Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks in the future and says up, up
Speaker 1: and away in my beautiful balloon. I'm Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren voc Obaum
Speaker 1: is not with us today. She is out of town
Speaker 1: this week, but she will be back again soon. Yes.
Speaker 1: So the reason for the choice of lyric today is
Speaker 1: because we have a listener request, a listener request which
Speaker 1: we love. By the way, continue sending those in listeners.
Speaker 1: We love getting those. This one comes from Benjamin on
Speaker 1: Facebook and he says, I was wondering if there is
Speaker 1: a future of airships. I know there is active research
Speaker 1: into solar powered airships. Was the potential of taking old
Speaker 1: technology and bringing it back as new? Well, Benjamin, we're
Speaker 1: going to answer that question today and it turns out
Speaker 1: that it's not just potential, people are actively working on this.
Speaker 1: What but to hold on a second, So you're not
Speaker 1: just talking about people going to steampunk conventions, no, which
Speaker 1: are awesome. Uh, You're not just talking about in fantasy
Speaker 1: worlds like BioShock, Infinite or like the Red Alert games no,
Speaker 1: which are awesome, although some you can argue do not
Speaker 1: feature the most awesome of acting. Oh no, oh, the
Speaker 1: Red Alert games certainly do have the most awesome of
Speaker 1: acting from Tim Curry and Udo Kier and a cast
Speaker 1: of wonderful actors. Full motion video games really did a
Speaker 1: number on Human Curry. There's so many great ones, Okay,
Speaker 1: but they do seem to figure largely in our imagination.
Speaker 1: People love airships. They're they're great in this sort of
Speaker 1: retro tech world that people like to occupy in fantasy
Speaker 1: and science fiction. And if you've ever seen I mean,
Speaker 1: we see blimps here in Atlanta occasionally when they're flying
Speaker 1: over the various like when they're flying over Turner Field,
Speaker 1: which I guess we won't be seeing in a couple
Speaker 1: more years, but at any rate, we see occasionally flying
Speaker 1: around near the near where our office is. And just
Speaker 1: seeing something that huge hanging in the air is kind
Speaker 1: of phenomenal, right. I mean, it's it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's enormous, and it feels like it shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it makes me think of, um, the
Speaker 1: Douglas Adams thing from Hitchecker's guys, the galaxy. It hung
Speaker 1: in the air the same way that bricks don't. That's
Speaker 1: a nice Yeah. So anyway, airships certainly do have a
Speaker 1: potential place in the future, and we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: all about what they are, their history, and what they
Speaker 1: could be. Yeah, tell me about airships. So an airship
Speaker 1: is uh, usually if we're just if we're defining just
Speaker 1: a straight out airship the classic sense, it's a lighter
Speaker 1: than air aircraft. So you might say, how the heck
Speaker 1: do you build something that's lighter than air? Well, the
Speaker 1: components themselves are not lighter than air, like the like
Speaker 1: the the material that makes up the envelope that holds
Speaker 1: whatever is giving you buoyancy, that's gonna be heavier than air.
Speaker 1: The container that's going to hold passengers or cargo, assuming
Speaker 1: there is one, that's going to be heavier than air.
Speaker 1: So what you need is something that is lighter than
Speaker 1: the surrounding air, so that the airship as a whole
Speaker 1: ends up being lighter than the air it displaces. Okay,
Speaker 1: in fact, it just dawned on me, now that we're
Speaker 1: talking about it, where the name airship must come from.
Speaker 1: It's like a ship in that it floats. It's fluid.
Speaker 1: It's in a fluid and it's maintaining its buoyancy by
Speaker 1: I guess by having a larger surface area than its mass. Really,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it really comes down to weight. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to weight. If you think of
Speaker 1: it as the weight of the overall aircraft is less
Speaker 1: than the air that it displaces, and it's going to
Speaker 1: have buoyancy, which means it's going to float on the
Speaker 1: air around it. Uh. And then of course you know what,
Speaker 1: air gets thinner as you go further up, at least
Speaker 1: to a point, and then so you need to have
Speaker 1: be able to counteract that make it more buoyant if
Speaker 1: you want to fly at those altitudes. But the predecessors
Speaker 1: to the airships that we think of in the past,
Speaker 1: like the great Ones of the past, the precessors were
Speaker 1: hot air balloons, and there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: records of various people experimenting with hot air balloons in
Speaker 1: the past. There's there was the brothers Montgolfier, who actually
Speaker 1: did so many early experiments and a lot of their
Speaker 1: work was so influential that Montgolfier till is still a
Speaker 1: term used to describe hot air balloons. Uh, they did
Speaker 1: their work back in seventeen eighty three. They demonstrated hot
Speaker 1: air balloons to French royals, who, if you know your history,
Speaker 1: three in a few years they had bigger things on
Speaker 1: their on their minds, but not for long because their
Speaker 1: minds ended up being separated from the rest of their bodies. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know French Revolution, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: rough time for everybody. Okay, what they end up in
Speaker 1: their balloons? So they sent up well, first of all,
Speaker 1: their balloons were made out of taffada, but it was
Speaker 1: varnished with alum. And they launched a sheet a duct
Speaker 1: and I don't know what either of those things are.
