DBWI: Airplaines used in civilian travel?

[Nicola]

OOC: How many PoDs are there here? No civilian airliners is crap, the Farman F.60 was produced in 1919, and continued to fly until 1931 in some cases. Contrawise, without helium zepplins are death-traps, and helium is expensive (and often unavailable). Aircraft by comparison are quite small, fairly cheap, reasonably fast (The Farman F.60 was faster than the USS Akron), and don't need a-mile-and-a-half to land in.

while i'm not the original author of the TL here's my take

primary PoD- easier and cheaper Helium - probably from fractional distillation of liquid air - also maybe to 'stretch it' as the cost of a little buoyancy you don;t fill your zeppelins with pure He but a He / N mix as you've got all this 'spare' nitrogen from fractional distillation of air after you've taken off the oxygen and the 'minor' but valuable components

secondary PoD even if heavier than air craft develop as OTL during 1918 , slight doctrinal shift sees the aeroplane as a scout and a form of 'cavalry' and less effort is expended on developing larger aircraft to drop bombs

losses in fledging commercial aviation post WW1 are seen as high for the factors discussed so far in the thread

- if the engine breaks down on a fixed wing aircraft you fall out of the sky ( what's the gliding performance and sink rate of a ww1 aircraft ) - where an all engines out airship ( don;t forget these early C20th airships might have up to a dozen independent power plants) drifts until it can find somewhere safe to put down or can catch a tow whether that's from a another airship or from a ship if over water

- The inert gas filled airship doesn't have the explosions and associated total hull losses that Hydrogen filled ones do

- The passenger experience of an airship, while perhaps a little more cramped than travelling first or second class on an ocean liner is better than a Pullman train , you have a cabin - ensuite in first class - sharing a toilet cubicle between 2 or 3 cabins in second, there is a restaurant - the menu limited only by the cost of the fares and skill of the brigade in the kitchens, a bar, a dance floor , library/ reading room , observation lounge ...

- where the passenger experience of 1920s fixed wing aircraft is cramped into a narrow tube, strapped in , one tiny toilet cubicle you have to wedge yourself in, no catering ... tossed about by turbulence etc etc ...

add in slightly slower developments in IC engines leading to poorer power to weight ratios ....

if you also throw a slightly different picture of railway development in - again butterflies at work - perhaps wider electrification because the diesel engine doesn't seem as attractive as an improvement over steam meaning that for intercity travel , especially in Europe there is no where near the demand for intercity air travel, which doesn't allow the flying on package holiday thing to develop off the back of short haul heavier than air developments ...

So in the 1950s and 1960s the intercity passenger railway is bright, airy, 200km/h chrome trimmed brightly coloured and CLEAN outside and in electrically powered streamliners driven by a single driver ( even if the unions keep a second man in the cab on some routes) and with instant start up rather than steam trains requiring a two man footplate crew and hours to get up to steam unless you keep them fired overnight ...

 

[Petike]

Petike, of course Central Europeans think that way. Bunch of conservative Habsburgs. They can change the name, but you can't change the people.

Now, now, while we are conservative on the outside, we are not adverse to research and innovation. Far from it. Are you forgetting the 7 Noble Prize holders we have, out of that 4 in applied sciences ? And since we're speaking about airships, we still produce some of the best in the world. Granted, the newer Aussie companies have proven strong competition for us and other European companies in the last two decades or so, but the Old Continent's airship and other aviation industries are certainly not in decline. I'm actually kind of glad that aeroplane and helicopter manufacture have grown over here since the late 1940s.

 

[MattII]

primary PoD- easier and cheaper Helium - probably from fractional distillation of liquid air - also maybe to 'stretch it' as the cost of a little buoyancy you don;t fill your zeppelins with pure He but a He / N mix as you've got all this 'spare' nitrogen from fractional distillation of air after you've taken off the oxygen and the 'minor' but valuable components

Urgh, this breaks my brain, because adding nitrogen kills your bouyancy (70% of the atmosphere is the stuff), and helium isn't in the atmosphere in any useful quantity, you might as well dredge seawater for gold.

secondary PoD even if heavier than air craft develop as OTL during 1918 , slight doctrinal shift sees the aeroplane as a scout and a form of 'cavalry' and less effort is expended on developing larger aircraft to drop bombs

Which is also problematic, virtually every nation that developed aircraft developed bombers to some degree.

losses in fledging commercial aviation post WW1 are seen as high for the factors discussed so far in the thread

maybe I missed something, but not a lot of crashes are talked about.

