On Wed, 24 Jun 2015, Onno Meyer wrote:
In a forest canopy, compact and agile grav flyers should beat huge airships.
And I'd rather not work with superstitions.
At TL6, a blimp is much cheaper than a rigid airship. A rigid airship must be
sealed, at $40/sf, while a gasbag is $0.005/sf. On the other hand, gasbags
are limited to good streamlining. That means slow, local use LTA craft are
much cheaper than fast, intercontinental ones.
750k gasbag, 25 stons, drag around 18k, two 1 MW props, HP gas engine, 50
mph, fuel for 20 h at 30 mph = 600 miles. I'll have to look at the numbers,
but it might be 10 people and 5 stons payload.
That's more power, less endurance, less speed than a historical blimp,
probably because of the streamlining rules.
I have not given much thought about specific design options, what would be
a general term for airships, blimps and other vehicles that are kinda
balloons with drives?
Sure grav vehicles are better for that application but as rule of thumb
they are better for any application.
So the question is, could blimps be more ecconomical if you factor in less
efficiency and more vehicle losses due to accidents and such, while
assuming some resources (like workers) are dirt cheap due to local social
and ecconomic conditions?
You also could substitute other social, ecconomic or eccologic reason
for superstitions. Like IIRC Canada allows whale hunting with some
specific technologically outdated ways, because it is traditional
for some native tribes, while whale hunting using state of the art
technology is forbidden. So there are real world precedences. Some of
theese also give you an additional vehicle, the grav vehicle, that looks
like a blimp, and with that an adventure hook.
Johannes
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