Speaker 1: What tafada? An album? You don't know taffada? Okay, tafada. Look,
Speaker 1: you've lived in the South for how long and you've
Speaker 1: never seen like a taffada dress my whole life. It's
Speaker 1: a fabric. And then album was what allowed it to
Speaker 1: remain gas tight, essentially hot air tight. That sounds like
Speaker 1: some British slang for aluminium. No, did you ever did
Speaker 1: you ever watching the Warner Brothers cartoons where they had
Speaker 1: the album and a character would end up and countering
Speaker 1: it and then their mouth would shrivel up into a
Speaker 1: teeny tiny spot like it was the sourst thing they
Speaker 1: had ever put in their mouths. Wow you have I've
Speaker 1: got to educate you on cartoons, buddy. So anyway, it
Speaker 1: was essentially to treat the material so it would keep
Speaker 1: the hot air in. Okay, so they heat it up
Speaker 1: the air and the hot air balloon. That's what allowed
Speaker 1: it to have a buoyancy. And again the sheep, duck
Speaker 1: and rooster went on a little fun trip across the lake.
Speaker 1: As I recall from from reading, I wasn't there. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get that indication. Meanwhile, over in gay Paris, Jacques,
Speaker 1: Charles and and the brothers Robert demonstrated a balloon that
Speaker 1: used hydrogen rather than hot air to achieve buoyancy. So
Speaker 1: hydrogen weighs less than than air. It's lighter than air, right, um,
Speaker 1: also helium same thing, so not not the helium and
Speaker 1: hydrogen or the same thing. They're not, but it's also
Speaker 1: lighter than air. There are some fundamental differences between helium
Speaker 1: and hydrogen that we'll talk about in this podcast, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, uh, that ended up being kind of
Speaker 1: the three main options for achieving buoyancy with a lighter
Speaker 1: than air aircraft. Either you use hot air, or you
Speaker 1: use helium, or you use hydrogen two create that that
Speaker 1: bulliant nature that you need in order for you to
Speaker 1: fly now. Flying in those early days what pretty much
Speaker 1: meant outing that you didn't have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: control over where you went. In fact, there were some
Speaker 1: people in the early early days of hot air balloons
Speaker 1: who said steering was going to be impossible and only
Speaker 1: adult would pursue any attempt to steer. Could you just
Speaker 1: flap your arms? I mean, well, no, that wouldn't really
Speaker 1: help you too much. But that was the thing was
Speaker 1: that there were there were cynics who said, there's no
Speaker 1: way that will ever discover any means that this is
Speaker 1: a curiosity at best, because there's no practical application. You
Speaker 1: will only go where the wind blows. You like if
Speaker 1: you want to mail something but you don't care who
Speaker 1: your mary exactly, you put it in the bottle and
Speaker 1: you throw it in the ocean. That kind of thing. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there were people who said that. But then we
Speaker 1: got into some developments with actual airships beyond just the
Speaker 1: hot air balloon approach. Back in four, which was shortly
Speaker 1: after those hot air balloon demonstrations, you had Jean Baptiste
Speaker 1: mate Musner, who are muse, I should say, proposed a
Speaker 1: new shape for an aircraft with an oblong gas bag,
Speaker 1: which is that sort of cigar shape that we think
Speaker 1: of as blimp, the blimp shape. He was the one
Speaker 1: who proposed that first, which would then be adopted by
Speaker 1: future builders, and that was the birth of the dirigible.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen fifty two, Henri Giffard builds an airship
Speaker 1: that uses a steam engine to drive a propeller for propulsion.
Speaker 1: So you've got the steam engine that's turning a propeller.
Speaker 1: All that sounds like you're kind of set. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Steam engines pretty heavy, okay, so you needed
Speaker 1: to really counteract a lot of weight to get bulliant,
Speaker 1: and so those early early ones were not very good airships.
Speaker 1: They couldn't go very high. Also, there's always a danger
Speaker 1: with something like steam. You know, you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: make a fire to generate the heat to create the steam,
Speaker 1: right fire, and these aircraft are not always great. There's
Speaker 1: not good to necessarily have them together, especially if they
Speaker 1: have is to be made using hydrogen as its method
Speaker 1: of attaining bulliancy, because hydrogen in the right proportion mixed
Speaker 1: with oxygen, it's not just flammable, it's explosive. Right. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk a bit about the famous Hindenburg disaster because
Speaker 1: that's when everyone thinks about what these airships. We will
Speaker 1: get to that um at any rate, it was not.
Speaker 1: It was the basic elements were there. Yes, the engine
Speaker 1: to provide propulsion, the method to get buoyancy, but it
Speaker 1: still hadn't been perfected to a point where it was practical. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you had the area on airship of eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: which was made up of three cylindrical gas bags that
Speaker 1: were tethered together, side by side, so instead of one
Speaker 1: massive envelope, it had three of them. In Evo, a
Speaker 1: fellow by the name Paul Heinlein or hend Line flew
Speaker 1: ad dirigible powered by an internal combustion engine, also an
Speaker 1: issue the same as the steam engine. Very heavy, dangerous,
Speaker 1: but so it was not very effective, made it really
Speaker 1: hard to achieve buoyancy. Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs designed
Speaker 1: and built La France, which was an airship that used
Speaker 1: electricity for propulsion. Now you're onto something, because you can
Speaker 1: make a much lighter propulsion system using an electrical motor
Speaker 1: than you could with a gasoline powered engine or steam engine. Jonathan,
Speaker 1: when did we get the famous, uh, the sort of
Speaker 1: name brand example of the dirigible, the Zeppelin. I thought
Speaker 1: it was the Ferdinand because it's named after Count Ferdinand
Speaker 1: von Zeppelin, Right, this is like the Zeppelin? Is it
Speaker 1: sort of like the Xerox or the Google or the
Speaker 1: Frisbee of dirigibles sort of zeppelin or is it was
Speaker 1: a Zeppelin actually a specific type of dirigible. It's specific,
Speaker 1: but it also is because the design that Count Ferdinand
Speaker 1: von Zeppelin came up with was so effective. Now now
Speaker 1: the earliest one, the l z one or elz Inns
Speaker 1: if you prefer um, not that effective. It had some problems.
