Some scientists are serious about resurrecting zeppelins for low-carbon travel

Already, there are a number of opportunities for airships to transform transportation. Cargo, for one thing, doesn’t need to move as fast as planes fly. “It’s wasteful to spend all the money and energy to bring cargo from Asia to North America at 500 miles an hour to then sit for days in a warehouse before it gets moved,” says Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba and president of Buoyant Aircraft Systems International (BASI). From an environmental perspective, we are paying “a huge cost, since jet engines are the most polluting of any form of transport,” he says. Using an airship can slash both fuel use and carbon production by up to 90%, according to the International Air Transport Association.

In addition to mitigating the causes of climate change, airships can also alleviate the effects, Prentice says. In northern Canada, he says, the ice roads — highways formed by frozen lakes — are melting, and it will soon become harder to reach the difficult-to-access communities that already lack adequate housing and affordable food. BASI is building airships to carry large, heavy loads like produce, construction equipment, and modular housing without the need for roads or runways, bridging distances for remote communities and areas without reliable roads. They may eliminate the need for roads altogether, which would reduce construction and pollution in sensitive ecosystems where thoroughfares are often built and avoid the high costs of roadbuilding for cash-strapped remote communities. Likewise, runways won’t be needed because most airships can land anywhere that’s flat enough — whether on water, snowpack, beach, or field.

Their ability to land anywhere makes up for their lack of speed. Container ships wait in notoriously backed-up lines before their goods are unloaded onto trucks, which themselves are prone to traffic jams. Airships could pick up goods for regional distribution directly from a factory if the payload is big enough (like an order of new cars and trucks), skipping congested cities and avoiding travel through the waterways where sea animals make their homes.

Furthermore, airships aren’t limited by the size of truck containers or train beds, making it possible to move large vehicles and machines directly to hard-to-reach locations, like construction projects, congested cities, or mines. “Transport massive loads — like fully assembled heavy equipment,” brags Lockheed Martin’s site. “Cargo will have a weight limit, but no practical size limit,” according to U.K.-based Varialift Airships.

These characteristics make them useful for humanitarian and disaster missions. “Infrastructure is one of the first things that goes in a hurricane, tidal wave, or earthquake. An airship is ideal for getting aid in and refugees out,” says Boyd, pointing to the devastation caused by the tsunami that hit India in 2004. With 2,000 miles of coastline devastated, even a massive helicopter lift wasn’t enough to move heavy supplies like fresh water and food quickly enough to the millions in need. “[Airships] are more capable than helicopters — safer, more environmentally friendly, and with a longer operational range,” says Mark Dorey, COO of Straightline Aviation, which is set up to be an operator for Lockheed Martin’s hybrid dirigibles.

Staying aloft for as long as airships can — most models easily go for a week — means they can also be used for long-term work: surveys, border security in remote areas, and, importantly, scientific monitoring. Currently, low-Earth orbit satellites that can capture great detail move past a site only every two hours, while images from higher, geostationary satellites have lower resolution because they’re farther away. Airships could fill the need for continuous, detailed monitoring in one location. “You could look at how vegetation changes over a season, at ocean surface changes, or agriculture,” says NASA’s Rhodes. “[An airship] could provide fire detection over the whole fire season; it could watch fire and understand its effects over days and months.”

It’s important not to overlook the fact that dirigibles are significantly quieter than planes, making only as much noise as a big car engine, thousands of feet above the ground.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2rQSNKl