I went when I was really young. I think I mainly visited resorts and amusement parks.
The rebirth of the Airship?
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In the fifties the US Navy used blimps in the anti submarine roll. We had squadrons on both coasts one of which was stationed in Lakehurst NJ (thank you Discovery Channel). After losing numerous ships and crews during bad weather the idea went the way of the dinosaur. The routes of any modern lighter than air ships would have to be constantly monitored and adjusted. If I had the money I would love to cross the ocean in one. I just don’t seee them making a comeback. I do give you credit for thinking outside the box balungaloaf. If more people did that we could solve all kinds of problems.
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I think the biggest issue for passenger travel would be speed. 53mph is not very fast. But with some investment in the tech?
However as far as cargo goes unless it is perishable it could certainly be a viable option. The real issue is probably the ratio of cost of operation per pound per mile. (The correct measure seems to be called ton-miles.)
Seventeen crewman for the blimp.
I can’t seem to come up with the comparable number for a A380 or 747.
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Dude thats the Goodyear blimp…about 200 feet long banana and not a real Airship which is like 800 feet long and must have more than 17 people working it.
That thing is an excuse to sell tires at football games. It cant fly across the Atlantic unless its a Kamikaze mission on Paris.
http://www.aerosml.com/gallery.htm
most likely the type of thing that carries 300+ people and gets to travel to Europe in 18 hours is gonna be real big to carry all that and most likely a nice big target to blow up by some people. Once that happens the thing goes back in the box like the Hindenburg episode.
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Courtesy of goodyear tires:
The Hindenburg was the largest, and it was 804 feet long, more than four times the length of the larger Goodyear GZ-20. Its gas volume was over six million cubic feet, and it had 242 tons of gross lift, enough to carry itself plus seventy passengers, a crew of sixty, diesel fuel for a transatlantic flight, luggage, some cargo and mail, and twenty tons of water ballast that could be dropped in the event of an emergency descent. It was faster, too, cruising at about eighty miles per hour.
not much has changed in terms of size needed to lift ratio. The American ones used Helium and faired worse than the Germans zepps.
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Too slow, holds too few people. A drastic decrease in speed means an increase in food, water, entertainment items (people aren’t going to simply sit in a seat twiddling their thumbs for 30+hours), and bigger holding tanks for storing more waste. All of those mean increased weight and less space. They’ll never be as efficient as a jet carrying hundreds of people 300+MPH.
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Helium may be cheaper but ratio wise it would have to be b/c Hydrogen is ligher so you would need more Helium.
I think our best bet would be an electic-magnetic rail system in the US.
LT
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electric-magnetic rail system in the US.
Im with you on that. need to tie the USA together from east to west with at least one running from California to say Boston
laid on a diagonal with a few shorter runs to Florida and Chicago.
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I would have liked the old Route 66 path. LA to NY with a stop in Chicago.
LT
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@ncscswitch:
Easy enough…
Heavier than air aircraft
do you refer to zeppelins or
what precisely enters into ˝heavier than aircraft˝domein
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Heavier than air aircraft require air to be moved over an airfoil to create lift, either by a rotating airfoil like a helicopter or by forward motion moving air over an air foil as in the case of fixed and variable wing aircraft. The motion of air over the airfoil creates the lift.
Lighter than air aircraft displace enough air with a lighter than air gas to create buoyancy in the same manner as a ship floats on water. The most common methods of creating that lighter than air are:
Heated air (which is less dense than regular air) as in a hot air balloon
Filled with light weight gases such as Hydrogen (in the case of the Hindenburg) or Helium (as in the case of the Goodyear Blimp) -
I suspect that you could duplicate the Hindenburg and fill it with helium for less than the cost of a new 747 or Airbus. I do not think that it is a matter of if, only when. The biggest headaches/roadblocks are FAA certification and ground facilities. The FAA is now one of the biggest obstacles to real change in the aviation area because of its certification process. I tried to get the AN-2 biplane transport certified in the early 1990s, but the cost of $2 million minimum was more than I could raise. Also, the major group interested in financing the project wanted the Polish government to privatize the factory, and that simply was not going to happen. Project went on back burner in consequence.