Speaker 1: It was four feet long, which is about hundred twenty
Speaker 1: eight It was thirty eight and a half feet in diameter,
Speaker 1: which is nearly twelve meters in diameter, and it used
Speaker 1: hydrogen for bullyiancy. Uh. It required a little less than
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand cubic feet of hydrogen that's about eleven thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred cubic meters, and that first flight wasn't until
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred he started designing it in he had built
Speaker 1: it by waited for nineteen hundred because you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of seemed like a significant sort of mark of
Speaker 1: the turn of the century, um, depending upon your view
Speaker 1: of when the century turns and uh. And he used
Speaker 1: to get two gasoline engines to steer it actually had
Speaker 1: two different compartments on the base of it. So it's
Speaker 1: again this oblong shape, that cigard like shape, with two
Speaker 1: compartments on the underside, each of them with a gasolene
Speaker 1: engine that would dry propellers. But some things that didn't have,
Speaker 1: which later models totally would have, included um stability fins,
Speaker 1: Like there were no fins or wings to provide any
Speaker 1: source stability, and so it wasn't an incredible success right
Speaker 1: out of the gate. One of the engines failed right
Speaker 1: away when they launched for the test flight, and without
Speaker 1: those fins for stability, it made it very difficult to
Speaker 1: maneuver this particular zeppelin. But what happened was Fernan did
Speaker 1: what scientists do. You look at your experiment, you see
Speaker 1: where you failed, you go and you refine it, and
Speaker 1: then you try again. And so he did and he
Speaker 1: began to make Zeppelin's that were incredibly effective. And uh,
Speaker 1: and we still call them Zeppelin's, not not Ferdinand's. As
Speaker 1: I put in my note. Um, now, the most famous,
Speaker 1: I would argue would be the l Z one nine.
Speaker 1: That's the Hindenburgh. Now it was actually the the sort
Speaker 1: of the flagship of a class of Zeppelin's that all
Speaker 1: were called hinden Burg class. I mean we forget that
Speaker 1: for a while. Zeppelin's were big. Yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: not physically big, but like they were doing business and
Speaker 1: they were. They were how very wealthy people were able
Speaker 1: to get across massive distances in much less time than
Speaker 1: it would take if you were to say, take it
Speaker 1: a ship, right, you could get there faster. It's really expensive. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were also useful for things like surveillance, reconnaissance,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But um, the Hindenburg is famous
Speaker 1: for the disaster on May six seven, that's when the
Speaker 1: Hindenburg burst into flame. It was it was reaching the
Speaker 1: end of a transatlantic flight. So it was coming into
Speaker 1: New Jersey, wasn't it. Yeah, it was coming in and
Speaker 1: there was actually a ground crew active trying to bring
Speaker 1: the the Zeppelin in. That's One of the things about
Speaker 1: these lighter than air aircraft is that in order for
Speaker 1: them to land, they usually need to have some sort
Speaker 1: of either docking station that they can latch onto or
Speaker 1: a ground crew that ends up grabbing tethers to help
Speaker 1: guide it into its final position. So you see those
Speaker 1: like people with the ropes and everything, And usually that
Speaker 1: also involves venting some hydrogen gas and replacing it with air,
Speaker 1: which makes the zeppelin heavier. Uh. Your goal is to
Speaker 1: do that very gradually so that you can come in
Speaker 1: for a nice smooth landing. Obviously, if you did that
Speaker 1: too quickly, then you would plummet. So it's a very
Speaker 1: delicate procedure. Now, in this case, the Hindenburg caught fire.
Speaker 1: Like we said, hydrogen extremely flammable, as was potentially as
Speaker 1: was the covering. There's some disagreement about whether or not
Speaker 1: the covering itself was what caused the real problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people don't really know for sure what caused
Speaker 1: the problem. Now there's there's there are debates. Uh. I
Speaker 1: tend to side more with the hydrogen hypothesis than the
Speaker 1: covering hypothesis, but but either could be correct and in
Speaker 1: any case, tragically thirty six people died in this disaster.
Speaker 1: One of them was a member the ground crew. The
Speaker 1: others were either passengers or crew members of the Hindenburg.
