A new concept in airships

[Norch]

Over the past 100 years or so, even before Count Zeppelin, there has not been that much inprovement in airship concepts. Count Zeppelin introduced the idea of a rigid balloon and from then not much has changed.

about 12 years ago I became interested in airships as a means of showing Africa to the well-heeled.

Two things have happened to stop that:
*Hamilton Aircraft Co, a South African listed company that soon forgot all about airships and worked on skinning the public.
*CargoLifter AG, a German company that learnt a lot from Hamilton aircraft.

For anybody that's interested in this, I have made a XLS file of some of the concepts, please contact me at gracere@eject.co.za . Don't let the za put you off as there are still some engineers left in Africa.

 

[sirsloppy]

Hello Norch

Sounds like the big boys had money on their brains rather than LTA flight. An economic case can be made for the very large lifters if the market segment is narrowly defined.

On the other hand there's the sport market for two-person dirigibles like Santos-Dumont's early designs. There used to be an Airship Association in the seventies. Does it still exist?

The main deterrent to these craft is the storage space issues and the severe weather issues. There has to be a way of landing and securing the airframe so a series of front - related gusts and squalls cannot tear it apart or rip it to shreds.

 

[invento]

As far as 2 man lighter-than-air's- only one co. that I have seen has a chance- Windcrafter's unique new patented Carangifoil airship technologies design -- from a 4ft to the size needed to work in the 70,000ft altitudes needed for stratospheric platform work. "Fly's like a fish swims-fast, beautiful, unstoppable, simple"
This new design uses much less lifting gas, and half the horsepower to maneuver than competition.

 

[Norch]

The main concept is that the gas is heated. If a -20C start and 150C max temp were used the Hindenburg would be 80% as big and use about 20000 m^3,(if my memory is correct). This is a huge step away from the 1000000 m^3 that was used. The other advantage is that altitude ans load compensation is very simple, heat or cool the gas as required!