12 ms·

Cargo Airships Are Happening

222 points by elidourado 2y ago

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Vaporware hype.
oatsandsugar 2y ago
Time to order a leather hat, goggles and a scarf.
thecrumb 2y ago
I see this brought up every few years but nothing ever seems to happen. I used to live not far from the Weeksville station in NC and would occasionally see flights from there. Would love to see these all over. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weeksville-dirigible-hangar https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weeksville-dirigible-han...
- fl0id 2y ago
  This. Anybody remember cargolifter?
  - myspy 2y ago
    I still remember seeing the big hall in a Galileo broadcast https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle
  - user_of_the_wek 2y ago
    For anyone not familiar with Cargolifter, this might be a useful start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter I remember when i had a students job, some older colleague told me he sunk a nice sum into this. Foolishly, maybe!
metalman 2y ago
Cargo airships will not happen,in any land based area where wind happens,ie :anywhere this has been hammered flat on numerous aviation engineering forums the only way around the guaranteed ground handling debaucle is to engineer mega structur masts for anchoring,which will need to have a circular pad underneath,where the cargo would have to follow the LTA,as it pivots in the wind so back to a debaucle,with lots of smashing stuff one possibility is airship to ocean ship transfers where wind drift can be managed.....sort of could be made to work for passengers snd small cargo that loads through the central pivot in the mast still the anchoring phase will always be very high risk
- frickinLasers 2y ago
  I'd bet a bunch of former SpaceX engineers will figure out a solution.
  - peterashford 2y ago
    Yeah, dude was head of Hyperloop. Nailed that one
    - frickinLasers 2y ago
      I take your point in that there are a lot of naysayers here, as there were with Hyperloop. There were also hundreds of volunteers working on the project, who clearly thought it had a chance of working--and many more saying rockets would never be made reusable, it had been tried before, too many problems that can never be solved... “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill
      - cjbgkagh 2y ago
        Apples and oranges. Of my many engineer friends none of them thought the hyper loop was viable, it’s an absurdly bad idea. Like installing compressed air jets in cars for faster acceleration. Another one of Elons missives. Reusable rockets were more of an economic issue, is there enough demand for economic viability. That was always going to be the real magic. I think that is still an open question but it at least appears plausible.
00N8 2y ago
One challenge I've heard of is: If you carry 100 tons of cargo from point A to point B in an airship, for the airship to return to point A, it needs to take on another 100 tons of new cargo (or ballast), or it needs to vent (or compress) lifting gas, in order to maintain the correct buoyancy. I wonder what the best approach is here, & how it affects the economics? Is water ballast safe & cheap enough, or is there a better way?
- jordanb 2y ago
  Yeah although typically they used water ballast, which is cheap and easy to find. One thing worth considering is going back to hydrogen as a lifting gas. Not only is it a better lifting gas than helium and much cheaper, it could be used as fuel. An airship that burned its own lifting gas would have the curious property of getting heavier the further it traveled. This could be countered by dual-fueling it and also have engines that burned heavier-than-air fuel like kerosene or propane. The hydrogen engines could burn the lifting gas at the same rate as the kerosene engines burn the ballast-fuel.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    The Graf Zeppelin burnt Blaugas[1] because it's about the same density as air, so as the fuel tanks emptied the buoyancy didn't change. See [2] for other things the Zeppelins did, which says "The LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin had bi-fuel engines, and could use gasoline and Blau gas as a propellant. Twelve of the vessel's gas cells were filled with a propellant gas instead of lifting gas with a total volume of 30,000 cubic metres, enough for approximately 100 flight hours. The fuel tank had a gasoline volume of 67 flight hours. Using both gasoline and Blau gas, one could achieve 118 hours of cruise time." That article mentions that the Zeppelins experimented with burning Hydrogen lift gas as fuel "without much success" but doesn't add detail. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy_compensator_(aviation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy_compensator_(aviation...
    - jordanb 2y ago
xnyan 2y ago
The (biggest) problem that keeps airships from practical use is that they are huge sails. Big sails mean even small amounts of wind can be powerful forces acting on the airship. In the air a big push from the wind might be safely managed, but if you're near anything solid such as the ground, you can get smashed to bits. To safely operate a suitably efficient (large) airship, we'd need both huge specialized docks with extremely strong mooring structures to keep wind from smashing the airship into whatever is near it, and a system (such as a 3-axis propulsion system on the airship) that is capable of counteracting wind force acting on the airship when it's near the ground or other solid objects and not docked. Despite the many attractive advantages of airships, there's yet been anything like a good solution to this problem. There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?), this is just the biggest.
- labcomputer 2y ago
  > There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?) Not to detract from your overall point, but you do the same thing you do when burning fuel while cruising: Add ballast. Yes, but how do you add ballast to an airship while it is underway? Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did.
  - aaron695 2y ago
    [dead]
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    > Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did. Citation? Would not the condenser need to burn fuel, thus lightening the ship?
    - imoverclocked 2y ago
      You are carrying fuel and using oxygen from the atmosphere to combust it. When it's hot, it's a gas. By simply cooling it and recovering most of it, you are potentially left with more mass than you started off with... and Oxygen is relatively heavy.
cookiengineer 2y ago
I think this has actually great potential for fruit transports. Many countries export and import fruits from neighboring countries, because goods like fruits need a riping process and time, and storage space locally is more expensive than transporting them via container ship. For example, almost the same fruits that are exported from Hawaii are simultaneously imported from Chile, and vice versa. Both nations grow those natively, but storage space on the ground is more expensive than shipment. If this was part or focus of the airship freighting company, I'd see great potential there. Not even that, they wouldn't even need to transport anything, if they could invent a storage space in the air that's tax free, or maybe even offshore above the water.
- drivebyhooting 2y ago
  I just want to say that fruits need a ripening time because they are picked too early to accommodate transportation. Fruits picked ripe from the tree are significantly tastier and probably healthier.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    Meet ethylene.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  > "if they could invent a storage space .. offshore above the water" like, a boat?
  - cookiengineer 2y ago
    On water: More like atlantis, with a harbor and a loading dock. Above water: maybe rope-anchored airships. What I wanted to point out is that taxes are ground based, meaning the volume that's available above the ground usually is not used because of physical limitations of buildings and construction. You could increase that efficiency of recurring costs for land vs storage space with airships.