Speaker 1: And not everyone died. There were survivors, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, it wasn't at all. Aboard died um.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, that definitely raised the concern about
Speaker 1: how hydrogen. This was not the first disaster, by the way,
Speaker 1: not even the first disaster with the Zeppelin UM. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the early Zeppelin's crashed in Germany, and the
Speaker 1: response in Germany was that people contributed money so that
Speaker 1: a new, better one could be built. That was the
Speaker 1: response to the disaster in Germany. But that was that
Speaker 1: was not the Hindenberg, it was an earlier one. In fact,
Speaker 1: there their stories, although it could be folklore that around
Speaker 1: the crash site Germans gathered and sang songs together, uh
Speaker 1: as sort of a kind of show of support for
Speaker 1: the endeavor because they believed so strongly in the Um
Speaker 1: the promise of the future that was the Zeppelin at
Speaker 1: the time. Anyway, Yeah, anyway, the it really kind of
Speaker 1: drove home the dangers of hydrogen. Hendinburg disaster did, and
Speaker 1: of course it got live coverage, Yeah it was. It
Speaker 1: was filmed. The whole thing was filmed. And you have
Speaker 1: Herbert Morrison who did the commentary. That's where the oh
Speaker 1: humanity comes from. Uh, we're you know, the stress in
Speaker 1: his voice is clear. I mean it's it's not not in,
Speaker 1: not in any way and an emotionless kind of coverage. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that really kind of pushed back, uh, the
Speaker 1: role of the Zeppelin in the world. I mean, that
Speaker 1: disaster was so well publicized that it really started to
Speaker 1: slow down. Plus you have the literal rise of the
Speaker 1: the airplane around the same time. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the the Brother's right had been working since since the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds building the first airplanes and they were
Speaker 1: starting to come into prominence. The aircraft in general, we're
Speaker 1: starting to really rise in prominence, and the air ship
Speaker 1: began to kind of fade away. But now we are
Speaker 1: hearing about them coming back. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: some of them have been around, like blimps have been
Speaker 1: around for ages. We've seen them in things like at
Speaker 1: sporting events like Goodyear Blimp, the Big One. Blimps are
Speaker 1: they're a novelty. Yeah, they're they're meant mainly as either
Speaker 1: a way to uh to create like a tourism attraction,
Speaker 1: or it's an advertising thing, you know, or it's sometimes
Speaker 1: a means of getting some sort of unique angle on
Speaker 1: a large event. But it tends to be for what
Speaker 1: you might think of as kind of entertainment or or
Speaker 1: commercial purposes in that sense, rather than a true way
Speaker 1: of moving around cargo or people. So we'll I have
Speaker 1: some questions then about why airships would really be coming back.
Speaker 1: I mean, now that we've sunk so much money and
Speaker 1: research and time into perfecting heavier than air aircraft like
Speaker 1: airplanes and helicopters, why why go back to airships? What
Speaker 1: advantages do they provide? Well, a true airship, the biggest
Speaker 1: advantage is that it doesn't take a whole lot of
Speaker 1: energy to get them aloft, right, because they're using they're
Speaker 1: using they're using some sort of lighter than air gas
Speaker 1: already to get aloft. They don't have to use thrust.
Speaker 1: So an airplane in order to fly requires thrust, so
Speaker 1: they can generate lift, right, the wings get the lift
Speaker 1: and that's what counteracts the weight of the plane and
Speaker 1: you can get up into the air. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a reason, you have to get going really fast
Speaker 1: on the runway in order to take off in an airplane.
Speaker 1: You can't just kind of hop up. You've got to
Speaker 1: get that force going in the at the front of
Speaker 1: the plane to slam that air down below the wings
Speaker 1: and lift the aircraft up right. Yeah, you're beating the
Speaker 1: air into submission. Yeah, that's that's what helicopter pilots describe
Speaker 1: flying a helicopter. That sounds accurate. So with a with
Speaker 1: a lighter than air aircraft, you don't need to do that.
Speaker 1: The energy you expend just to steer, to navigate, to
Speaker 1: propel yourself to wherever you're going, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to expend energy to stay in the air. Because of that,
Speaker 1: they are very energy efficient. They require far less energy.
Speaker 1: And if you need to do something that requires you
Speaker 1: to be in the air for a long time, for example,
Speaker 1: to hover in a spot and to do something uh
Speaker 1: you know that's related to being in a specific geographic location,
Speaker 1: then lighter than air aircraft is the way to go.
Speaker 1: Because we've discussed this with flying drones. One of the
Speaker 1: problems with them is that they run off energy and
Speaker 1: then you've got to recharge them. And if they run
Speaker 1: out of energy relatively quickly, like within the span of
Speaker 1: an of less than an hour, then their their usability
Speaker 1: is limited by that right. But an airship can remain
Speaker 1: there for as long as it needs to be there,
Speaker 1: depending upon whether it's manned or unmanned. Obviously, if it's
Speaker 1: a manned airship, then eventually you're going to have demands
Speaker 1: that are going to require it to land just for
Speaker 1: the people aboard. But unmanned airships are also a possibility,
Speaker 1: and those could stay in a location for as long
Speaker 1: as their energy would allow them to maintain that position,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that if they encounter truly severe weather
Speaker 1: then they need to clear out, because most of them
Speaker 1: are rated for pretty serious winds because they need to be.
Speaker 1: But even at that those serious winds, that's like an
Speaker 1: extreme case, and anything beyond that they are they would
Speaker 1: be in serious jeopardy of damage. Would there be any
Speaker 1: advantage to using an airship in lieu of something like
Speaker 1: a weather balloon, Well, it depends on the the uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, yes, because you can steer it's that's
Speaker 1: a big one um. And also depend upon what the
Speaker 1: use is. So if you were using it to study weather,
Speaker 1: you could do that although weather balloons are pretty well, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty well suited for that kind of use. But if
Speaker 1: you want to do something like surveillance, whether that's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't have to be military surveillance. That's
Speaker 1: what everyone immediately goes to. You know, I think, oh,
Speaker 1: like military surveillance, that could be one use of it.
Speaker 1: But security surveillance. Let's say that you have an enormous
Speaker 1: event like the Olympics or the World Cup, and you
Speaker 1: want to have a overhead view of what's going on
Speaker 1: in order to provide better security. Then something that can
Speaker 1: hover without expending a lot of energy would be really useful.
