The Flying Luxury Hotel

[lowlifecat]

Tomorrow's cruise ship will sail through the air, not the water

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/whatsnew/18ac893302839010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html?s_prop18=whatsnew

<quote>This two-football-fields-long concept airship is the brainchild of Igor Pasternak, whose privately-funded California firm, Worldwide Aeros Corporation, is in the early stages of developing a prototype and expects to have one completed by 2010. Pasternak says several cruise ship companies have expressed interest in the project, and for good reason: The craft would have a range of several thousand miles and, with an estimated top speed of 174 mph, could traverse the continental U.S. in about 18 hours. During the flight, passengers would peer at national landmarks just 8,000 feet below or, if they weren't captivated by the view, the cavernous interior would easily accommodate such amenities as luxury staterooms, restaurants, even a casino.</quote>

d'ya think they'd let cats abord?

[Mehen]

wonder how much they could charge for ad space on the bottom of that thing

[Mehen]

or final fantasy

[Brian Ellis]

Hmm... the word airship immediately reminds me about Hindenburg.

No resemblance between a hydrogen-filled Zeppelin and a modern helium-filled dirigible. Probably safer than a 747. How many people have died in the Goodyear and other dirigibles?

[KvHagedorn]

Let's see.. how many rigid airships have crashed other than the Hindenburg? Three that the US Navy had all crashed.. with helium as lifting agent. The only one that didn't was the Zeppelin-built Los Angeles. Then there was the R-101, which crashed because of poor construction and unwise operation. In fact, inexperienced operators and poor skills at dealing with weather have proven far more dangerous than having hydrogen as a lifting agent. The likely possibility that the Hindenburg was a deliberate sabotage gives more weight to the idea that a hydrogen filled rigid was relatively safe under normal conditions when normal precautions were taken.

[VJ]

There was a documentary on National Geographic on the Hindenburg crash.

According to the documentary: one of the bosses of the company was with the pilot. He told to pilot to speed up things; because of this they made a sudden manouvre causing one of the cables connected to the rudder to snap, this made a hole in one of the hydrogen baloons.
The boss also ordered the pilot to land, despite stormy weather (which is against all airship recommendations): due to the stormy weather, both the frame as the outer hull are electrically charged (static electricity, in stormy weather), but with the same charge.

As soon as the anchor cable touched the ground, the metal frame discharged rapidely. The cloth hull cannot discharge as fast, causing a big difference in charge. This difference caused sparks between the hull and the frame which ignited the hydrogen.

Dunno 'bout you, but I find this a very plausible explanation...


Jörg

[GNEP]

I thought that there was a bit of a shortage of helium for this sort of project, which is why we don't see more of them - it's too expensive to fill them.

I'm still waiting for the material that has the right properties to make partial-vacuum-filled dirigibles possible

[VJ]

I wonder... if they could make Aerogel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel ), which is 99% air with helium in stead...


Jörg

[Brian Ellis]

I understood there was a design fault on the Hindenburg. The increased air pressure on the descent cause the ballonets to compress slightly, causing the hydrogen to be vented. The vent was at the rear, close to the mooring fixture. As the craft approached the mooring mast, there was an electrostatic discharge from the aluminium skeleton which ignited the hydrogen being vented which, in turn, ignited the envelope. The disaster was caused by the envelope, made from highly inflammable cellulose-doped cotton, catching fire and falling over the nacelles and over the people underneath. The hydrogen just burnt quietly in an almost instantaeous fireball - there was no explosion.

See http://www.cypenv.org/Files/Hydrogen%20myths.htm

[Umfriend]

There will be plenty of Helium once we get nuclear fusion economically viable I guess.