    - 2y ago
dpflan 2y ago
What is the current target use-case for this company's airships, the use-case that will get them a consistent business that will allow them to grow? What is the target operating speed considering cargo weight? How much cargo can such an airship carry at its target operating speed such that this is more efficient than air-freight and land-freight?
- Invictus0 2y ago
  Read the article dude
  - dpflan 2y ago
    Yes, this seems like the best paragraph from the article related to those questions: Airship Industries is designing its vehicle to dominate transoceanic air freight. It checks all the right boxes. It shortens end-to-end freight delivery time. It lowers freight handling costs, delays, and breakage. It’s highly profitable on a unit basis. It lowers fuel burn and carbon emissions by 75 percent without any sustainable fuel breakthroughs. How many shipping container can a single airship carry?
satisfice 2y ago
The article said nothing about weather hazards or the fact that it’s a big fat target for a war drone to bring down. It’s not just an easy target to hit, it’s a symbolic target. Airships were abandoned because very large objects falling out of the sky did not appeal to the public… and too many of them fell. Extremely severe weather brings down relatively tough aircraft, but once on the ground or in hangars they are relatively safe. Airships are flying cheesepuffs.
- imoverclocked 2y ago
  Luckily, we have much better weather forecasting than we did last time we tried airships for realsies.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Severe turbulence in clear conditions is increasing due to climate change: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-severe-turbulence-climate-change-singapore-airlines https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-severe-turbulenc...
    - imoverclocked 2y ago
      Turbulence for an airliner is going to be experienced differently for an airship. I'm not sure what to expect, TBH, but the difference between a plane moving at Mach 0.8 and an airship moving at 80 mph will definitely be real.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      There has been no increase in air turbulence accidents per passenger mile over the past 30 years despite a quadrupling of air traffic (so more chances to encounter turbulence). https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.... After normalizing the data by annual flight hours, there was no obvious trend over time for turbulence-related Part 121 accidents during this period [1989-2018]. The BBC article cites a modelling paper. In a conflict between real data and a simulation, real data should win.
stubish 2y ago
This effort is just starting up? Flying Whales expect to have an airship in 2025 and be operational in 2028 per https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/outback-town-launches-airship-cargo/104457420 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/outback-town-launches... . Not that this is a race; better if several companies succeed.
- tim333 2y ago
  I'm old enough to remember Airship Industries (1979): >The AD500 was "a new-generation airship making use of advanced materials and technology." It was 164 feet (50 m) long and contained 181,200 cubic feet (5,130 m3) of helium. >Unfortunately, on 8 March 1979, the month-old AD500 was seriously damaged when the nosecone failed while the ship was moored in high winds. And various other things not really working till they went bust in 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Industries I wonder if Airship Industries (2024) will do any better? Their ships don't looks very different - old co https://www.airliners.net/photo/Airship-Industries/Airship-Industries-Skyship-600/6707209 https://www.airliners.net/photo/Airship-Industries/Airship-I... New co https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc175398-a486-474a-b13f-70c1841c9718_3840x2072.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...
  - 1propionyl 2y ago
    >Unfortunately, on 8 March 1979, the month-old AD500 was seriously damaged when the nosecone failed while the ship was moored in high winds. "Well the front's not supposed to fall off, for a start."
maw 2y ago
If you can pick up goods directly from a customer on one side and deliver them directly to a customer on the other, you can actually beat today’s air freight service on delivery time. I didn't understand this part, specifically how you could beat today's air freight. Why wouldn't airships be subject to the same (ahem) overhead at either end? Competitive enough on speed while being less expensive makes sense, though.
- danielheath 2y ago
  Airships don't require a runway; a century ago they could moor to skyscrapers, or ships at sea. If (big regulatory issues here) you can deliver directly from one site to another, you eliminate trucking goods to the source airport & from the destination airport. A 3 hour dirigible flight is slower than a 45 minute cargo plane flight, but buffering at a warehouse to loading / unload a truck (twice) could easily add 2-3 days latency.
  - maw 2y ago
    That makes it make more sense. Thanks. You're right that there are big regulatory issues still.
fernly 2y ago
Maybe a smaller issue than wind, but something is wrong with this claim: "If you can pick up goods directly from a customer on one side and deliver them directly to a customer on the other..." How do you handle customs inspections and duties on imports? As TFA states, in current air freight, "there is a trucking company, a warehouse, a customs broker..." Freight has to go through the warehouse on arrival in-country so the customs inspectors can look at it and assess duties. The article seems to envision the airship dropping down directly at the destination address, which would be that nation's customs agency's worst nightmare.
- nielsbot 2y ago
  Yeah--I came here to highlight this too. I think all the legacy systems around international shipping won't permit direct to consumer pick up and delivery. Unless someone can show me an existing example?
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Some international logistics businesses pickup from and ship directly to customers. They are well-practiced in avoiding customs delays and have extensive experience with non-traditional transport, such as semi-submursibles. Seriously, if a Toyota supplier in Japan delivers parts daily to a factory in Ohio, do they go through regular customs or is there some other arrangement? Can they fly directly to an airfield near the factory?
    - nevi-me 2y ago
      That feels like a different scenario. Intuitively I would expect some pre-arranged clearance process that is valid for some period to avoid say daily paperwork lodging. Even the inspection process could be streamlined if there's some trust between the authorities and the regularly shipping parties. It still doesn't address the case where a random small business receives a container full of their latest items from a supplier. The first thing I funnily thought of with direct-to-customer was narcotics. If countries don't inspect goods coming in (assuming that countries with a risk of narcotics being shipped out have already lost), then it makes for a great muling opportunity, or just wholesale shipment.
bzmrgonz 2y ago
They are missing out on a golden opportunity, North Carolina disaster could be where they shine and show the world what they can do!!! Someone needs to advise these folks, they are desperate for non-road transportation up there... (western NC AND Eastern TN).
- tim333 2y ago
  I wonder what >Lighter Than Air, a company owned by Google's co-founder, begins testing Pathfinder 1, a next-generation airship that could revolutionize air travel, cargo transport, and the movement of humanitarian aid. are doing with their ship? I think it's built and sitting around. (https://www.domusweb.it/en/sustainable-cities/gallery/2023/11/14/the-gigantic-founder-of-google-sergey-brin-new-generation-travel.html https://www.domusweb.it/en/sustainable-cities/gallery/2023/1...)
