The return of the blimp: First passanger blimps since 1937 may take off in 2025

[really]

The likely candidates in say Europe would be either too far apart like say Dublin to England, or already well served by rail like London to Paris.
Greek Islands?
Corsica, Sardina?
Indonesian or Philippines?

 

[amadeus]

I think these blimp people are full of hot air.

Am I really to believe a bunch of gassy bubbles are a more efficient way of transporting people than an electric train or a ferry?

 

[Broken_Erika]

Blimps will probably make for good cruises.

 

[Zardnaar]

Fuel will likely get more expensive in the future and it is cleaner.

It's not that fast though is the real problem.

 

[GinandTonic]

The other problem I see is that they will need to be relatively close to a hanger large enough for them in case of a storm.

 

[Spidernova]

Can i finally live out my air pirate dreams now?

 

[Zkribbler]

I think these blimp people are full of hot air.

Am I really to believe a bunch of gassy bubbles are a more efficient way of transporting people than an electric train or a ferry?

Electric trains require land. Ferries require water and can't match airships in speed. Airships excel in crossing over both land and sea.

The other problem I see is that they will need to be relatively close to a hanger large enough for them in case of a storm.

Germany seemed to have handled that problem pre-WWII. And I've not heard of Goodyear blimps having sheltering problems.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Compared to airplanes, blimps have two actual advantages: they're more fuel-efficient and they can stop in mid-air.
Someone will surely do the maths and see if it's worth it, but at the very least they could cover a niche similar to historic steam trains.

Most failure mods of blimps are pretty graceful, whereas an airplane will fall out of the sky at high speed for lots of failure modes a blimp will just slowly descend.

 

[Samez]

To my knowledge one of the most common failure modes for airships was breaking apart in bad weather (at least If you exclude stuff like burning/exploding). As they are usually rather slow, circumnavigating storms can be difficult compared to planes. Also If there are winds close to the ground landing can be impossible as they have a huge surface area compared to their weight.
As it was mentioned before: there was a freight airship concept in Germany in the 2000s called CargoLifter which died with the .com bubble.
The hangar of the planned airship is quite a technological marvel and has been converted to a tropical theme park.

Spoiler :

 

[Birdjaguar]

I hope it is popular.

 

[Zelig]

The capacity of a subway is not analogous to the capacity of the airport, but to the capacity of all roads leading to the airport (the latter usually include subways).

The world's busiest airport has could serve its entirely daily passenger load in under 10 hours of a pretty average subway line - given that a subway can have notably more capacity than this, and an airport spreads passenger fairly evenly over like 16 hours, I'd expect the world's busiest airport to comprise less than half of the passengers on a subway line to it, even if there were no roads to the airport.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It is OK until you find a somewhat strong wind and begin flying backwards. Also, hellium is only found in some natural gas fields (mostly in USA) and it is not that abundant nor cheap. You can also use hydrogen but pretty bad things can happen then.

There was a number of reasons for people to chose airplanes instead as soon as they became available. So I see this as a recreative thing, not as a substitute for jetliners in any environmentally meaningful way.

This might spur development of mining helium on the Sun.

Or, more likely, Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter's atmosphere is 10% helium and Saturn's is 6%. It doesn't sound like much, but those are very large planets.

Of course they'd need to make sure there isn't any life there...

Yeah, blimp travel on Earth could really jumpstart more practical reasons for the space program!

Electric trains require land. Ferries require water and can't match airships in speed. Airships excel in crossing over both land and sea.

Let's see... if something goes wrong, would I rather drown or fall out of the sky?

Have they thought of what birds might have to say about these things?

 

[Sarin]

This might spur development of mining helium on the Sun.

Or, more likely, Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter's atmosphere is 10% helium and Saturn's is 6%. It doesn't sound like much, but those are very large planets.

Of course they'd need to make sure there isn't any life there...

Yeah, blimp travel on Earth could really jumpstart more practical reasons for the space program!

By the time we could mine it, we should have working fusion reactors so I'm thinking...

How radioactive is helium produced by deuterium/tritium fusion? Any physicist here?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

This might spur development of mining helium on the Sun.

Or, more likely, Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter's atmosphere is 10% helium and Saturn's is 6%. It doesn't sound like much, but those are very large planets.

Of course they'd need to make sure there isn't any life there...

Yeah, blimp travel on Earth could really jumpstart more practical reasons for the space program!

Of course helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, but it's so light that in "small" planets such as Earth it floats over all other liquid and gases as oxygen and nitrogen and finally scape to space. Being a noble gas, it doesn't form any chemical compound either as hydrogen does, so under common conditions in nature it can only be found in pure helium gas form, which means, along with its lightness, that there is not any "original" helium in this planet, the only one remaining is a byproduct of uranium radioactive decay accumulated under a few zones where earth crust is hermetic enough to keep it underground, so a bunch of natural gas deposits.

Anyway, recently a huge not natural gas related helium reservoir was found in Tanzania, so it seems there is more than we thought firstly. Enough to build a few thousand airships, if anyone has a real interest in doing such thing...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Of course helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, but it's so light that in "small" planets such as Earth it floats over all other liquid and gases as oxygen and nitrogen and finally scape to space. Being a noble gas, it doesn't form any chemical compound either as hydrogen does, so under common conditions in nature it can only be found in pure helium gas form, which means, along with its lightness, that there is not any "original" helium in this planet, the only one remaining is a byproduct of uranium radioactive decay accumulated under a few zones where earth crust is hermetic enough to keep it underground, so a bunch of natural gas deposits.

Anyway, recently a huge not natural gas related helium reservoir was found in Tanzania, so it seems there is more than we thought firstly. Enough to build a few thousand airships, if anyone has a real interest in doing such thing...

I hope people realize I was being facetious, at least about mining helium on the Sun. There are people who would in all sincerity say it would be doable if they went at night.

There are other people who would claim that if we took helium from the Sun, it would blow up and kill us all.

Well, the Sun does need helium to stay healthy, but (supposing we found a method of extracting it that was non-lethal to whoever did it), the Sun is huge. I don't think the amount we would need for operating blimps to carry tourists around, or politicians on a junket, would be that much that the Sun would miss it.

 

[Michkov]

By the time we could mine it, we should have working fusion reactors so I'm thinking...

How radioactive is helium produced by deuterium/tritium fusion? Any physicist here?

The He4 itself is not radioactive, you get neutrons out of the D/T reaction that may cause some problems with activation of the surround matter, but per se non of the products of the reaction itself are radioactive.

 

[Ajidica]

Return of the blimp?
I see your mom has hit the dating circuit again.

I'll show myself out.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

I wish these could be real, but every time a company comes out touting these, it just never becomes reality

 

[Samson]

Do they say what gas they use? I guess helium, but there is not enough of that to make this a significant contribution to travel. Hydrogen does not have that problem, but has another minor downside.

 

[Gelion]

You mean if 2025 happens?