Industrial/Steampunk Aircraft

Not to be a continual nattering nabob of negativism, but part of AA's explanation raised another question. If the molecular action of volatus creates lots of postive pressure then the airships are more vulnerable to damage. Puncture the envelope/cells and the gas shoots out, possibly explosively.

The "high vacuum" term from the electrohandwavic gas is absolutely wrong. It's still a bag of gas, with the envelope expanding/contracting to achieve pressure equilibrium. You can handwave it into a density lower than that of hydrogen, but it's still going to be at pressure equilibrium. He's just reduced the mass required to be less than that of hydrogen.

If there was actual vacuum in the envelope, you'd have a pressure vessel, not a balloon. A balloon would collapse under vacuum, whether the vacuum is magical or not. What you'd need instead of a magic gas is a magic foil to cover the envelope with, a lead zeppelin that can take a very strong normal stress for its weight.

This is more like a blimp or child's balloon than a traditional zeppelin, in which the gas is not under any positive pressure. Because of this, relatively large rips and tears in the gas cells, particularly in the lower half of the cell, are not immediately catastrophic for a zeppelin as the loss of lifting gas is slow and the damage is repairable in flight.

Why would gas explode out of a balloon if it's at pressure equilibrium? Why wouldn't it be at or near equilibrium? They don't regularly ascend or descend radically.

It's absolutely more like a traditional zeppelin. Magic gas at local atmospheric pressure, in the presence of a punctured envelope, will act the same way hydrogen does. A whole lot of nothing happens. It'll slowly lose buoyancy as it diffuses with the outside air. There's no explosive change in pressure.

A magic, high-vacuum lead zeppelin is the one that's more dangerous in case of rupture. You're going to have an explosive change in pressure, which will rapidly change your orientation and displace you. After the initial explosion, you have zero buoyancy, and experience full weight. Unless you can somehow manage to parachute out, and I doubt it with the design being somewhat of a spinning bluff body, you're dead.
 
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I'm also sure you have thought about this, but even airplanes would benefit by using volatus in the structure. While the volume of gas might be far less than necessary to contribute meaningful lift by itself, it would make the plane lighter and hence increase performance.

My reading of volatus is that it simply has an incredibly low mass density per unit volume. You can replace air with it, which in the case of a balloon, changes your buoyancy a great deal.

In the case of a fixed-wing aircraft, let's take a look at it. There's empty space in there, alright. We've got the fuselage, the interior of the wings, it's not a solid hunk of metal. You can replace all of the open spaces with no-mass-gas. Let's take that mass out of the weight of the aircraft.

And we still have an aircraft that weighs almost exactly as much as it did before. If you replaced the wings of the aircraft with an ultra low-mass stressed skin surface (see the magic lead zeppelin envelope material), you could save some weight. If you're looking at having relatively heavy wings that don't have any weight contribution from air anymore, not so much.

The only way you can help is if this gas has *negative* weight. And my read is that that isn't the case. It won't increase performance whatsoever, and given the apparent expense of the gas, it's not going to be wasted here.
 
The "high vacuum" term from the electrohandwavic gas is absolutely wrong. It's still a bag of gas, with the envelope expanding/contracting to achieve pressure equilibrium. You can handwave it into a density lower than that of hydrogen, but it's still going to be at pressure equilibrium. He's just reduced the mass required to be less than that of hydrogen.

If there was actual vacuum in the envelope, you'd have a pressure vessel, not a balloon. A balloon would collapse under vacuum, whether the vacuum is magical or not. What you'd need instead of a magic gas is a magic foil to cover the envelope with, a lead zeppelin that can take a very strong normal stress for its weight.

Why would gas explode out of a balloon if it's at pressure equilibrium? Why wouldn't it be at or near equilibrium? They don't regularly ascend or descend radically.

It's absolutely more like a traditional zeppelin. Magic gas at local atmospheric pressure, in the presence of a punctured envelope, will act the same way hydrogen does. A whole lot of nothing happens. It'll slowly lose buoyancy as it diffuses with the outside air. There's no explosive change in pressure.

A magic, high-vacuum lead zeppelin is the one that's more dangerous in case of rupture. You're going to have an explosive change in pressure, which will rapidly change your orientation and displace you. After the initial explosion, you have zero buoyancy, and experience full weight. Unless you can somehow manage to parachute out, and I doubt it with the design being somewhat of a spinning bluff body, you're dead.

My reading of volatus is that it simply has an incredibly low mass density per unit volume. You can replace air with it, which in the case of a balloon, changes your buoyancy a great deal.

In the case of a fixed-wing aircraft, let's take a look at it. There's empty space in there, alright. We've got the fuselage, the interior of the wings, it's not a solid hunk of metal. You can replace all of the open spaces with no-mass-gas. Let's take that mass out of the weight of the aircraft.

And we still have an aircraft that weighs almost exactly as much as it did before. If you replaced the wings of the aircraft with an ultra low-mass stressed skin surface (see the magic lead zeppelin envelope material), you could save some weight. If you're looking at having relatively heavy wings that don't have any weight contribution from air anymore, not so much.

The only way you can help is if this gas has *negative* weight. And my read is that that isn't the case. It won't increase performance whatsoever, and given the apparent expense of the gas, it's not going to be wasted here.

I do appreciate Zoomars 'negativity', so don't worry about it Zoomar. It helps give me perspective when I'm developing these ideas.

I have a cross section done of the given cruiser, and the gas bags are distributed throughout the ship (carefully though to keep it balanced), and all are relatively internal (i.e. behind a bit of 'armor').

And regarding usage of the gas with normal airfoil craft, if you have areas of 'negative' weight along with 'positive' weight, you'll have stresses just as though it was all one or the other. So if the wings aren't filled with the gas and only the fusalage is, you'll have serious stresses at where the wings join the body.

Regardless of the rareity, I'm thinking that the gas really can only be used in 'large' quantities with regards to aircraft, because as it is a gas, and thusly subject to differences in pressures and temperatures, you need some system to keep it relatively static in its states, and a airfoil craft goes through temperature and pressure changes far faster than a full sized airship, and has less to 'protect' the gas from the environment, so it'd made it relatively hard to control (and damaging to the craft).
 
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