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  > They are missing out on a golden opportunity, North Carolina disaster could be where they shine and show the world what they can do They currently are showing the world what cargo airships can do (ie nothing). The world just perpetually doesn't want to listen.
Animats 2y ago
The article on the site is vague, but if you go to the company's site, and examine the images, you can get a close look at the airship design. The image on the web site [1] is higher resolution than the web site needs, and you can zoom in if you open the image directly. The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU. This is comparable to a B-747 freighter. Current new price of a B-747 freighter is about US$400 million. Trips per unit time would be less but fuel cost would be lower. Large container ships are now in the 20,000 TEU range. It's not clear there's much demand for faster container shipping. Container ships tend to run slower than they can, to save fuel. Maersk has some 4,000 TEU high speed container ships capable of 29 knots, but due to lack of a market and huge fuel costs, they're mothballed in a loch in Scotland. [1] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66b24fc3f58cf05c3cbc4d19/fa1855e5-93a3-4462-8b32-6b3b4bfefbbf/Hangar_Cutaway.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66b24fc3f58cf0...
- Sammi 2y ago
  For the curious the search string you want is "Maersk cargo ships in Loch Striven".
  - user_of_the_wek 2y ago
    I searched around a bit and it seems they have been gone from the Loch since 2011: https://inflatableboatjourneys.blogspot.com/2011/07/kyles-of-bute-and-loch-striven.html https://inflatableboatjourneys.blogspot.com/2011/07/kyles-of... Or maybe they are back? There aren't a lot of sources I could find.
- pier25 2y ago
  At some point in the future the real cost of operating with fossil fuels will catch up.
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    Battery cargo ships make a lot of sense, since you can slow-steam far slower without losing efficiency, with an electric motor.
fergie 2y ago
Articles about airship dreambuilding have been a mainstay of HN and Reddit since the early days. The tech has always been super inspiring, yet "just around the corner". It would be almost sad to see them actually become a reality.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Unrealized futurism predating both in magazine form was Popular Mechanics and Popular Science hype of Moller skycars as the original goat, and virtual reality being a close second.
- adolph 2y ago
  Jet packs seem to be getting actually closer, maybe perpetually 5 years off instead of perpetually 10 years away.
floppiplopp 2y ago
To summarize: "It'll surely work this time. Please invest."
verzali 2y ago
Is there an actual problem here that airships solve? Is getting cargo across the Pacific one or two days faster (and that's presumably a best case, since airships are heavily weather and wind dependent) actually that valuable? I would have though the scale of international shipping would anyway mean its pretty cheap to set up a continuous stream of cargo, which airships would struggle to replicate in any efficient way. Honestly, it sounds like a cool thing to work on, but this article is not convincing about the potential market. I can easily imagine former SpaceX and Hyperloop engineers thinking a cool technology will simply find a market, but that's not really what Elon Musk did with SpaceX.
LordHeini 2y ago
Sounds good does not work. Reminds me of CargoLifter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter The german article states that the price the Zeppelin GmbH (yes those guys) calculated, that the costs of transportation via airship, would be about 10 times as high as conventional methods. CargoLifter used helium which is stupidly expensive, this is supposed to use hydrogen and more modern materials but i think that does not make a factor of 10. Also "current FAA guidance disallows the use of hydrogen as a lifting gas". So good luck with that. As you burn fuel you must either gain weight or vent gas. Old Airships had either rain collectors (yep really) or piston engines which burned gas with a similar density to air (which digs a lot into your carrying capacity and volume). Venting helium is way to expensive and one of the reasons CargoLifter failed, was that they never managed to get water collection running. This article and the linked website have no idea how to solve the propulsion problem. There is some stuff about turbines going with the the old Zeppelin approach, of burning gas. Or something about solar cells, which obviously would not work because solar cells are rigid and heavy but this is supposed to be semi rigid. And you would need heavy batteries too. Also airships sink when they get wet. And it gets warm the gas expands and it rises. You need ballast to account for that; this is large so it will do that a lot. Don't forget how stupidly large these things are and thus how much wind is a problem. The linked website claims a predicted length of 388 and width of 78 Meters minimum! So maneuverability is going to be a large problem, you can overcome this by adding lots of propellers everywhere but that add weight and uses fuel. Now imagine a 388x78 m giant filled with hydrogen, with hordes of engines everywhere, dropping of a bunch of containers at some delivery center... Since wind might be coming from every direction you need a landing circle (!) of roughly a km in diameter. This is why old Zeppelins landed at large (!) airstrips or sometimes on masts attached to skyscrapers. Then cargo gets loaded off and ballast of the same weight must be moved onto the ship. That ballast has to go somewhere, so the ship either needs water tanks (again loss of carrying capacity). Or the landing strip has some attachable ballast (how do you transport that back and forth?). If you have the infrastructure to accommodate this thing you can be reached by truck or rail, which is cheaper, not depended on weather and so on... And weirdly enough you can be reached by cargo aircraft which is a solved problem! Door to door delivery was exactly what CargoLifter was supposed to do. But it was basically a more expensive and clunky helicopter. Thus it failed.
calmbonsai 2y ago
No. They absolutely are NOT happening. In fact, this is one of the very few technical solutions I'm very confident to state is never happening. 1) The economic model is unproven so even initial costs will be far too high to pay of debt incurred to manufacture, market, and maintain and they're not competitive with extant mass-market alternatives on cost & time out-of-the-gate with no clear pathway to even being niche competitive, let alone having mass-market adoption. And no, the Airship cruise industry is never going to take-off (heh) because there wouldn't be any extant "ports of call" (unlike with sea-going cruise ships) and no way to economically stimulate their construction. 2) Inclement weather mitigations (aside from docking, re-routing (delaying), or rescheduling (also delaying)) are virtually non-existent so there's a much higher trip variance which eats into fuel, time, labor, and ultimately a far higher cost variance which (as a 2nd order effect) leads to an overall MUCH higher cost to operate ANY route compared to conventional cargo or mixed-mode transportation. As a historic model, look at the air cargo transport costs in the transition from mandated multi-stop piston engine refueling and in-weather flying in the late 1930s to single-hop above-the-weather flying in the gas turbine "jet age" of the late 1940s. It's not JUST that jets were much faster, they were also far more predictable to service routes AND had far lower maintenance costs. A lower, slower, and less predictable airship with higher maintenance costs and, at best, a handful of percentage points off of the dollars/mile/ton figure with a higher initial cost outlay doesn't merit investment. 3) Safety is still a huge issue for any airship attempting station-keeping or full-authority-navigation close to any ground-effect altitude which is, unfortunately, also the airspace where any accident is likely to cause the most collateral damage. No other form of transport has this problem and, with current tech, would seem insolvable without turning the airship into a poorly performing version of a plane or rotor-craft.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  As it turns out, ships are just really good at shipping. People keep trying airships with no fundamental tech or economic breakthroughs and they should all expect the same result.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Agreed. I've been reading about the return of airships since I was a kids in the 1980s. The fundamentals haven't changed.
