"Hello Airplanes? It's Blimps. You won. Totally."
Posted on 11/20/2015 1:57:39 PM PST by SatinDoll
Lockheed Martin has been given the green light to build its radical hybrid airship that will launch in 2018.
The US Federal Aviation Administration has this week approved a certification plan developed by the company, taking it one step closer to starting commercial deliveries.
Lockheed says the airships can transport heavy cargo to remote locations, burn significantly less fuel than conventional aircraft and land on any flat surface, including sand, snow and water.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
One account of how the new band’s name was chosen held that Moon and Entwistle had suggested that a supergroup with Page and Beck would go down like a “lead balloon”, an idiom for disastrous results.[21] The group dropped the ‘a’ in lead at the suggestion of their manager, Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the term would not pronounce it “leed”.[22] The word “balloon” was replaced by “zeppelin”, a word which, according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought “the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace” to Page’s mind.[21]
I was four when I lost mine. Mom told it was headed for Texas which didn’t help. I said, what’s Texas?
Not as spectacular as Hindenburg, but still...
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=goodyear+blimp+crash
Iceberg towing is another perpetual idea: The Many Failures and Few Successes of Zany Iceberg Towing Schemes
Every few years for the past couple centuries, even before the large-scale cultivation of marijuana, this idea occurs to someone: What if we towed an iceberg from the poles, where there are no people, to some dry, populous place and then melted it into freshwater?
LOL! Except white.
Spooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon!
Folks were playing with tri-lobed designs in the 1970s. It didn’t work then, either.
Zeppelin is actually selling some semi-rigids these days. I’d stick with the proven design.
Hey cool! They got a blimp!
Wonder when they will make it available in Prepar3D V3.0.
That was my first thought!!!
Yeah, I think that’s been done. ;-)
Not sure I want that flying over me with a million pounds of anything.
ASW platform potential.
But other than that, pretty much the same.
"Hello Airplanes? It's Blimps. You won. Totally."
I think I went out with her way back.
Heh, yeah, that idea was, uh, floated, more than once just among the Gulf States — had they been able to push the really big bergs from the Antarctic, there’s no way for the velocity to be high enough for the ice to remain ice during the hundreds of miles of 70+ F seas near the destination.
As long as we’re airing (ahem) views — using heavy lift balloons (capable of 1000 tons/tonnes or more, IOW, 10 yard/meter cubed of ice/water) to nab the bergs right out of the drink, and be able to contain them as liquid so there’s no loss during the flight, would probably work, but it seems as if that would be spectacularly expensive compared to modern desalination tech. It would be the only option for, say, refoliated the Sahara, and would still require Israeli-style trickle irrigation.
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