Lloyd Alter catches wind of the test flight of the Airlander 10 for Treehugger.com:
… the Airlander 10 took its first flight on August 17. It was a short flight, only 19 minutes, 500 foot altitude and only 35 knots speed, but it is perhaps the start of a new era of low-carbon transportation. It is also not going to catch fire, because it is filled with helium, not hydrogen. TreeHugger used to worry about using so much helium in blimps, but major new fields have been discovered that lessen the worry about peak helium. …
Airships have a few advantages over other flight tech; they are quiet, they don’t pollute nearly as much, since their engines are not doing the heavy lifting, but are for control and movement. The Airlander has 4- 325 hp, 4 litre V8 direct injection, turbocharged diesel engines; that’s smaller than the engine on a pickup truck. Most of the lift is provided by the helium, but as much as 40 percent of lift can come the aerodynamic shape of the hull; it is a giant flying wing. This means that it is not a truly lighter than air vehicle like the dirigibles were, but a hybrid:
Image: Hybrid Air Vehicles
Questions concerning high wind conditions were not discussed, which leaves me dubious of what is otherwise an attractive technology. There are few examples, since lighter than air craft have not been in common use, but consider that of the USS Shenandoah, operated by the U. S. Navy, as related by Airships.net:
On September 3, 1925, on its 57th flight, Shenandoah was caught in a storm over Ohio. Updrafts caused the ship to rise rapidly, at a rate eventually exceeding 1,000 feet per minute, until the ship reached an altitude over 6,000 feet. Shenandoah rose, fell, and was twisted by the storm, and the ship finally suffered catastrophic structural failure, breaking in two at frame 125, approximately 220 feet from the bow. The aft section sank rapidly, breaking up further, with two of the engine cars breaking away and falling to the ground, killing their mechanics.
The control car, attached to the bow section, also separated from the ship and crashed to the ground, killing the six men still aboard, including the ship’s captain, Lt. Cdr. Lansdowne. Without the weight of the control car, the remaining bow section, with seven men aboard, including Navigator Charles Rosendahl, ascended rapidly. Under Rosendahl’s leadership, the men in the bow valved helium from the cells and free-ballooned the bow to a relatively gentle landing. In all, fourteen members of the crew were killed in the crash.
I’m no expert – just a nervous nelly when it comes to storms and high, unstable places.