Speaker 1: So surveillance is a big one, whether again it's security
Speaker 1: or wartime or whatever. Environmental monitoring is another one. You
Speaker 1: would probably have an unmanned craft for this, although you
Speaker 1: could do a manned craft as well to uh in
Speaker 1: monitor any kind of region for any sort of environmental changes,
Speaker 1: to study uh subtle changes in in a climate, or
Speaker 1: just other types of environmental changes like like a fire,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Again, that hovering ability comes in
Speaker 1: really handy um and you can stay there for as
Speaker 1: long as you need it to stay. Or near space operations,
Speaker 1: so airships today can really high. You remember, you know
Speaker 1: Felix who jumped out of his his balloon to jump
Speaker 1: from space. Um, it's kind of the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: You can get airships that can get too near space conditions,
Speaker 1: which means you can do research at that level or
Speaker 1: if there any other kind of operations you need to
Speaker 1: do at that altitude. It's a good Um, it's a
Speaker 1: good choice because again, you don't have to expend that
Speaker 1: much energy to get them up there. The buoyancy does
Speaker 1: all the work, so you're not spinning tons of energy
Speaker 1: just to get to the right altitude. Uh. Also, you
Speaker 1: can use it to move cargo, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: crazy how much cargo you can move with the right
Speaker 1: size of airship. Well, yeah, that especially seems like that
Speaker 1: be a big help because with an airship, the amount
Speaker 1: of fuel you're using, it seems like it wouldn't nearly
Speaker 1: have as much to do with the weight of the aircraft.
Speaker 1: Like when you're using heavier than air aircraft, you need
Speaker 1: more fuel if the aircraft is heavier, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you have to provide even more thrust to overcome the
Speaker 1: weight of the of the combined of everything in the aircraft.
Speaker 1: This is why if you fly commercially, occasionally you'll run
Speaker 1: into a situation where their problems because there's too much
Speaker 1: weight on the plane and they have to either you know,
Speaker 1: deny some people the ability to get on that plane
Speaker 1: or make other considerations. This actually does happen, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: it happens more frequently on smaller aircraft. Obviously the large
Speaker 1: aircraft tend to be pretty powerful, but uh, it is
Speaker 1: something that has to be taken into consideration. With an
Speaker 1: airship that's lighter than air it's less of a problem. Again,
Speaker 1: as long as the capacity of the airship is great
Speaker 1: enough to overcome that weight, then you're good to go.
Speaker 1: So there are airships that, at least proposed airships that
Speaker 1: could carry as much as five metric tons of cargo.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of cargo. And think about it. You
Speaker 1: can go from the point of pick up to the
Speaker 1: point of delivery and not have to worry about geographical
Speaker 1: features getting in the way. You go over them. So
Speaker 1: if there's a forest or an a lake, or an
Speaker 1: ocean or mountains, you go over all that or maybe
Speaker 1: a tun drap. I mean, it sounds like this would
Speaker 1: be very useful for delivering cargo to places that are
Speaker 1: otherwise hard to reach, remote locations, don't have good road access,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and there's still a call for using
Speaker 1: it as a form of luxury transport. Yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I'll think of it this way. You could take a
Speaker 1: Transatlantic cruise if you want it, and it's a an
Speaker 1: interesting experience. I have not personally gone on one, but
Speaker 1: my wife has. My wife went on a Transatlantic cruise
Speaker 1: and that's you know, it's that's definitely a luxury right. Um,
Speaker 1: it turned out to assume it turned out to be
Speaker 1: a rollicking good time because apparently it was a bit
Speaker 1: of a a weavy journey. But you could do something
Speaker 1: similar in an airship. It would take less time. Top
Speaker 1: speed of airships that are being proposed today are in
Speaker 1: the hundreds of miles per hour. You know. I also
Speaker 1: recall Transatlantic cruises being set back by a disaster in
Speaker 1: the early That's a totally different podcast. So yes, that
Speaker 1: but that is also true. So it could very well
Speaker 1: still be something that is invested in for for luxury
Speaker 1: air travel. So for people who want the experience of
Speaker 1: travel where they're they're going over great distances, but they
Speaker 1: want it to be this kind of luxury vacation experience.
Speaker 1: They're not so much concerned on getting from point A
Speaker 1: to point B as fast as possible. The journey itself
Speaker 1: is part of the vacation. Well, how fast can something
Speaker 1: like this go, Depending up on the one you're looking at,
Speaker 1: some of them can go around two undred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: So yeah, because some of them, some of the airships
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about right now, I guess
Speaker 1: it's a good time to to to segue into it
Speaker 1: are hybrids in the sense that they are not lighter
Speaker 1: than air aircraft. They're actually heavier than air aircraft. They're
Speaker 1: using some form of gas, like mostly helium these days,
Speaker 1: because again hydrogen is so volatile that no one really
Speaker 1: wants to work with it in huge volumes. But they're
Speaker 1: using helium to offset some of the weight. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the case of the aeroscraft, it's about six percent of
Speaker 1: the aircraft's weight is offset by helium. There's another one
Speaker 1: called the dinal lifter, and that one I think is
Speaker 1: more like forty eight percent of the aircraft's weight is
Speaker 1: offset by helium. The rest of the weight has to
Speaker 1: be offset by something else or else. It's not gonna fly,
Speaker 1: And in this case it's lift. It's the actual design
Speaker 1: of the airship itself, along with some some wings and
Speaker 1: fins that help provide lift, and it has to get
Speaker 1: up to a cruising speed so that the lift ends
Speaker 1: up counteracting the rest of the weight and then it
Speaker 1: can take off and it can fly. So in this case,
Speaker 1: these are airships that need to move in order for
Speaker 1: them to maintain flight. If they were to stop, they
Speaker 1: would start sinking because they're heavier than the air around them.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think. It seems like there will
Speaker 1: be a trade off because if you're increasing some part
Speaker 1: of the airplane in order to make a pocket to
Speaker 1: hold lighter than air gas, aren't you increasing the surface
Speaker 1: area of the airplane cutting down on its aerodynamic capabilities.
