The market for this must be literally dozens of people.
Maybe cargo, not people.
Comment on The world's largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Twelve electric motors powered by diesel generators and batteries enable vertical take-off and landing. They can propel the Pathfinder 1 at up to 65 knots (75 mph), although its initial flights will be at much lower speeds.
Who the hell wants a 2-day ride to London?
Archer apparently got the math on that right too, in 2010. New York to London is about 3500 miles, which would take about 47 hours at the top speed of 75 mph.
I can’t believe they actually got enough money to build this thing. It’s like a vaporware project that somehow made it.
0x0@programming.dev 10 months ago
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Not a chance. If you’re paying for air freight it’s because you need something delivered now. If you don’t need it fast, then train/truck shipping is more cost effective.
While Pathfinder 1 can carry about four tons of cargo in addition to its crew, water ballast and fuel, future humanitarian airships will need much larger capacities.
By comparison, the Airbus A350-900 has a payload capacity of 53 tons, and the newer A350F version can carry 111 tons.
Even if they manage to triple the payload capacity, the A350F can carry 10x the weight.
4am@lemm.ee 10 months ago
If they send a bunch of them and they replace container ship traffic, however- how much less pollution is that?
Not saying they don’t face an extremely uphill battle to scale enough for that to make sense (we all know the green angle alone won’t be enough even if it should be…)
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 10 months ago
replace container ship traffic
A standard twenty-foot cargo container can carry ~20000 lbs (10 tons). This airship can’t even match half the capacity of one container. Modern cargo ships carry thousands of those containers, the largest about 24000. You would need to build 40000 airships to get roughly the carrying capacity of one container ship.
This isn’t an uphill battle, it’s completely infeasible.
PizzasDontWearCapes@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
“a bunch”?
Container ships can carry over 200K tons
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 10 months ago
If they are fully automated and solar powered, might be useful for shipping on the cheap if you have a swarm of it.
Taringano@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Airship can land and take off from virtually any surface that allows that silly baloon to fit. Not just airports or air strips.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Sure, but so can a helicopter, which can also carry more weight and get there faster.
buzziebee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
How much does it cost to send that freight at that speed though?
As airships get bigger and bigger they’ll be able to handle more cargo, and they’ll be a nice middle solution that fits between air freight and ships/road freight in both cost and speed.
It’s a potential new multiple billion market solution. These people aren’t developing the tech for no reason.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 10 months ago
How much does it cost to send that freight at that speed though?
Air freight is usually for overnight, so it definitely tends to be expensive. I don’t see how this is going to be less expensive, with such a limited carrying capacity. Every pound will come at a premium.
As airships get bigger and bigger they’ll be able to handle more cargo
OK, to improve the payload of an airplane you can improve the aerodynamics, increase the wingspan, use more powerful engines or lighten the frame/use newer fancy composite materials. The modernized A350F doubled the payload of the previous model.
This airship is a prototype and parts of it are probably overbuilt and could be more efficient. But it also has almost no cabin structure, so to carry more cargo they’re going to have to add a fair amount of structure which is going to cut into the added weight capacity. And, the heavier the cargo is the heavier the frame and structure will have to be. To effectively double the payload, they’ll have to more than double the size of the gas envelope, which is going to hit a practical limit pretty quickly. They might get to the capacity of 1 TEU (~10 tons) with very efficient design, but it will never match the capacity of even the older A350-900. And the bigger balloon is going to restrict the places this thing can land.
middle solution that fits between air freight and ships/road freight in both cost and speed.
With a top speed of 75 mph, this might match road transit but won’t beat it.
It’s a potential new multiple billion market solution. These people aren’t developing the tech for no reason.
It’s a hobby project for one of Google’s founders, who has more money than he know what to do with.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 10 months ago
I’d love to take a ride on a dirigible.
Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I can see this being used in international shipping if the get the cost down. Why put your product on a big ship when you can use an air ship? Also for landlocked countries.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s even more entertaining: it’s airspeed not ground speed, so the trip duration depends on the direction and force of the wind at the heigh it travels in (and that’s a lot worse for airships that aircraft because the formar have a much larger area facing the wind than the latter).
So that trip at top speed would likelly be shorter than that on the way to London, but longer than that on the way back (as the predominant winds - except during the El Niño - are from the west).
tiredofsametab@kbin.social 10 months ago
I'd love to take a slow (presumably more environmentally friendly) flight like that. Time is the only issue.