- if the engine breaks down on a fixed wing aircraft you fall out of the sky ( what's the gliding performance and sink rate of a ww1 aircraft ) - where an all engines out airship ( don;t forget these early C20th airships might have up to a dozen independent power plants) drifts until it can find somewhere safe to put down or can catch a tow whether that's from a another airship or from a ship if over water

Right, except that over land aircraft most aircraft could come down on a wide road.

- The inert gas filled airship doesn't have the explosions and associated total hull losses that Hydrogen filled ones do

Hydrogen prices won't come down much, and will go up if anything if the US starts selling the stuff.

- The passenger experience of an airship, while perhaps a little more cramped than travelling first or second class on an ocean liner is better than a Pullman train , you have a cabin - ensuite in first class - sharing a toilet cubicle between 2 or 3 cabins in second, there is a restaurant - the menu limited only by the cost of the fares and skill of the brigade in the kitchens, a bar, a dance floor , library/ reading room , observation lounge ...

- where the passenger experience of 1920s fixed wing aircraft is cramped into a narrow tube, strapped in , one tiny toilet cubicle you have to wedge youself in, no catering ... tossed about by turbulence etc etc ...

Gets you there faster than the train though, and turbulence is only a big problem for an aeroplane, but it's a colossal one for a Zeppelin.

OOC: I like zeppelins, but this is borderline ASB.....

I think so too.

 

[Parterre]

Now, now, while we are conservative on the outside, we are not adverse to research and innovation. Far from it. Are you forgetting the 7 Noble Prize holders we have, out of that 4 in applied sciences ? And since we're speaking about airships, we still produce some of the best in the world. Granted, the newer Aussie companies have proven strong competition for us and other European companies in the last two decades or so, but the Old Continent's airship and other aviation industries are certainly not in decline. I'm actually kind of glad that aeroplane and helicopter manufacture have grown over here since the late 1940s.

Of course, the United States still leads in such things. But I was really thinking in political terms.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

while i'm not the original author of the TL here's my take

primary PoD- easier and cheaper Helium - probably from fractional distillation of liquid air - also maybe to 'stretch it' as the cost of a little buoyancy you don;t fill your zeppelins with pure He but a He / N mix as you've got all this 'spare' nitrogen from fractional distillation of air after you've taken off the oxygen and the 'minor' but valuable components

OOC:
Liquid helium from air is certainly possible, and we'll probably be doing it in my kids' lifetimes. Still, that would be at least 10 times as expensive as helium is currently.

As for 'stretching' it. pure nitrogen gives almost no lift, so you'd be making a bigger envelop with the same amount of helium for a given load.

Given the rather limited amounts of 'cheap' fossil helium, there is no way you are going to get larger amounts of cheaper helium. It just isn't there.

Oh, sure, in today's society, with LNG tankers cruising the world, getting otherwise uneconomical amounts of He out of natural gas during the liquification process would be 'trivial'. But for most wells, you have to be liquifying the gas anyway to make He recovery worthwhile at todays' prices. As the price goes up, more wells will do that, but this isn't going to get you cheaper He.

 

[Nicola]

helium is extracted by fractional distillation - some comes from air , although it's far more abundant in some natural gas fields so it tends to come from there - and this was discovered in 1903

some 'balloon gas' sold for party balloons is either a mixture of helium and nitrogen or helium and air - any helium enriched mix gas is going to have some buoyancy it;s a case of trading off the partial pressure of helium vs the partial pressure of the cheaper gas with the buoyancy you achieve.

or are the knockers suggesting that the whole idea is ASB ? and if so why is it ASB given the conditions are all there and known pre WW1 and don;t need the ASBs to intervene...