Speaker 1: You can still make it aerodynamic in the in the
Speaker 1: right shapes, And so you can't really call these airplanes either.
Speaker 1: They're not. They don't look like they look more like
Speaker 1: blimps than they look like airplanes. They really do look
Speaker 1: more like a dirigible or a zeppelin than an airplane,
Speaker 1: But they look like kind of a dirigible or zeppelin
Speaker 1: that has a funky shape to it and wings stubby
Speaker 1: stubby wings at that they don't look like airplane wings.
Speaker 1: But again it's one of those things where if they're
Speaker 1: moving at the right speed, they're generating enough lift to
Speaker 1: counteract that the rest of that weight. Um. And the
Speaker 1: neat thing about these is that they can come down,
Speaker 1: uh without the use of a ground crew. And UH.
Speaker 1: For example, the aeroscraft, which is a proposed one, there's
Speaker 1: a prototype called the Pelican that's already been built. Uh.
Speaker 1: This this was a DARPA funded initial shotive initially, and
Speaker 1: it was originally under Project Walrus. Is the name of
Speaker 1: the project under DARPA, Project Walrus. Uh, the funding like
Speaker 1: a Walrus, yes, exactly. And the funding for Project Walrus
Speaker 1: ended in two but the funding for Aeroscraft has continued
Speaker 1: in some form or another since then. And they developed
Speaker 1: the Pelican prototype vehicle which they hope to use as
Speaker 1: a guide for a fleet of aircraft, UM, something like
Speaker 1: twenty four aircraft that they kind of require three billion
Speaker 1: dollars in investment in order to build these things. But
Speaker 1: the largest, yeah, the largest one would be able to
Speaker 1: carry about two h fifty tons of cargo and passengers.
Speaker 1: Now they use special helium tanks in their design, and
Speaker 1: those helium tanks can then release helium into the main compartment,
Speaker 1: which would allow it to have this uh, this boolliancy
Speaker 1: for to counteract the aircraft's wait when they're coming into land,
Speaker 1: they can pump helium from that main compartment back into
Speaker 1: the compressed tanks, and then they fill up that space
Speaker 1: with regular air, which is heavier, and that allows them
Speaker 1: to land the aircraft more efficiently. This sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like the way a submarine would manage its buoyancy, right,
Speaker 1: very similar, having bladders that expand and contract, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: very simi interesting. And the dinal Lifter, which is another
Speaker 1: proposed aircraft that is um again kind of in the
Speaker 1: planning stages, very similar, uses helium to offset its weight
Speaker 1: in this case, and then uses those the sort of
Speaker 1: wings and fins to help provide lift through thrust. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was tested in two thousand thirteen. It was built
Speaker 1: in Ohio, and it has an interesting an interesting feature,
Speaker 1: which is that it has detachable pods that can hold cargo.
Speaker 1: So you can attach the pods to the airship uh
Speaker 1: and then it flies off to its destination and then
Speaker 1: it can detach the pods quickly and then fly off again,
Speaker 1: meaning that you don't have to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time loading and unloading the airship itself. You have to
Speaker 1: do loading and unloading of the detachable pods, but you
Speaker 1: can do that in advance. And they said that the
Speaker 1: big advantage of that is, let's say that you have
Speaker 1: operations that you need to do in an area where
Speaker 1: perhaps a giant airship tethered to the ground would be
Speaker 1: a tempting target for some opposing force. UH. You don't
Speaker 1: really want that, right, You don't want an enormous target
Speaker 1: seeing there's something that's vulnerable, particularly if you're planning on
Speaker 1: either delivering or or taking UH supplies to an important
Speaker 1: part of the world. So these detachable pods mean that
Speaker 1: you can very quickly load or unload the airship and
Speaker 1: then have the airship move on its way while you
Speaker 1: deal with the pods. So the airship could just keep
Speaker 1: on going and do very quick UH landings and takeoffs
Speaker 1: to make sure that stuff gets to where it needs
Speaker 1: to be without too much time being spent being vulnerable
Speaker 1: on the ground. And then you have the very a
Speaker 1: lift which was a that's that's the proposed designed out
Speaker 1: of the United Kingdom. It's made of aluminium since it
Speaker 1: is the UK and UH. It has the top speed
Speaker 1: of three or fifty kilometers per which is about two
Speaker 1: seventeen miles pur It's pretty darn fast for an airship.
