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Airships have been the darlings of aerospace innovation over the past five years and more because they offer immense potential for the aerospace industry leaders. Shipping cargo by air remains cost prohibitive for the vast majority of international trade—so 90% of all goods are exchanged via ocean tankers and container ships. These massive vessels are notorious polluters, with the 16 largest ships producing as much sulfur pollution as all the cars in the world (approx. 800 million) combined.
Additionally, ocean cargo ships are slow and expensive, subject to weather and customs delays, and must be offloaded at compatible ports, where trucks take over for last-mile wholesale delivery. Considering the immense volume of products such ships deliver, ultimately the carbon footprint and delivery costs on a per unit basis are low. Nonetheless, aerospace companies recognize the very real need for flexible and efficient large-scale shipping solutions and have repeatedly invested in airship research to fill this gap.
To be successful, airship logistics need to be faster than ships but much cheaper than planes. Static buoyancy means little energy is spent actually getting the load up and maintaining it in the air, unlike planes. However higher loads require more buoyancy and larger airships. Now the engineers must accelerate a massive airship to a reasonable, safe speed and also must make unladen return trips economically practical. These last two issues have been the primary challenges in recent years.
Lockheed Martin seems to have found the right permutation of size, load and speed, as Lockheed will begin delivering production models of the Hybrid Airship (LMH1) to customers in 2018 or 2019. StraightLine Aviation has already ordered 12, with plans to offer charter airship deliveries from bases in New York, Los Angeles and London.
It is called the Hybrid Airship because flying power is a mix of 80% buoyant lift from a helium ballast and 20% aerodynamic lift, which is created by the flow of air over the nose of the craft’s unusual tri-lobe shape. Four thrust vectoring engines power the LMH1 into the skies, and instead of conventional landing gear, the airship features an air cushion landing system. This system is essentially three hovercraft blowers that provide take-off thrust or suction to keep the craft on the ground.
Yet the LMH1 isn’t a true vertical take-off and landing aircraft, as it requires about 20 ft. to take off. This means the Hybrid Airship can land and take-off in remote locations without prepared landing zones, provided the terrain is relatively flat (this includes oceans). At 300 feet long, LMH1 has a payload capacity of 20 tons. With a top speed of 70 mph and range of 1,400-1,600 miles, an LMH1 could deliver 20 tons of quality pizza from New York to Dallas within 24 hours.
As part of the last phase of assembly, six self-propelled instruments for damage evaluation and repair (aka SPIDERs) crawl over the airship surface. Using light sensors, these robots crawl the surface of the LMH1 and find and repair holes and leaks. The SPIDER takes pictures so operators can check on a repair job and can cooperate with other SPIDERs for larger fixes. These helpful robots cut down on 80% of the labor of this tedious job.
The immediate applications of the LMH1 are cargo and lifting uses for construction, energy and transportation industries. Lockheed hopes to one day introduce these behemoths to tourist, search and rescue and disaster relief applications. They could be used for advertising too, seeing as Goodyear no longer sends its blimps to sporting events.
20 tons heavy lift is not nearly enough. 100 tons increases global market opportunities by at least an order of magnitude for the price per ton, which goes up non-linearly.
And then there is wind shear, especially on station and especially when the load profile is added to that of the airship at a continually varying distance below the airship.
I do not know what LM is up to, but the airship concept is not the path toward solving the world's aerial heavy lift and transport needs. And I think the Russians have figured this out.
I'm going to have to declare shenanigans on this. 20 tons? That is half of what a semi can move. Can you envision how many of these it would take to move he same amount of containers as on Super Panama? A Chinamax? Definitely not going to replace container ships for gross cargo transport. Most likely use will be as a replacement for cargo helicopters.
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It seems like the LMH1 is designed primarily for niche uses. Eventually LM plans to produce a 50 ton version, but hasn't released any concrete data on it.
We're still talking huge profiles for cross-wind control, coupled with the payload, especially if it is suspended by a single tether. A true aeronautical challenge.
I agree that the LMH1 will be primarily a niche market means of cargo moving but I fail to see what that niche will be. I naturally love the concept of more efficient shipping. However, since helium production is a byproduct of natural gas production for these airships to exist there must be plenty of fossil fuel available for other forms of shipping.
Maybe the niche for this craft will be as a form of skycrane where the speed of a heavy lift helicopter(s) will not be needed.
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It's not great because it looks like a graph. Consider it an infographic and it might become more clear.
I think you need to forget about an X axis, so there is no negative or positive. The line that slopes up left to right references fuel consumption; the line sloping up, from right to left references speed (but yeah, the vast majority of planes are going to be faster than helicopters, unless LM knows something we don't ).
The infographic provided is not clear at all, I think Daily Mail cut the legend on the x axis from the original LM graph but I cannot find the original one.
Probably this infographic (from Hybrid Enterprises) will be clearer: http://hybridhe.com/hybrid-airship/hybrid-airship-advantages/sustainable/
I agree that LMH1 design is for a niche market. 20 ton are more load than a Lockeed Martin C-130J airplane (that can operate from unprepared runways, but is expensive to operate), and more than twice the load of the Sikorsky S-64E heavy lift elicopter, but the LMH1 should have (much) lower operational costs.
I think it is designed to replace heavy lift elicopter, like the skycranes, and specialized aircraft cargos, for specialized civilian operations, but it won't be a competitor for cargo ships or conventional cargo aircrafts. I wonder how many LMH1 will be sold to fill this niche: maybe 25?
A point to be highlighted, the payload of the LMH1 will be placed inside a cargo-bay (10'x10'x60' / 3mx3mx18m), not suspended by a theter.
Re: HUSH Loves Airships, Part 4