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

But I have to agree with RCAF on one thing though. Being able to use the Men's Room in-flight is a luxury I can't to without.

Hear Hear, especially when they're serving liquid refreshments.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Which is also problematic, virtually every nation that developed aircraft developed bombers to some degree.

There was an arguement made pre war that Aerial Bombardment of civilian targets was illeagal under the Hague convention. Otl that was ignored right from the start but if (and I admit it's a huge if) that view was adheared to throughout WW1 then the large multi engined bombers that were most suitable for conversion to passenger transports would not have been developed. There would admitedly still have been the Flying Boats but without the landplane conversions to prove there was a market for civil transport airplanes and the ability to reliably cross large bodies of water the airship would have appeared the better option. Otl Even after the Hindenburg crash there were still many who thought transoceanic heavier than air passenger flights were a nonsence. It took WW11 and the wartime developments in infrostructure and aircraft technology to silence those voices.

About the availability of Helium if the US hadn't treated the sale of Helium to non US buyers as Arms sales then the safety issue of using Hydrogen would have been a non starter.

 

[Æsir]

OOC: This talk of bombers not being developed is moot, since the existence of large bombers seems to be expressly mentioned in the third post.

 

[MattII]

There was an arguement made pre war that Aerial Bombardment of civilian targets was illeagal under the Hague convention. Otl that was ignored right from the start but if (and I admit it's a huge if) that view was adheared to throughout WW1 then the large multi engined bombers that were most suitable for conversion to passenger transports would not have been developed.

Except the Ilya Muromets, some of which started their life as airliners (and without a war would stay as such). Also, bombers are going to be perfectly viable against military targets like submarine bases, battleships and barracks. Also, the though that a country that would invade an dominate another country would stop something like that just because of a bit of paper...

Otl Even after the Hindenburg crash there were still many who thought transoceanic heavier than air passenger flights were a nonsence. It took WW11 and the wartime developments in infrostructure and aircraft technology to silence those voices.

However, you're at the point of "there were still many", which isn't the same as "everyone". As soon as Alcock and Brown made it (and there were people before them who tried), airliners were destined.

About the availability of Helium if the US hadn't treated the sale of Helium to non US buyers as Arms sales then the safety issue of using Hydrogen would have been a non starter.

For a few years, then they'd have stopped again, because they would suddenly find themselves without enough for even their own uses.

 

[modelcitizen]

.........
Now have a very large war, not one of the colonial brushfire affairs but an all out war like the Napoleonic wars but bigger occur, say over the collapse of the Dual Monarchy, instead of a few hundred bombers built over a few decades have thousands if not tens thousands would be built in a few years

Once the war is over, well you have lots of surplus airplanes and airplane factories, why spend money building zeppelins or zeppelin factories when airplane factories and used airplanes already exist

...

That sounds like a scary-as-hell scenario, especially envisioning that airborne machinery streaking overhead at breakneck speed, with gunners on the ground unable to keep pace! Cities would be defenseless, leveled, rendered into fields of fire and then ash! That's damn scary. It would make an excellent timeline.



ooc: Did I just hint at no radar being used on a widespread basis? I think I did!

 

[MattII]

No WW1 means Sikorsky's Ilya Muromets enter service, probably in 1914 as the first airliners, unless you do something where Russo-Balt never starts up.

 

[strummist]

OOC:

Department Of Wrong:

From another forum: a thread titled "Can anyone help me make helium with just using simple things that doesn't cause bad health explosions and fire or that is bad for the environment and can you reply completely thanks"

I have tried putting pure muriatic acid with aluminium foil in a plastic bottle. The acid boiled and and the foil disintegrated in seconds. White, thick fumes came steaming out. Then, the bottle shrunk to one third its original size!!!!! .Can someone tell me what happened?

(original post contained a lot of spelling errors but I couldn't bear to leave them uncorrected)

Don't try this at home, kids! Or anywhere.