Speaker 1: Also uses helium to offset weight. Um. It can use
Speaker 1: variable buoyancy units to pump in enough helium to create
Speaker 1: lifts so it doesn't need thrust. It can do vertical
Speaker 1: takeoff and landing because you don't have to do any
Speaker 1: sort of thrust to do take off. So the heaviest
Speaker 1: design that they have proposed would in theory be able
Speaker 1: to carry more than five metric tons of cargo. It's
Speaker 1: an incredible and if you look at a picture of
Speaker 1: the Very Lift airship, it's it's pretty funky looking. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like an aluminum canister floating in the
Speaker 1: sky from the pictures I've seen. I have just had
Speaker 1: the most brilliant idea. What's that? Okay? We've talked about
Speaker 1: flying cars on this podcast before, Yes, and we're always
Speaker 1: talking about man in an urban environment. How are we
Speaker 1: going to get the kind of vertical takeoff and landing
Speaker 1: we want airships? Personal airships, just a little airship, just
Speaker 1: a little One problem with a little one. Okay, how
Speaker 1: can you have a little airship. I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna you have to have enough of whatever material you're
Speaker 1: using for bulliancy to be bulliant. That's that's actually quite
Speaker 1: a bed it's done. So you can't have a little airship,
Speaker 1: even for one that's just going to lift you and
Speaker 1: maybe a briefcase alas, and not to mention, you also
Speaker 1: have to be counteract whatever propulsion system you have there. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe instead of a full body car, you'd just
Speaker 1: be kind of like a I don't know, a propeller
Speaker 1: and like a harness for your Torso now you're talking
Speaker 1: essentially about an analog jet pack. Like it's not even
Speaker 1: a jet pack, it's a propeller pack. The future is
Speaker 1: steampunk jet packs. So you're saying. So what you're saying
Speaker 1: is you want you want an outboard boat motor attached
Speaker 1: to your back while a balloon gives you lift. That's
Speaker 1: what you want. I'm thinking about the future. I assume
Speaker 1: a top head and monocle are also standard issue, right,
Speaker 1: I don't say can't. Okay, that's fair. So anyway, some
Speaker 1: of the technologies will see developed about this. A lot
Speaker 1: of its material science. Just coming up with new lighter
Speaker 1: materials like carbon fiber technology has been a big boon
Speaker 1: to this airship design because it means that you can
Speaker 1: create these rigid frames that are very lightly you know,
Speaker 1: they can be as strong as steel, or stronger than
Speaker 1: steel and lighter than steel. So that is one of
Speaker 1: the big bonuses that you know, it's one of those
Speaker 1: developments that the airship industry can take advantage of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to mention just material science for things like the
Speaker 1: covering that's being used to to make sure that you
Speaker 1: have a nice strong seal on whatever gas you're using,
Speaker 1: most likely helium. Uh. Yeah, that brings me to helium. Now,
Speaker 1: helium is not exactly the most abundant and cheap resource
Speaker 1: on Earth. Yeah, that's a problem. We kind of need
Speaker 1: helium for important stuff. Yes, yes, we need helium for
Speaker 1: many important things, from super cooling particle accelerators to children's balloons.
Speaker 1: I mean, are aren't there actually people who are mad? Yes,
Speaker 1: people are using helium for children's balloons. We don't have
Speaker 1: all that much access to it. It's not easy to
Speaker 1: get to know. No, helium is in fact one of
Speaker 1: those things that is very much a precious resource and uh,
Speaker 1: and it is a problem. It's not easy to get
Speaker 1: at and we need it for lots of important things,
Speaker 1: including super cooling superconductors. I mean, liquid helium is incredibly cold,
Speaker 1: and that's what we use to lower the temperature of
Speaker 1: scientific equipment down to near absolute zero so that it
Speaker 1: can be a superconductor. Um and that's used for a
Speaker 1: lot of different things. And it's it's weird people don't
Speaker 1: usually think of helium as a finite resource like oil
Speaker 1: or something. It kind of is, yeah, and it's and
Speaker 1: also it's just it's not easy to get so I mean,
Speaker 1: if we can ever figure out a way of getting
Speaker 1: all that helium three off the moon, then maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we'll be set. But um, yeah, right now, it's it's
Speaker 1: an issue. So there that isn't that is a problem.
Speaker 1: And also the technology that we see used in these
Speaker 1: these devices will largely depend upon what they're meant for.
Speaker 1: Right A surveillance airship is gonna obviously have you know,
Speaker 1: sophisticated cameras and and other sensors on it, but one
Speaker 1: that's for environmental sensing is going to have different sensors
Speaker 1: on it. One that's meant for just transportation is not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to be as concerned with all those sensors.
Speaker 1: Clearly there will be quite a few for safety and
Speaker 1: navigation purposes, but not the same sort of thing that
Speaker 1: you're gonna use if you're trying to keep an eye on,
Speaker 1: you know, the giant sporting event or a wildfire or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. So it'll really depend upon what
Speaker 1: the airship is meant for. That'll they'll determine what kind
Speaker 1: of technology is used on it. But another good question
Speaker 1: is just why do we find these so fascinating. Part
Speaker 1: of it, I think is because it is this sort
Speaker 1: of retro throwback to what uh science fiction and fantasy authors,
Speaker 1: you know what, however you want, weird fiction authors whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call them, back in the day, the
Speaker 1: earliest in the genre, how they envisioned the future, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it involved things like zeppelins and dirigibles
Speaker 1: flowing around because at the time that was the cutting
Speaker 1: edge technology. And so this this kind of vision, this
Speaker 1: sort of quaint retro uh sometimes super elaborate kind of
Speaker 1: view of what the world would look like, is something
Speaker 1: that appeals to us esthetically somehow. The vision of derigibles
Speaker 1: coming over the horizon towards your city is even more
Speaker 1: horrifying than a bunch of bomber planes. And I don't
Speaker 1: know why it shouldn't be. I mean, it should be
Speaker 1: easy to shoot down, right. It's the same reason, Joe,
Speaker 1: why shambling zombies are scarier than running zombies. That is
Speaker 1: an excellent point, because even though it's slow, you know
Speaker 1: nothing is gonna stop it, and eventually it's gonna get you.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's the sudden attack. It's that you
Speaker 1: see it coming and you anticipated, and that makes it
Speaker 1: all the worse. That's why that's science to say. But no,
Speaker 1: it is interesting that we see this fascination with this
Speaker 1: this type of aircraft. I mean the fact that steampunk
Speaker 1: has a place and that the dirigible very much occupies
Speaker 1: a spot of love in that world I played. I
Speaker 1: played a game at E three a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: It was an early build of a game where you
Speaker 1: were part of a an airship crew and the wild
Speaker 1: Skies it might have been. I remember that it was
Speaker 1: very much like you were piloting an airship that was
Speaker 1: essentially like a pirate ship being carried by a blimp,
Speaker 1: and you did battle with other airships yeah, it might.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what you're talking about. Wild Skies was
Speaker 1: one of the games we talked about in our episode
Speaker 1: about uh three D gaming and virtual reality and full
Speaker 1: motion three D because it had been adapted to a
Speaker 1: sort of free play area where you could move your
Speaker 1: whole body and and sort of go between stations on
Speaker 1: the airship. Yeah, I think it had been. They had
Speaker 1: worked with the Oculus Rift folks to do a build
Speaker 1: for it specifically, Yeah, that kind of thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't help but feel excited playing a game like that.
