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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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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Could you begin to emagine how the conditions of roads would change for the worse if both rail and road were competing for funding for things like repairs and maint.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad down south but up here in the north where you have to use massive amounts of road salt and street plows to keep roads clear in the winter time. That is very demanding on the streets and sidewalks.
LT
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He isn’t talking about competing for funding. He is talking about the government NOT funding airports, and roads and roads to get to the airport.
On a $$$ per ton per mile basis or $$$ per passenger per mile basis the costs the airlines and trucking companies charge likely does not include maintenance of the roads and airports. Similar to the actual cost to transport crude and its products from the middle east to the US.
If the cost of your airline ticket also included the government outlay to build the airport you’d be seeking another way to travel. Now I think some places do have fees for these things (I’m not well versed in this) but a lot of this stuff is funded with taxes.
There are a great many things that I don’t think we understand the actual cost to accomplish. The question for airships and rail is whether they can be implemented in an acceptably low cost per ton-mile for the extra time the transport would require. Also it could probably be done with less of a carbon footrpint.
I don’t think anyone has actually but any time into figuring out how it could work and left it with “It just won’t” “No one will accept it” et al.
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Frimmel,
I was just thinking out loud that if lighter then airships were to become a common use medium that the government puts say $100 in the DOT budget. This includes plains, trains, automobiles and ships.
Lets say that every one of those four get $25 for the year diretly or indirectly. Every year they would adjust the percentage to compinsate like you said per ton per mile / per person per mile to come up with a fair way to represent all four mediums.
What I was thinking is if a new airship need was created the would have to throw the whole scale out the window for at least a few years to subsidize the building of the infrastructure that a lighter then air fleet would need.
If we decided that all ships over x feet long needed to have a nuclear reactor to power them that the same thing would happen. More then their fair share would be needed to assist this new demand.
Now getting to your coment about “I don’t think anyone has actually but any time into figuring out how it could work and left it with “It just won’t” “No one will accept it” et al.” Lets just say for sake of discussion that lighter then air was the way to go they would still need to throw off the ballance ratio discussed above to give the ball a chance to roll.
LT
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