awiesenhofer 2y ago
Even grifters seem to run out of new ideas...
Terretta 2y ago
> Over the summer, Jim incorporated Airship Industries. He hired a team of cracked ex-SpaceX engineers. And he raised a large pre-seed round... This typo is perfect.
- ralfd 2y ago
  I am blind. What typo?
  - HenryBemis 2y ago
    I assume the word "cracked"?
  - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
    "Crack engineer" means an engineer who is smart and capable. "Cracked engineer" means an engineer who is insane.
    - n_jd 2y ago
      It's just how the kids and the terminally online are saying it these days
      - brcmthrowaway 2y ago
        Cracked founders!
      - cthalupa 2y ago
        Not even particularly new. I remember seeing it used talking about Counter-Strike pros in the early 2000s
    - echelon 2y ago
      > (slang) Extremely good at something (usually a video game). >> 20 kills? Dude, you're cracked. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cracked https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cracked
voidUpdate 2y ago
> "But for air freight service, end-to-end delivery takes a week or more, involving multiple parties: in addition to the air carrier and freight forwarder, at both the origin and destination, there is a trucking company, a warehouse, a customs broker, and an airport. Each touchpoint adds cost, delay, and the risk of theft or breakage." How does an airship solve any of those problems? Its still got to go through customs and such, and still go through local truck delivery
- Thorrez 2y ago
  I'm not sure about how they solve customs, but the picture shows an airship dropping cargo directly off at a warehouse (avoiding trucks).
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    How will the airship and its cargo clear customs at a random warehouse with presumably no staffing of border agents?
    - patl 2y ago
      Maybe it's still a customs/border facility. It can just be inland now, away from the very expensive waterfront/costal property
      - dylan604 2y ago
        Would that inland facility still have a 100 mile jurisdiction boundary around it as well?
        withinboredom 2y ago
        Yes, of course, with a grid of these facilities across the country.
      - DowagerDave 2y ago
        the reason that property is so expensive is because that's where the people are. There's no point in avoiding the biggest cost of air freight - getting goods to consumers who don't live near the limited freight hubs, if you land it in the middle of nowhere and now need to ship by rail or truck AND last mile delivery
d--b 2y ago
Nice! I guess one of the side effects is that air pirates are finally going to be a thing! Yay!
- vaylian 2y ago
  Is your crew hiring?
danielovichdk 2y ago
This reads as a technologist that has absolutely no clue about anything regarding the shipping or the logistics industry. I hope someone told these guys what the spent is on new (water) ships globally, because it points only in one direction.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - QuantumGood 2y ago
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wejick 2y ago
There's oversimplification of how logistic is working. For example it's not gonna happening solving last mile delivery using this airship, not even mentioning the pickup.
jeffreyrogers 2y ago
In the render it shows the airship directly loading while hovering above a warehouse. This is currently not allowed under FAA regulations and would require a regulatory change. Not being able to do that makes a lot of the business model assumptions questionable.
6510 2y ago
It is a wonderful solution looking for a problem. I imagine there must be at least one landlocked country interested in the adventure. Someone long ago did a napkin calculation for me showing a hard vacuum airship made of reinforced concrete can work if you make it big enough. What are a few miles on the cosmic scale?
cbeach 2y ago
On a related note, I recommend this short presentation by Hacker News regular @simonw on the history of airships, including a look at the future of airships: "When Zeppelins Ruled The Earth" (6m47s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omobajJmyIU&ab_channel=SimonWillison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omobajJmyIU&ab_channel=Simon...
Log_out_ 2y ago
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter What has changed?
ttepasse 2y ago
The CargoLifter-Conendrum: If you're want to use your cargo airship for point to point transport, you'll need ballast at the target point so that the buoyancy of the airship doesn’t change too much. CargoLifter back then used water. Their prototype could lift an armoured vehicle and lower it – while maintaining buoyancy through pumping water with an high speed pump. They planned cargo services for very remote points. But if you’ll can transport water and a high speed pump and a mobile mooring tower to the very remote target, chances are, you’ll already can transport the cargo itself to that target. Today the CargoLifter hangar is the biggest indoor water park.
graybeardhacker 2y ago
I feel there were very good reasons that airships were abandoned. I don't know what those reasons were, but unless they enumerate the reasons and explain why they have now solved them, I will assume they are also going to fail. According to AI, there have been 5 historical attempts to make airships work before the modern resurgence: The early experimental phase (1780s–1850s), The pioneering era (1850s–1900s), The golden age (1900s–1930s), A post-Hindenburg decline (1930s), Cold War military uses (1940s–1970s), and A modern resurgence (1990s–present).
ninalanyon 2y ago
Cargo airships are like nuclear fusion, just a few years away for the last sixty years.
joelignaatius 2y ago
Consider a cargo airship operated remotely. The propulsion would be based on solar powered fans. Even if it took weeks to cross the ocean it would need essentially no cost to operate (or incredibly little) compared to operating a ship. If one blows up (hydrogen is volatile) you'd dump all the cargo on the ocean but you wouldn't be dumping tons of diesel fuel and the frame of the the ship is smaller than a ship. If you can do it without a crew you've essentially made shipping almost free except for loading and unloading at ports. AND you can put ports in areas that don't have access to inlets to the oceans or good shorelines. The most difficult part is the volatility of the lifting gas. You might have to load and unload cargo on platforms away from the coastline to prevent explosions. As for the hydrogen itself, the balloon can create it's own lifting gas by separating hydrogen from the atmosphere with an onboard chemical electric apparatus (presumably) if it ends up leaking hydrogen on its voyage. Lifting gas volatility has always been the biggest problem.
joelignaatius 2y ago
Serious question out of curiosity. Has anyone solved the lifting gas volatility problem (is the lighter the gas the more volatile)? That's the main deal breaker with all zeppelin proposals.
metalman 2y ago
cargo airships are not ever gona happen pure unobtainium we are domehow glosding over the imposibility of combining a transport ship with a built in mega crane,that has no fixed base or solid anchoring system all bulk cargo operations are dangerouse enough already cargo airships can not be engineered to work zeeeero
- hbrav 2y ago
  Cargo airships are not going to replace container ships, but they may well have their niche. One such use-case is prompt delivery of supplies that are urgently needed in high quantity in underdeveloped areas. For example, delivering some grammar to the parent comment.
rekabis 2y ago
> He hired a team of cracked ex-SpaceX engineers. A team of what??
adfm 2y ago
Sailing ships are happening.