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If movie and pop stars and political leaders endorsed the airship then certain people would use airships. Otherwise our fast pace society will not accept such travel.
Most people’s thoughts of airships consist of the Hindenburg burning and the beer commercial series Bud Bowl.
I would love if ships and airships became the mode of travel again.
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I greatly enjoy cruise ships as a mode of travel, and given the level of comfort you could supply on an airship, I would love that as well.
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Trains. Trains are a very civilized way to travel.
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Trains. Trains are a very civilized way to travel.
It is a shame that train stations always seem to be in the worst parts of town though :|
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@ncscswitch:
Trains. Trains are a very civilized way to travel.
It is a shame that train stations always seem to be in the worst parts of town though :|
Train stations NOW are in the worst part of town. I suspect that when everyone had to take the train that part of town was a bit more on the up and up. More folks around, more intrest from city leaders in keeping vistor’s first impressions good. The big local B&O station isn’t in the worst part of town (even back when it was still a train station.)
Although I suppose it might be that Trains are/were loud and dirty and smelly and the nice folks didn’t want them in their neighborhood. The aforementioned station is pretty far away from the nicer residences when it would have been thriving.
The town (Wheeling, WV) at one time was the state capitol and the station is around the corner from one of the buildings used as the capitol and across the street from the other bigger building that was used as such.
The Train station in Pittsburgh is not in the worst part of town. Neither is the station in Cincinnati. I wouldn’t call them the best parts of town but I don’t view them as spots of greater personal vulnerabilty than anyplace else in town. :|
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Don’t count on it yet. Airplanes are still more versatile than airships are and that won’t change for a long time.
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@ncscswitch:
Trains. Trains are a very civilized way to travel.
It is a shame that train stations always seem to be in the worst parts of town though :|
Train stations NOW are in the worst part of town. I suspect that when everyone had to take the train that part of town was a bit more on the up and up. More folks around, more intrest from city leaders in keeping vistor’s first impressions good. The big local B&O station isn’t in the worst part of town (even back when it was still a train station.)
Although I suppose it might be that Trains are/were loud and dirty and smelly and the nice folks didn’t want them in their neighborhood. The aforementioned station is pretty far away from the nicer residences when it would have been thriving.
The town (Wheeling, WV) at one time was the state capitol and the station is around the corner from one of the buildings used as the capitol and across the street from the other bigger building that was used as such.
The Train station in Pittsburgh is not in the worst part of town. Neither is the station in Cincinnati. I wouldn’t call them the best parts of town but I don’t view them as spots of greater personal vulnerabilty than anyplace else in town. :|
My parents are from Dennison, OH (fairly close to Wheeling), which was a major troop depot during WW2. It was at its height at that time, now it’s withering away quite rapidly and while there is evidence trains were always coming and going, there is only a museum with a parked locomotive and some cars currently.
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I grew up in Blair County, PA… home of the Sam Ray repair yards in Hollidaysburg, and the massive rail yards in Altoona. Both allegedly were on Hitler’s Top 10 list to bomb in WWII if he could get Bombers with the range to do so. It is the home county of the Horseshoe Curve and the Allegheny Portage Railroad (check your pre-rail road Canal history for the relevance of THAT one).
And as much as it pains me to say it… rail is dead… so long as we continue to subsidize the shipment of freight on asphalt instead of on steel. Without government subsidy of highways, if freight costs were contingent upon the REAL cost per ton to move freight including the cost of the roads, then rail would again be KING in this nation, for no business would willingly pay the insane costs to ship 40,000 pounds by 53’ trailer without the massive government subsidies.
And in a way, that is analogous of airships… we subsidize fixed wing aircraft: publicly paid for airports, government controlled airspace and rights of passage. Without those government financed advantages, the cost of moving people and goods via air with aircraft that required ZERO FUEL to stay aloft would rapidly promote and exponentially expand lighter than air aircraft. If you can move 100 people by air from LA to NYC for a few hundred pounds of kerosene and do it in a day and a half, only the most time sensitive issues would require the use of THOUSANDS OF GALLONS of JP8 to move the same 100 people in 6 hours on an MD-80.
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