Airships Are Almost Here

…again?

LTA and others are apparently still working on their new generation of airships [1].

As an old helium head, I’m always excited by zeppelins.  And, of course, we have so much better tech these days.  As Michael Koziol says, “[Graf Zeppelin had] dope painted on the fabric increased its strength and resiliency. But canvas is still canvas.”  Today we have highly specialized synthetic fabrics.  And carbon fiber tubes.  And lidar to monitor the gas bags. And, of course, machine learning augmented sensor and flight systems.

It’s all very, very, very cool.  When can I ride one?  When can I drive one???  : – )

One thing that hasn’t really changed, though, since airships went out of service 100 years ago: the business model.   Or rather, the lack of a business model.

Koziol suggests that the target is “between” sea cargo and air cargo.  The companies seem to wave their hands at “humanitarian relief” or “supply chain snarls”, but who knows? Obviously, much depends on how much it will cost, what the realistic range and payload is, and so on.

LTA’s ships are designed to be 100% electric, which is important.  Of course, all classes of aircraft are electrifying rapidly, so that won’t be a differential for long.

I have to wonder just how much market there can be for something with the speed and capacity of a truck or large helicopter, but the size of an airliner?  And bear in mind that small electric UAVs are swarming onto the scene. Much as I dislike these annoying drones, they are likely to be cheap and ubiquitous and therefore practically useful.

Can a zeppelin compete with 100 or even 1000 robot drones?  I dunno.

Now, we do know that there is a small, but crazy-enthusiastic market for Zeppelin rides—sign me up! And if you can get the price right I can imagine loony parties in the sky (A unique Bar Mitzvah or  Wedding?  Game watching parties, circling the stadium. Sky raves?). 

Airships are also interesting candidates for long term surveillance, lower than Earth orbit but higher than conventional aircraft, especially solar charged electric airships with missions that linger for months between landings.

And how about using something like a LTA as a base for a swarm of drones?  How do you get 4 tons of UAVs hundreds of kilometers off the road?  Fly them there in a carrier airship, then launch and command the swarm from air.

I can keep coming up with cool ideas for a long time.  But until we really know the cost and performance really available, it’s hard to have any confidence in the feasibility of any of this stuff.

Still – I would love to see airships in the sky again in my lifetime. So don’t dawdle!

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1. Michael Koziol, The Tech Is Finally Good Enough for an Airship Revival, in IEEE Spectrum – Aerospace, December 10, 2022. https://spectrum.ieee.org/airship