222 points by elidourado 2y ago

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Vaporware hype.

oatsandsugar 2y ago

Time to order a leather hat, goggles and a scarf.

thecrumb 2y ago

I see this brought up every few years but nothing ever seems to happen. I used to live not far from the Weeksville station in NC and would occasionally see flights from there. Would love to see these all over. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weeksville-dirigible-hangar https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weeksville-dirigible-han...

fl0id 2y ago
This. Anybody remember cargolifter?
- myspy 2y ago
  I still remember seeing the big hall in a Galileo broadcast https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle
- user_of_the_wek 2y ago
  For anyone not familiar with Cargolifter, this might be a useful start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter I remember when i had a students job, some older colleague told me he sunk a nice sum into this. Foolishly, maybe!

metalman 2y ago

Cargo airships will not happen,in any land based area where wind happens,ie :anywhere this has been hammered flat on numerous aviation engineering forums the only way around the guaranteed ground handling debaucle is to engineer mega structur masts for anchoring,which will need to have a circular pad underneath,where the cargo would have to follow the LTA,as it pivots in the wind so back to a debaucle,with lots of smashing stuff one possibility is airship to ocean ship transfers where wind drift can be managed.....sort of could be made to work for passengers snd small cargo that loads through the central pivot in the mast still the anchoring phase will always be very high risk

frickinLasers 2y ago
I'd bet a bunch of former SpaceX engineers will figure out a solution.
- peterashford 2y ago
  Yeah, dude was head of Hyperloop. Nailed that one
  - frickinLasers 2y ago
    I take your point in that there are a lot of naysayers here, as there were with Hyperloop. There were also hundreds of volunteers working on the project, who clearly thought it had a chance of working--and many more saying rockets would never be made reusable, it had been tried before, too many problems that can never be solved... “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      Apples and oranges. Of my many engineer friends none of them thought the hyper loop was viable, it’s an absurdly bad idea. Like installing compressed air jets in cars for faster acceleration. Another one of Elons missives. Reusable rockets were more of an economic issue, is there enough demand for economic viability. That was always going to be the real magic. I think that is still an open question but it at least appears plausible.

00N8 2y ago

One challenge I've heard of is: If you carry 100 tons of cargo from point A to point B in an airship, for the airship to return to point A, it needs to take on another 100 tons of new cargo (or ballast), or it needs to vent (or compress) lifting gas, in order to maintain the correct buoyancy. I wonder what the best approach is here, & how it affects the economics? Is water ballast safe & cheap enough, or is there a better way?

jordanb 2y ago
Yeah although typically they used water ballast, which is cheap and easy to find. One thing worth considering is going back to hydrogen as a lifting gas. Not only is it a better lifting gas than helium and much cheaper, it could be used as fuel. An airship that burned its own lifting gas would have the curious property of getting heavier the further it traveled. This could be countered by dual-fueling it and also have engines that burned heavier-than-air fuel like kerosene or propane. The hydrogen engines could burn the lifting gas at the same rate as the kerosene engines burn the ballast-fuel.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  The Graf Zeppelin burnt Blaugas[1] because it's about the same density as air, so as the fuel tanks emptied the buoyancy didn't change. See [2] for other things the Zeppelins did, which says "The LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin had bi-fuel engines, and could use gasoline and Blau gas as a propellant. Twelve of the vessel's gas cells were filled with a propellant gas instead of lifting gas with a total volume of 30,000 cubic metres, enough for approximately 100 flight hours. The fuel tank had a gasoline volume of 67 flight hours. Using both gasoline and Blau gas, one could achieve 118 hours of cruise time." That article mentions that the Zeppelins experimented with burning Hydrogen lift gas as fuel "without much success" but doesn't add detail. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy_compensator_(aviation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy_compensator_(aviation...
  - jordanb 2y ago

xnyan 2y ago

The (biggest) problem that keeps airships from practical use is that they are huge sails. Big sails mean even small amounts of wind can be powerful forces acting on the airship. In the air a big push from the wind might be safely managed, but if you're near anything solid such as the ground, you can get smashed to bits. To safely operate a suitably efficient (large) airship, we'd need both huge specialized docks with extremely strong mooring structures to keep wind from smashing the airship into whatever is near it, and a system (such as a 3-axis propulsion system on the airship) that is capable of counteracting wind force acting on the airship when it's near the ground or other solid objects and not docked. Despite the many attractive advantages of airships, there's yet been anything like a good solution to this problem. There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?), this is just the biggest.

labcomputer 2y ago
> There are other challenges too (what do you do when you drop off your cargo and the airship wants to shoot up into the air? Vent gas? Rapidly compress your gas?) Not to detract from your overall point, but you do the same thing you do when burning fuel while cruising: Add ballast. Yes, but how do you add ballast to an airship while it is underway? Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- zabzonk 2y ago
  > Simple: condense water out of the exhaust like the zeppelins did. Citation? Would not the condenser need to burn fuel, thus lightening the ship?
  - imoverclocked 2y ago
    You are carrying fuel and using oxygen from the atmosphere to combust it. When it's hot, it's a gas. By simply cooling it and recovering most of it, you are potentially left with more mass than you started off with... and Oxygen is relatively heavy.

cookiengineer 2y ago

I think this has actually great potential for fruit transports. Many countries export and import fruits from neighboring countries, because goods like fruits need a riping process and time, and storage space locally is more expensive than transporting them via container ship. For example, almost the same fruits that are exported from Hawaii are simultaneously imported from Chile, and vice versa. Both nations grow those natively, but storage space on the ground is more expensive than shipment. If this was part or focus of the airship freighting company, I'd see great potential there. Not even that, they wouldn't even need to transport anything, if they could invent a storage space in the air that's tax free, or maybe even offshore above the water.

drivebyhooting 2y ago
I just want to say that fruits need a ripening time because they are picked too early to accommodate transportation. Fruits picked ripe from the tree are significantly tastier and probably healthier.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  Meet ethylene.
jodrellblank 2y ago
> "if they could invent a storage space .. offshore above the water" like, a boat?
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  On water: More like atlantis, with a harbor and a loading dock. Above water: maybe rope-anchored airships. What I wanted to point out is that taxes are ground based, meaning the volume that's available above the ground usually is not used because of physical limitations of buildings and construction. You could increase that efficiency of recurring costs for land vs storage space with airships.
  - 2y ago

dpflan 2y ago

What is the current target use-case for this company's airships, the use-case that will get them a consistent business that will allow them to grow? What is the target operating speed considering cargo weight? How much cargo can such an airship carry at its target operating speed such that this is more efficient than air-freight and land-freight?