Speaker 1: It just it was so evocative of certain I don't know,
Speaker 1: just just really just kind of tapped into the excitement
Speaker 1: center of my brain, saying, this is so cool. It's
Speaker 1: such a fantastical and yet ultimately believable kind of scenario
Speaker 1: in the sense that nothing in that, you know, violated
Speaker 1: the laws of physics. Well, I mean, at some point,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you you reach a point where you can't
Speaker 1: keep scaling up sure the airship, And I don't know
Speaker 1: what that point is. I don't know if you came
Speaker 1: across that in your research, but just like there's gotta
Speaker 1: be a limit right on where how you can contain
Speaker 1: he liam with the kinds of containing materials we have now,
Speaker 1: I mean, there would be a point where you hit
Speaker 1: hit the law of diminishing returns right where you're you're
Speaker 1: talking about a an airship so heavy that we there's
Speaker 1: no effective means of using enough helium to get enough left.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that limit is either, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure that it does exist. One. I would imagine the
Speaker 1: larger the containers, you keep making it bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1: Just one simple thing about it is it's more likely
Speaker 1: to leak in more places. Yeah, and then you obviously
Speaker 1: have the problem of maintaining buoyancy and you won't stay
Speaker 1: in the air forever. Yeah. So anyway, this is a
Speaker 1: fun thing to talk about, Benjamin, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for the suggestion. Uh, there are lots of different plans
Speaker 1: for airships for many different purposes. Whether they are going
Speaker 1: to be manned or unmanned or or you know, they're
Speaker 1: flexible and you can be either whether it's for surveillance,
Speaker 1: whether it's for transporting cargo or people. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of different plans and it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 1: I was actually I was actually really surprised at how
Speaker 1: many company these are proposing to do this, and I'm
Speaker 1: really curious to see which ones end up making good
Speaker 1: on that proposal, which ones are able to make that happen.
Speaker 1: A lot of it ends up coming down to whether
Speaker 1: or not they can get the funding that's necessary to
Speaker 1: actually build these things. Because the technology is there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the technology has been there. The basic technology has been
Speaker 1: there since the late eighteenth century. So it's not that
Speaker 1: it's a technological barrier so much as it is a
Speaker 1: financial barrier. And to make sure that you can prove
Speaker 1: the practical applications are in fact useful enough to justify
Speaker 1: the expense. So assuming that that happens, we're gonna see
Speaker 1: airships in the air, you know, not not too long
Speaker 1: from now. There's some that should be launching literally by
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. Whether or not that happens will all
Speaker 1: come down to whether or not people invest in it.
Speaker 1: Um is it a good investment? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: not an investor, so I can't I can't really answer
Speaker 1: that question. But uh, I like the idea of a
Speaker 1: future where you look up into the sky and every
Speaker 1: now and then you see an airship, you know, lumbering past.
Speaker 1: Although any any airship moving at Twitter, Miles pur you
Speaker 1: can't really call lumbering. I think I mean just assuming
Speaker 1: there will be at least a few occasions where you
Speaker 1: need to get five metric tons of Vienna sausages to
Speaker 1: the South Pole, it makes sense. I know that there
Speaker 1: are plenty of people at the South Pole who would
Speaker 1: be pleased at such a delivery, and maybe if you
Speaker 1: would roll their eyes. But who knows. We we we
Speaker 1: don't know. We're not at the South Pole. If you're
Speaker 1: at the South Pole or anywhere else for that matter,
Speaker 1: and you have a suggestion for a future episode, you've
Speaker 1: got an idea. You want us to talk about a
Speaker 1: particular type of technology, science, or just wondering what one
Speaker 1: aspect of the future is really going to be. Like,
Speaker 1: ask us, just like Benjamin did, send us a message
Speaker 1: either on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus or handle
Speaker 1: at all three is f w thinking reach us there?
Speaker 1: We will read your message. We will uh you know,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's something that really sparks our interest,
Speaker 1: we will tackle that head long, and we will do
Speaker 1: an interesting podcast about it, we promise. So let us
Speaker 1: know and we will talk to you again. Willison for
Speaker 1: more on this topic and the future of technology, visit
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