I'm an airship fan, so I'll take the pro-lighter-than-air side of the argument. Honestly, I don't think I can prove than airships can be commercially successful, but I can provide some hand-waving for folks that want airships in their campaigns.
There are currently two serious programs for heavy-lift airships, currently focussed on supplying mining operations, particularly in the Canadian Arctic. It's very expensive to build roads or runways for heavy-lift aircraft in the Arctic, so all the supplies for mines need to be shipped in the few months that the tundra is frozen hard enough for heavy trucks. These projects aren't much help to Onno, probably. They are for "hybrid" airships. A hybrid airship has its gasbag built in the form of an ovoid lifting body. The lifting gas has enough static lift to cancel the weight of the structure, allowing all the dynamic lift to be devoted to cargo. Both of the current projects have a landing pad or pads built like hovercraft skirts. On water or mud, the landing pads have air pushed into them so act as hovercraft. On solid ground the fans are reversed to suck the craft firmly into the ground, so they don't need mooring masts. By coincidence there's an article in the Telegraph today: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/hybrid-airships-could-bring-back-193532187.html On weather, airships are vulnerable to low-altitude weather, but so are tl6 aircraft. From the examples of the German rigid airships and the US Navy blimp program, you need to be willing to lose about half-a-dozen aircraft to weather before you get enough flight-time training to deal with weather. And there are different kinds of weather. The winter of 1957-1958 in northeastern North America had frequent ground fogs, low ceilings, and icy runways that frequently grounded all military and commercial airplane. But cold, still air is great for lighter-than-air, and the US Navy never missed a blimp patrol during that winter. You need large sheds for construction and maintenance, but for normal operations the US Navy and the British airship program kept ships on the mast for weeks or months. On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Johannes wrote: > >> >> Soft ground (snow, mud ect) might not only make runways difficult to >> maintain, but also make emergancy landings for air ships more viable? >> > > There was a quote that airships don't get lots in storms all that often > because few airshipmen are silly enough to fly through a storm. A slight > exaggeration, but it would get even more true with GPS and weather sats. > > Am i correct that with air ships it's easier to deliver or pick up cargo >> or (competent) passangers without landing? >> > > I don't think so. Loading while the airship hovers requires a drop of > ballast, unloading required either taking on ballast or valving lift gas. > > Regards, > Onno > > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l > _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