Invictus0 2y ago
Read the article dude
- dpflan 2y ago
  Yes, this seems like the best paragraph from the article related to those questions: Airship Industries is designing its vehicle to dominate transoceanic air freight. It checks all the right boxes. It shortens end-to-end freight delivery time. It lowers freight handling costs, delays, and breakage. It’s highly profitable on a unit basis. It lowers fuel burn and carbon emissions by 75 percent without any sustainable fuel breakthroughs. How many shipping container can a single airship carry?

satisfice 2y ago

The article said nothing about weather hazards or the fact that it’s a big fat target for a war drone to bring down. It’s not just an easy target to hit, it’s a symbolic target. Airships were abandoned because very large objects falling out of the sky did not appeal to the public… and too many of them fell. Extremely severe weather brings down relatively tough aircraft, but once on the ground or in hangars they are relatively safe. Airships are flying cheesepuffs.

imoverclocked 2y ago
Luckily, we have much better weather forecasting than we did last time we tried airships for realsies.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Severe turbulence in clear conditions is increasing due to climate change: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-severe-turbulence-climate-change-singapore-airlines https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-severe-turbulenc...
  - imoverclocked 2y ago
    Turbulence for an airliner is going to be experienced differently for an airship. I'm not sure what to expect, TBH, but the difference between a plane moving at Mach 0.8 and an airship moving at 80 mph will definitely be real.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    There has been no increase in air turbulence accidents per passenger mile over the past 30 years despite a quadrupling of air traffic (so more chances to encounter turbulence). https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.... After normalizing the data by annual flight hours, there was no obvious trend over time for turbulence-related Part 121 accidents during this period [1989-2018]. The BBC article cites a modelling paper. In a conflict between real data and a simulation, real data should win.

stubish 2y ago

This effort is just starting up? Flying Whales expect to have an airship in 2025 and be operational in 2028 per https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/outback-town-launches-airship-cargo/104457420 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/outback-town-launches... . Not that this is a race; better if several companies succeed.

tim333 2y ago
I'm old enough to remember Airship Industries (1979): >The AD500 was "a new-generation airship making use of advanced materials and technology." It was 164 feet (50 m) long and contained 181,200 cubic feet (5,130 m3) of helium. >Unfortunately, on 8 March 1979, the month-old AD500 was seriously damaged when the nosecone failed while the ship was moored in high winds. And various other things not really working till they went bust in 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Industries I wonder if Airship Industries (2024) will do any better? Their ships don't looks very different - old co https://www.airliners.net/photo/Airship-Industries/Airship-Industries-Skyship-600/6707209 https://www.airliners.net/photo/Airship-Industries/Airship-I... New co https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc175398-a486-474a-b13f-70c1841c9718_3840x2072.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...
- 1propionyl 2y ago
  >Unfortunately, on 8 March 1979, the month-old AD500 was seriously damaged when the nosecone failed while the ship was moored in high winds. "Well the front's not supposed to fall off, for a start."

maw 2y ago

If you can pick up goods directly from a customer on one side and deliver them directly to a customer on the other, you can actually beat today’s air freight service on delivery time. I didn't understand this part, specifically how you could beat today's air freight. Why wouldn't airships be subject to the same (ahem) overhead at either end? Competitive enough on speed while being less expensive makes sense, though.

danielheath 2y ago
Airships don't require a runway; a century ago they could moor to skyscrapers, or ships at sea. If (big regulatory issues here) you can deliver directly from one site to another, you eliminate trucking goods to the source airport & from the destination airport. A 3 hour dirigible flight is slower than a 45 minute cargo plane flight, but buffering at a warehouse to loading / unload a truck (twice) could easily add 2-3 days latency.
- maw 2y ago
  That makes it make more sense. Thanks. You're right that there are big regulatory issues still.

fernly 2y ago

Maybe a smaller issue than wind, but something is wrong with this claim: "If you can pick up goods directly from a customer on one side and deliver them directly to a customer on the other..." How do you handle customs inspections and duties on imports? As TFA states, in current air freight, "there is a trucking company, a warehouse, a customs broker..." Freight has to go through the warehouse on arrival in-country so the customs inspectors can look at it and assess duties. The article seems to envision the airship dropping down directly at the destination address, which would be that nation's customs agency's worst nightmare.

nielsbot 2y ago
Yeah--I came here to highlight this too. I think all the legacy systems around international shipping won't permit direct to consumer pick up and delivery. Unless someone can show me an existing example?
- mmooss 2y ago
  Some international logistics businesses pickup from and ship directly to customers. They are well-practiced in avoiding customs delays and have extensive experience with non-traditional transport, such as semi-submursibles. Seriously, if a Toyota supplier in Japan delivers parts daily to a factory in Ohio, do they go through regular customs or is there some other arrangement? Can they fly directly to an airfield near the factory?
  - nevi-me 2y ago
    That feels like a different scenario. Intuitively I would expect some pre-arranged clearance process that is valid for some period to avoid say daily paperwork lodging. Even the inspection process could be streamlined if there's some trust between the authorities and the regularly shipping parties. It still doesn't address the case where a random small business receives a container full of their latest items from a supplier. The first thing I funnily thought of with direct-to-customer was narcotics. If countries don't inspect goods coming in (assuming that countries with a risk of narcotics being shipped out have already lost), then it makes for a great muling opportunity, or just wholesale shipment.

bzmrgonz 2y ago

They are missing out on a golden opportunity, North Carolina disaster could be where they shine and show the world what they can do!!! Someone needs to advise these folks, they are desperate for non-road transportation up there... (western NC AND Eastern TN).

tim333 2y ago
I wonder what >Lighter Than Air, a company owned by Google's co-founder, begins testing Pathfinder 1, a next-generation airship that could revolutionize air travel, cargo transport, and the movement of humanitarian aid. are doing with their ship? I think it's built and sitting around. (https://www.domusweb.it/en/sustainable-cities/gallery/2023/11/14/the-gigantic-founder-of-google-sergey-brin-new-generation-travel.html https://www.domusweb.it/en/sustainable-cities/gallery/2023/1...)
pclmulqdq 2y ago
> They are missing out on a golden opportunity, North Carolina disaster could be where they shine and show the world what they can do They currently are showing the world what cargo airships can do (ie nothing). The world just perpetually doesn't want to listen.

