This is great news! Once airships become commercial, we just need to put London on wheels and blow up the planet, and then we'll be in a Mortal Engines-esque world. How awesome is that?
Scientist Predicts Cargo Zeppelins in the Future
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
You just cant put enough structure into and airship to make them capable of high speed flight. The fastest modern airship are only capable of 100mph and thats with making the gas bag from Kevlar. That gives a top speed which is 1/5 of the speed of an airliner. Whats the point of building a mode transport thats slower than taking the train? A 747 can carry 500 poeple from London to Sydney in 26 hours, an airship would take 5 days (ignoring things like having refuel and have enough food to feed people for 5 days)solidstatemind said:
Did you even read the article?Kevlar Eater said:I like the idea of cargo ships too. What my primary fear about them is:
And that scares the crap out of me.
Seriously. Don't post until you've read the article.
Cpt. Red said:
A train can 1000 tons of cargo at 80 mph in weather that will ground any airship. A bulk carrier can carry 350 000 tons at 25 mph, why bother with airships?
Anything that makes the world feel more like a Final Fantasy game can only be a good thing.
That, and airships are just generally awesome. Shame about Hindenburg; if not for that, airships wouldn't have as much of a public stigma, and they'd probably be zipping around the world everywhere today.
That, and airships are just generally awesome. Shame about Hindenburg; if not for that, airships wouldn't have as much of a public stigma, and they'd probably be zipping around the world everywhere today.
Now if only jet airplane were somehow rendered ineffective compared to propeller airplanes. And air pirates started to appear, and the US broke up, and the British invaded Hawaii, and I was the leader of the Fortune Hunters.
Now that would be a fun future.
Now that would be a fun future.
Now we shall take pirates to the SKIES! Muahahaha!!
Seriously, if they do get around to doing this, not only would I deliberately build my own, but I would totally make my own band of airship pirates.
Seriously, if they do get around to doing this, not only would I deliberately build my own, but I would totally make my own band of airship pirates.
Huzzah! Let us all build our own stylish goggles, and get our steam-powered crossbows ready for the Vinci invasion!TsunamiWombat said:
Just look out for the FLYceberg.A Raging Emo said:
I was under the impression that we still have a relative Helium shortage. It's not like we're making any more (since the only way to do that is fusion of Hydrogen). What we do "produce" is actually distilled from natural gas, but that's a finite resource. Once it's used, it escapes into space (or at least the upper atmosphere) since it's lighter than the rest of the atmosphere.
I would like to point out that fusion is being seriously considered as a possible power source, and should this happen, more helium could likely be made without too much hassle (if fusion power becomes popular).Avaholic03 said:
See this wiki page for more info and the current state of fusion as a potentional power source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Current_status
That's only true if D-T fusion comes to fruition (as opposed to other fusion fuels, such as Helium-3), and if it's feasible to capture and use the Helium byproduct. Even then, the amount being produced wouldn't be sufficient to sustain a huge fleet of airships.Jaeriko said:
