Posted on 02/28/2014 11:18:27 PM PST by Olog-hai
The world’s largest aircraft, which can stay airborne for up to three weeks and will be vital in delivering several tonnes of humanitarian aid as well as transporting heavy freight across the world, has been unveiled.
The 300-ft (91-m) ship is part plane, airship and helicopter, and there are plans to eventually use it to transport hundreds of tonnes of freight across difficult terrain throughout the world as well as deliver aid to risky areas.
It is environmentally friendly, being part airship filled with inert helium, and will also be used for surveillance and communications. Developers hope to make more of the “green vehicles”, which they hope to make capable of taking off from land, water, desert, ice and fields. …
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I clicked on that link and my computer virus scanner went NUTS! Don’t go there...
Unless they have a head wind.
Uh, Jonty30, can we check your math?
“It can reach about 100mph and stay airborne for about three-and-a-half days.”That's 2400 miles a day, approximately up to five days maximum—with good winds—to reach anywhere in the world. . . But you gotta go to ground every three and a half to refuel. Call it six. Nothing new here. Everything old is new again.
Add a head wind and with that frontal area to say nothing of drag??? You'd be lucky to make 30MPH.
Say, the first line of the article says it can stay aloft for three weeks. . . but the it says three and a half days??? Who are they kidding??? Somebody’s making things up! I smell a hoax!
This has all the earmarks of that “announced” Boeing 797 that seated 1200 passengers hoax that looked like a flying wing.
That front end “cracks” me up. They could call it the Assenburg or the Hindenbutt.
blimp big deal
At 100 mph, it can travel 2400 miles in 24 hours. Pretty impressive.
But what about helium supplies? I thought we were running out?
I remember reading here about an old Soviet transport plane design that was designed to fly very low. It used the "ground effect" to save on fuel.
I wonder if it will go anywhere. It seems like they'd have military use, at least. Check out this neat looking rendering:
I don't know how they'd do on heavy seas.
Staying aloft, going nowhere, for three weeks may have some reconnaissance value to it. Actually traveling somewhere is going to burn a lot more fuel than just loitering in one spot.
Interesting fact:
Nasa is the country's largest user of helium. Guess who the second is?
The Macy's Day Parade.
“Trendy phrase I’d like to see permanently retired: “Game changer.””
YES! Along with “unexpected.”
DARPA, NASA, and, the DOD have been studying airship technology for years as rapid military transports. There are benefits (faster than ships, not bound by waterways, less crew intensive) and liabilities (vulnerable to wind and weather, vulnerable in general to enemy fire, and, able to carry less for their size than a comparable ship.)
It is a neo-novel concept. The would fill a niche somewhere between sea-going vessels and transport aircraft but that niche and how important it is is the question.
Oh, it's green. Well ok, just keep reverting the country back to the early 1900's,
then call it progress.
It wouldn’t have much military use, because it is too slow. Where I could see it being used is one could probably unload a ship and load a blimp within a few hours and get it to wherever it needs to be in a minimal number of steps.
They keep trying to do it with electric cars, after all. They read the stories of the time when electric cars once outsold internal and external combustion cars, and wonder what stopped the technology.
"... and it looks like a giant penis."
Like the Segway. I actually saw one recently - at the Target store in Mountain View.
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