Animats 2y ago

The article on the site is vague, but if you go to the company's site, and examine the images, you can get a close look at the airship design. The image on the web site [1] is higher resolution than the web site needs, and you can zoom in if you open the image directly. The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU. This is comparable to a B-747 freighter. Current new price of a B-747 freighter is about US$400 million. Trips per unit time would be less but fuel cost would be lower. Large container ships are now in the 20,000 TEU range. It's not clear there's much demand for faster container shipping. Container ships tend to run slower than they can, to save fuel. Maersk has some 4,000 TEU high speed container ships capable of 29 knots, but due to lack of a market and huge fuel costs, they're mothballed in a loch in Scotland. [1] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66b24fc3f58cf05c3cbc4d19/fa1855e5-93a3-4462-8b32-6b3b4bfefbbf/Hangar_Cutaway.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66b24fc3f58cf0...

Sammi 2y ago
For the curious the search string you want is "Maersk cargo ships in Loch Striven".
- user_of_the_wek 2y ago
  I searched around a bit and it seems they have been gone from the Loch since 2011: https://inflatableboatjourneys.blogspot.com/2011/07/kyles-of-bute-and-loch-striven.html https://inflatableboatjourneys.blogspot.com/2011/07/kyles-of... Or maybe they are back? There aren't a lot of sources I could find.
pier25 2y ago
At some point in the future the real cost of operating with fossil fuels will catch up.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  Battery cargo ships make a lot of sense, since you can slow-steam far slower without losing efficiency, with an electric motor.

fergie 2y ago

Articles about airship dreambuilding have been a mainstay of HN and Reddit since the early days. The tech has always been super inspiring, yet "just around the corner". It would be almost sad to see them actually become a reality.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Unrealized futurism predating both in magazine form was Popular Mechanics and Popular Science hype of Moller skycars as the original goat, and virtual reality being a close second.
adolph 2y ago
Jet packs seem to be getting actually closer, maybe perpetually 5 years off instead of perpetually 10 years away.

floppiplopp 2y ago

To summarize: "It'll surely work this time. Please invest."

verzali 2y ago

Is there an actual problem here that airships solve? Is getting cargo across the Pacific one or two days faster (and that's presumably a best case, since airships are heavily weather and wind dependent) actually that valuable? I would have though the scale of international shipping would anyway mean its pretty cheap to set up a continuous stream of cargo, which airships would struggle to replicate in any efficient way. Honestly, it sounds like a cool thing to work on, but this article is not convincing about the potential market. I can easily imagine former SpaceX and Hyperloop engineers thinking a cool technology will simply find a market, but that's not really what Elon Musk did with SpaceX.

LordHeini 2y ago

Sounds good does not work. Reminds me of CargoLifter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter The german article states that the price the Zeppelin GmbH (yes those guys) calculated, that the costs of transportation via airship, would be about 10 times as high as conventional methods. CargoLifter used helium which is stupidly expensive, this is supposed to use hydrogen and more modern materials but i think that does not make a factor of 10. Also "current FAA guidance disallows the use of hydrogen as a lifting gas". So good luck with that. As you burn fuel you must either gain weight or vent gas. Old Airships had either rain collectors (yep really) or piston engines which burned gas with a similar density to air (which digs a lot into your carrying capacity and volume). Venting helium is way to expensive and one of the reasons CargoLifter failed, was that they never managed to get water collection running. This article and the linked website have no idea how to solve the propulsion problem. There is some stuff about turbines going with the the old Zeppelin approach, of burning gas. Or something about solar cells, which obviously would not work because solar cells are rigid and heavy but this is supposed to be semi rigid. And you would need heavy batteries too. Also airships sink when they get wet. And it gets warm the gas expands and it rises. You need ballast to account for that; this is large so it will do that a lot. Don't forget how stupidly large these things are and thus how much wind is a problem. The linked website claims a predicted length of 388 and width of 78 Meters minimum! So maneuverability is going to be a large problem, you can overcome this by adding lots of propellers everywhere but that add weight and uses fuel. Now imagine a 388x78 m giant filled with hydrogen, with hordes of engines everywhere, dropping of a bunch of containers at some delivery center... Since wind might be coming from every direction you need a landing circle (!) of roughly a km in diameter. This is why old Zeppelins landed at large (!) airstrips or sometimes on masts attached to skyscrapers. Then cargo gets loaded off and ballast of the same weight must be moved onto the ship. That ballast has to go somewhere, so the ship either needs water tanks (again loss of carrying capacity). Or the landing strip has some attachable ballast (how do you transport that back and forth?). If you have the infrastructure to accommodate this thing you can be reached by truck or rail, which is cheaper, not depended on weather and so on... And weirdly enough you can be reached by cargo aircraft which is a solved problem! Door to door delivery was exactly what CargoLifter was supposed to do. But it was basically a more expensive and clunky helicopter. Thus it failed.

calmbonsai 2y ago

No. They absolutely are NOT happening. In fact, this is one of the very few technical solutions I'm very confident to state is never happening. 1) The economic model is unproven so even initial costs will be far too high to pay of debt incurred to manufacture, market, and maintain and they're not competitive with extant mass-market alternatives on cost & time out-of-the-gate with no clear pathway to even being niche competitive, let alone having mass-market adoption. And no, the Airship cruise industry is never going to take-off (heh) because there wouldn't be any extant "ports of call" (unlike with sea-going cruise ships) and no way to economically stimulate their construction. 2) Inclement weather mitigations (aside from docking, re-routing (delaying), or rescheduling (also delaying)) are virtually non-existent so there's a much higher trip variance which eats into fuel, time, labor, and ultimately a far higher cost variance which (as a 2nd order effect) leads to an overall MUCH higher cost to operate ANY route compared to conventional cargo or mixed-mode transportation. As a historic model, look at the air cargo transport costs in the transition from mandated multi-stop piston engine refueling and in-weather flying in the late 1930s to single-hop above-the-weather flying in the gas turbine "jet age" of the late 1940s. It's not JUST that jets were much faster, they were also far more predictable to service routes AND had far lower maintenance costs. A lower, slower, and less predictable airship with higher maintenance costs and, at best, a handful of percentage points off of the dollars/mile/ton figure with a higher initial cost outlay doesn't merit investment. 3) Safety is still a huge issue for any airship attempting station-keeping or full-authority-navigation close to any ground-effect altitude which is, unfortunately, also the airspace where any accident is likely to cause the most collateral damage. No other form of transport has this problem and, with current tech, would seem insolvable without turning the airship into a poorly performing version of a plane or rotor-craft.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
As it turns out, ships are just really good at shipping. People keep trying airships with no fundamental tech or economic breakthroughs and they should all expect the same result.
eesmith 2y ago
Agreed. I've been reading about the return of airships since I was a kids in the 1980s. The fundamentals haven't changed.

awiesenhofer 2y ago

Even grifters seem to run out of new ideas...

