Having another Titanic instead of the Hindenburg could help a bit.
Agreed; the Hindenberg disaster was what truly killed the Zeppelin.Having another Titanic instead of the Hindenburg could help a bit.
You're the kind of people who think a Firefly was just a show cancelled before its time and not an insect.Me too...![]()
Your challenge is to have Zeppelins (alongside or superseding airplanes) as the primary mode of transportation in 2012. Zeppelins are a staple of parallel worlds, and I think it'd be cool if we could have them now.
Any ideas how we can achieve this?
-AYC
You're the kind of people who think a Firefly was just a show cancelled before its time and not an insect.
-AYC
Take a 300 ft diameter blimp shape, make it proportionately long. Add wings sufficient to the task. Add a small submarine type nuclear power plant. Use the eletricity to both super cool and super heat your {He}. This allows the craft to actually change its lighter-than-air aspect while in flight, without wastefully venting the {He}, for a smooth transition from LTA to wing borne flight near the ground, thus eleminating the main problem with landings and high winds. Make the craft into 'flying boats' to avoid having to have 20 mile long runways for landings. The great lakes of the world become massive transshipment points!
Build 'floating' rail docks (multi story if you please) for rapid loading/unloading.
Good bye to lock size problem in panama, hello to far faster shipment of bulk frieght.
Any comments?
EDIT
At what temp is super heated {He} as (or more) boyant than unheated {H}?
Take a 300 ft diameter blimp shape, make it proportionately long. Add wings sufficient to the task. Add a small submarine type nuclear power plant. Use the eletricity to both super cool and super heat your {He}.
It is very difficult to get hard weights on sub nuke plants. But the seem to be at least hundreds of tons, perhaps a thousand. By the time you add the water for coolant and lead for shielding and steel for turbines, etc, the weight adds up quickly.
If you want a nuclear-powered zeppelin, there are better options than a Pressurized Water Reactor. Something like one of the ANP Project's direct-cycle air-cooled engines, for example, or maybe a scaled-up version of one of the SNAP satellite reactors. I don't have specific weights on hand, but the ANP reactors were intended to power jet engines for high-subsonic bombers, so I imagine they could handle this.
Of course, that raises the question as to why one would want a nuclear-powered zeppelin...
What about a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) like the ones in Voyager and Curiosity?