Making a Comeback?

It may seem fantastical to us now, after 70 or so years of the skies being dominated by airplanes, and ruled by especially pointy ones, but back in the yearly days of the last century some of the most important flying machines were actually lighter-than-air vehicles: rigid airships and blimps. Many of these were cargo and passenger carriers, but several nations (notably including the U.S., U.K. and Germany) also produced military versions, including bomb-carrying attack craft and the infamous flying aircraft carriers U.S.S. Macon and U.S.S. Akron. Unlike a conventional airplane, lighter-than-air vehicles can stay in the air for as long as desired, provided their crew is kept supplied with food and drink, and while not particularly fast (military versions had a top speed of around 85 MPH) there was no reasons they couldn’t just keep flying until they reach their destination. Or, to look at it another way, it’s four times as fast as an ocean-going ship, is not limited by shallow water or a need for natural harbors, and can travel over land as easily as water, and for their time they carried a relatively good payload…

Unfortunately, as every school child knows, the era of the airship came crashing down on May 6, 1937, when the German airship Hindenburg exploded at the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 people aboard and one of the handlers on the ground. It didn’t really matter that the Hindenburg had been filled with hydrogen because the U.S. had embargoed helium as a strategic material, or that a conventional airplane exploding in mid-air would probably have killed a lot more than 35% of the people on board; the disaster got too much ink and captured too many imaginations. Even the often-repeated claims that the explosion was caused by sabotage did nothing to change public opinion. From about 1940 onward, lighter-than-air vehicles were limited to recreational and promotional use, hardly more than curiosities in sky filled with noisy, fuel-guzzling, smoke-spewing craft with airfoils…

Until now…

Even if the public relations issues surrounding airships could have been overcome – and that would have been a tall order even for helium-filled craft following the Hindenburg disaster – the greater speed of conventional aircraft and the relatively low cost of fuel to power them made the slower but more fuel-efficient airships unappealing. But with the cost of aviation gas and jet fuel rising, along with concerns regarding global warming and air pollution, the idea of something that floats along at the speed of a fast truck or train and carries 70 metric tons (around twice what a semi carries) to any point on Earth is starting to gain traction. An article on the Bloomberg website from earlier this month tells the story of a company named Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) and its plans to start building blimps designed to carry ores to market from remote parts of Canada starting in 2016…

How well these craft will work is anyone’s guess, but the company’s technical manager claims that the blimps will use about a quarter of the fuel a cargo airplane with similar payload would require, will be able to land anywhere on water or land without port facilities or a runway, and can use any engine type that could be used to power an airplane. The company also claims that the craft will cost something around $100 million, or about one-third of what a large cargo jet with none of those capabilities would cost (a new Boeing 777 freighter is about $300 million according to the Boeing website). Or, to look at it another way, less than the access road to a single distant mining operation would cost to build even before you purchase the trucks to drive on it…

Now, it remains to be seen if the company can overcome 77 years of “conventional wisdom” telling everyone that lighter-than-air vehicles are impractical and/or dangerous. If they can get even a few of these things flying and prove the concept works (e.g. lower cost and higher efficiency) I’d expect to see some commercial interest in the design. It probably helps that it’s a British company (rather than an American one) building them; it would also help if the potential buyers from Siberia (where roads are even less practical than they are in Northern Canada) come through with additional purchases. But believe it or not, this isn’t the first time somebody has tried to sell this concept – and the last time did not end well…