Terretta 2y ago

> Over the summer, Jim incorporated Airship Industries. He hired a team of cracked ex-SpaceX engineers. And he raised a large pre-seed round... This typo is perfect.

ralfd 2y ago
I am blind. What typo?
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  I assume the word "cracked"?
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  "Crack engineer" means an engineer who is smart and capable. "Cracked engineer" means an engineer who is insane.
  - n_jd 2y ago
    It's just how the kids and the terminally online are saying it these days
    - brcmthrowaway 2y ago
      Cracked founders!
    - cthalupa 2y ago
      Not even particularly new. I remember seeing it used talking about Counter-Strike pros in the early 2000s
  - echelon 2y ago
    > (slang) Extremely good at something (usually a video game). >> 20 kills? Dude, you're cracked. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cracked https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cracked

voidUpdate 2y ago

> "But for air freight service, end-to-end delivery takes a week or more, involving multiple parties: in addition to the air carrier and freight forwarder, at both the origin and destination, there is a trucking company, a warehouse, a customs broker, and an airport. Each touchpoint adds cost, delay, and the risk of theft or breakage." How does an airship solve any of those problems? Its still got to go through customs and such, and still go through local truck delivery

Thorrez 2y ago
I'm not sure about how they solve customs, but the picture shows an airship dropping cargo directly off at a warehouse (avoiding trucks).
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  How will the airship and its cargo clear customs at a random warehouse with presumably no staffing of border agents?
  - patl 2y ago
    Maybe it's still a customs/border facility. It can just be inland now, away from the very expensive waterfront/costal property
    - dylan604 2y ago
      Would that inland facility still have a 100 mile jurisdiction boundary around it as well?
      - withinboredom 2y ago
        Yes, of course, with a grid of these facilities across the country.
    - DowagerDave 2y ago
      the reason that property is so expensive is because that's where the people are. There's no point in avoiding the biggest cost of air freight - getting goods to consumers who don't live near the limited freight hubs, if you land it in the middle of nowhere and now need to ship by rail or truck AND last mile delivery

d--b 2y ago

Nice! I guess one of the side effects is that air pirates are finally going to be a thing! Yay!

vaylian 2y ago
Is your crew hiring?

danielovichdk 2y ago

This reads as a technologist that has absolutely no clue about anything regarding the shipping or the logistics industry. I hope someone told these guys what the spent is on new (water) ships globally, because it points only in one direction.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
[flagged]
- QuantumGood 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html — Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity. Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

wejick 2y ago

There's oversimplification of how logistic is working. For example it's not gonna happening solving last mile delivery using this airship, not even mentioning the pickup.

jeffreyrogers 2y ago

In the render it shows the airship directly loading while hovering above a warehouse. This is currently not allowed under FAA regulations and would require a regulatory change. Not being able to do that makes a lot of the business model assumptions questionable.

6510 2y ago

It is a wonderful solution looking for a problem. I imagine there must be at least one landlocked country interested in the adventure. Someone long ago did a napkin calculation for me showing a hard vacuum airship made of reinforced concrete can work if you make it big enough. What are a few miles on the cosmic scale?

cbeach 2y ago

On a related note, I recommend this short presentation by Hacker News regular @simonw on the history of airships, including a look at the future of airships: "When Zeppelins Ruled The Earth" (6m47s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omobajJmyIU&ab_channel=SimonWillison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omobajJmyIU&ab_channel=Simon...

Log_out_ 2y ago

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter What has changed?

ttepasse 2y ago

The CargoLifter-Conendrum: If you're want to use your cargo airship for point to point transport, you'll need ballast at the target point so that the buoyancy of the airship doesn’t change too much. CargoLifter back then used water. Their prototype could lift an armoured vehicle and lower it – while maintaining buoyancy through pumping water with an high speed pump. They planned cargo services for very remote points. But if you’ll can transport water and a high speed pump and a mobile mooring tower to the very remote target, chances are, you’ll already can transport the cargo itself to that target. Today the CargoLifter hangar is the biggest indoor water park.

graybeardhacker 2y ago

I feel there were very good reasons that airships were abandoned. I don't know what those reasons were, but unless they enumerate the reasons and explain why they have now solved them, I will assume they are also going to fail. According to AI, there have been 5 historical attempts to make airships work before the modern resurgence: The early experimental phase (1780s–1850s), The pioneering era (1850s–1900s), The golden age (1900s–1930s), A post-Hindenburg decline (1930s), Cold War military uses (1940s–1970s), and A modern resurgence (1990s–present).

ninalanyon 2y ago

Cargo airships are like nuclear fusion, just a few years away for the last sixty years.

joelignaatius 2y ago

Consider a cargo airship operated remotely. The propulsion would be based on solar powered fans. Even if it took weeks to cross the ocean it would need essentially no cost to operate (or incredibly little) compared to operating a ship. If one blows up (hydrogen is volatile) you'd dump all the cargo on the ocean but you wouldn't be dumping tons of diesel fuel and the frame of the the ship is smaller than a ship. If you can do it without a crew you've essentially made shipping almost free except for loading and unloading at ports. AND you can put ports in areas that don't have access to inlets to the oceans or good shorelines. The most difficult part is the volatility of the lifting gas. You might have to load and unload cargo on platforms away from the coastline to prevent explosions. As for the hydrogen itself, the balloon can create it's own lifting gas by separating hydrogen from the atmosphere with an onboard chemical electric apparatus (presumably) if it ends up leaking hydrogen on its voyage. Lifting gas volatility has always been the biggest problem.

joelignaatius 2y ago

Serious question out of curiosity. Has anyone solved the lifting gas volatility problem (is the lighter the gas the more volatile)? That's the main deal breaker with all zeppelin proposals.

metalman 2y ago

cargo airships are not ever gona happen pure unobtainium we are domehow glosding over the imposibility of combining a transport ship with a built in mega crane,that has no fixed base or solid anchoring system all bulk cargo operations are dangerouse enough already cargo airships can not be engineered to work zeeeero

hbrav 2y ago
Cargo airships are not going to replace container ships, but they may well have their niche. One such use-case is prompt delivery of supplies that are urgently needed in high quantity in underdeveloped areas. For example, delivering some grammar to the parent comment.

rekabis 2y ago

> He hired a team of cracked ex-SpaceX engineers. A team of what??

adfm 2y ago

Sailing ships are happening.