AHC: Zeppelin-Wank!

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
 
Significantly slow down, or better yet butterfly away, petrol technology. No petrol = much slower development of fixed-wing aircraft, allowing those zepps to flourish...
 
There are a few ways to help such a scenario. Advanced Solar Cell Technology would allow you to power them that way - if only partially - combined with advanced battery tech. Along with very clean and efficient engines for assured power. Making them far more luxurious than they were OTL is another plus.

Helium filled as opposed to Hydrogen couldn't hurt either - especially on the PR side.
 
Having another Titanic instead of the Hindenburg could help a bit.

Yeah, like the sinking of the Empress of Ireland, Lusitania, etc. did anything to end the use of passenger liners. There are dozens of air crashes every year but the use of passenger carrying aircraft has not decreased. Passenger liners can carry more people and cargo than a single airship.

The only way that you will have zeppelins as a primary, tho truthfully, secondary mode of transportation, will be massive government investment and long term support. Major shipments of cargo and mail will continue via steamship and rail.
 
You are also going to have to make far more efficient use of your helium. Compress it back into cylinders rather than venting it for buoyancy control. Have skins with minimal leakage. Collect helium from natural gas wells that dont currently separate out the helium. Actually, a good step toward the latter would be if most natural gas was transported as lng, then the leftover gas is very rich in helium.
 
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

My own take:
  1. Add wings.
  2. Nuclear power plants.
  3. Good use of Cyrogenics.
  4. Make them seaplane/amphibous.
Solves all the problems that I know of with the whole lighter than air craft.

Comments or questions?
 
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}?
 
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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}?

PV=nRT
So to have n, number of moles, cut in half, you have to double T. Since room temperature is c.300 degrees K, youd have to heat the helium to 600K, 1080R or about 600F

Which is hotter than my oven will go.
?...

Why do you need n cut in half? Because each helium atom weighs 4 and each hydrogen molecule 2. So you need to have half as many helium atoms as hydrogen molecules.

Note that the lift advantage of hydrogen over helium is minor, about 7%, by my back of the enveloppe calculation. Heating, and insulating that big an enveloppe that hot would be.... counterproductive in terms of lift capacity.
 
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.
 
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...
 
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?
 
What about a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) like the ones in Voyager and Curiosity?

I'd think that would be too low a power density to be practical except maybe to power sensor drones, but I'm not positive about that.
 
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