than air ships rule the sky. I recommend it.
Basically, not practical. They run smack into these inherent limitations:
Strength: Using the best known materials, there’s no way to make the structure both light enough to fly and strong enough to endure the stresses imposed by normal bad weather.
Speed: Strength and weight considerations limit airships to speeds around 150 kph - IOW, speeds typical of reasonably low-tech trains.
Fuel efficiency: An airship of any useful capacity has to be large; driving a large airship through the atmosphere at useful speeds takes a lot of energy. As compared to the fuel efficiency of aircraft, airships are excellent at very low speeds, poor at moderate speeds (150kph) and useless at higher speeds.
Load-carrying capacity: It take a huge (& thus stunningly expensive) airship to carry the load of a single train car. It will carry that load at much the same speed, using dramatically more fuel per ton-mile.
Lift via lighter than air gas will always result in a gigantic bulky envelope of some sort. The size is really the problem, since it causes lots of drag in the direction of travel (much more drag than a comparable airfoil). And that giant envelope is easily pushed around by crosswinds, which is the major problem with take-offs and landings.
When you parallel park a car you aren’t being towed in random directions by a clipper ship propelled by 20 mph winds ;).
If we presume a super-strong (or super-flexible) aluminum alloy, would that make Zeppelins practical? What sort of magic would it take to make them work?
Why wouldn’t we use the super-strong alloy in our heavier-than-air craft instead? Any material that would make zeppelins better would make airplanes better too.
Larry Niven invented the concept of stasis blimps. This requires the use of a Slaver Stasis Field where time doesn’t pass. So you go out in space, and create a stasis field in the desired shape around a volume of vacuum. Bring the stasis field back to earth, and hey, it’s a perfectly buoyant perfectly rigid airship hull. Now get to work searching the sea trenches for ancient aliens preserved via stasis field, and we’re in business.
Sounds to me one plausible way to create an alternate-history World of Zeppelins is where you have a extremely strong World Government that actively suppresses fixed-wing technology for whatever reason (perhaps because World Emperor von Zeppelin wants to make sure his Zeppelin factory stays busy).
Well, if we are going the route of just trying to come up with a world for a sci-fi book, a different atmosphere might do the trick? I would guess that a different atmosphere could result in all kinds of different wing lift, while there will always be something ‘lighter than air’. But, I’d have to do more research - I admit this is pure speculation at the moment.
On the other hand, if we are only going to discuss things that have never been discussed before on this message board, things will get very quiet very fast from what I can see 