Talk:Airship

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Former good articleAirship was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 24, 2005Good article nomineeListed
May 15, 2009Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

The Montgolfier Brothers?[edit]

Why no mention of the Montgolfier brothers? Or does that article need revision? --NealMcB (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An "airship" according to Webster's has steering and propulsion. The Montgolfier balloons had neither? (I.e., the Montgolfier Wiki article is incorrect calling them airships.) Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 11:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nick Talbot's Kite-shaped airships[edit]

Should this be mentioned/referenced somewhere?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248159/Aircruise-touted-scenic-new-millennium-luxury-ships-floating-U-S-37-hours.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyberWasteland (talk • contribs) 08:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Локомоскай[edit]

I just came across this Russian company that builds lens-shaped heavy-lift ships based on a 1980s Aviastar design, the "thermoplane": LocomoSky, article & video, press release. I wonder why there is nothing on Wikipedia if the design is so old. It sure looks interesting.--87.162.50.191 (talk) 20:22, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We need reliable sources showing it's real. Until then it's "pie in the sky". Crum375 (talk) 21:02, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Or "vaporware". – .Raven  .talk 19:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Aerodrome or Airport?[edit]

I'm pretty sure that 'Aerodrome' is the term that was mostly used for facilities that house and service Airships. --Arima (talk) 23:25, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aerodrome is an alternative term for airfield, in common use in Britain. For example, see Dunsfold Aerodrome, until recently a British Aerospace flight test center, and Denham Aerodrome, a local airport. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.163.218.36 (talk) 01:33, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aerodrome is a term used for a place used to store aircrafts. Aerodromes do not operate like airports. They are much like a railyard where trains are kept when not in use. Shreyansh Jain0101 (talk) 06:34, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aerodrome is an archaic term, but it means the same thing (at least to the extent where we can't assume any difference just from the name). They're not "storage yards". Andy Dingley (talk) 11:15, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Military use[edit]

June 14, 2010 has been relased news that Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $517 million agreement to develop up to three Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) systems for the U.S. Army. A new hybrid airship weapons system, just larger than the length of a football field, will take to the skies in just 18 months to provide an unblinking, persistent eye for more than three weeks at a time to aid U.S. Army troops in Afghanistan, according to Northrop Grumman Corporation.

WHY above text have been taken away from the article? What kind of "poor writing". If it is POOR they you are suppose to IMPROVE IT not DELETE IT!!! BEST REGARDS TIMO FROM FINLAND. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.153.141.241 (talk) 07:01, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

( This article is suppose to be about WW1 airships, Right??) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.36.16.125 (talk) 23:34, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You do not see the advertisement aspect and the poor writing? The text you added is a straight text dump taken from Northrop Grumman press releases like this one, using peacock phrases such as "unblinking, persistent eye" to describe the venture. The text you added falls under Wikipedia:Copyright violations. Rewrite the bit for encyclopedia style. Binksternet (talk) 12:53, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose the addition altogether. It's not directly related to article that is an oviview of the subject. The military use of airships is not new, even in recent times. Further, it probably violates WP:NOTNEWS. - BilCat (talk) 13:05, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
as opposed to "In November 2006, the US Army bought an A380+ airship from American Blimp Corporation through a Systems level contract with Northrop Grumman and Booz Allen Hamilton." do you actually read the article, or do you merely troll the new adds and abuse the editors ? rewrite or tag; don't delete. Accotink2 talk 13:28, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Susceptibility to lightning[edit]

The fact that an Airship is made out of composite materials doesn't make it less susceptible to lightning. A metal airship flying through the air would gain charges at one end and lose them at the other. Charges on plastic, or other similar non conductive materials would accumulate where they form.Blakut (talk) 15:49, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Conductive coating is one way to correct for this; consider it a "layer" of the composite. – .Raven  .talk 19:19, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, making an airship out of composite materials seems likely to make it more susceptible to lightning. Composite materials were implicated in the crash of a helicopter over the North Sea a few years back, because its less conductive body did not channel the lightning safely away from the tail rotor quickly enough, causing the rotor catastrophic damage. A similar poorly-conductive skin on the scale of an airship could lead not only to similar problems, but also might create spectacular and possibly catastrophic arcs between different parts of the airship upon mooring.

Ericthefred (talk) 15:40, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An airship is no more or less susceptible to danger from lightning than airplanes. There are factors which affect both. The lack of sufficient grounding of structure or systems, the presence of inflammable gases.

Airships are more susceptible to gust and turbulence than aircraft due to their size. When an airship is operated in weather conditions which threaten it's structural integrity it is possible that lightning will cause an explosion of inflammable gases produced by either flying above pressure height (thus venting gas) or structural failure.

Airships also can be susceptible to explosion when as in the case of the Diximunde (French name for the L-72) when the aircraft is operated with dangerously 'ripe' that is to say gas cells which contain dangerous levels of air contamination. Mark Lincoln (talk) 02:37, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Predictions and press releases[edit]

I am with 84user in questioning the many predictions and press releases about future airships. Each one should be able to establish its notability, not just its existence, or the existence of a design or patent. The proposal must have been the subject of verifiable comment in reliable mainstream sources. This does not mean the company's own website or the publishing of a bit which parrots the company's public relations release. Others in the industry must comment on it. Binksternet (talk) 21:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Crum375 (talk) 02:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Undeveloped Ideas[edit]

"Present-Day research: Proposed designs and applications - Undeveloped Ideas" contains some topics of questionable quality, notability, and placement:
1) Vacuum airship is not cited as being contemporary research, though seemingly notable.
2) Hybrid airship is both notable and currently under development, but could use some clarification.
3) Aeroscraft is clear, notable, and currently under development.
4) Cruise ship is apparently original work and either needs either immediate citation or deletion. Fixblor (talk) 15:30, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the three sections "Modern use", "Recent developments" and "Present-day research" should be merged and updated. Information (such as heavy lifting) appearing in two sections might be have better readability if combined. I think poorly cited bits should either be thrown out or reinforced with better cites. Binksternet (talk) 15:56, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "Undeveloped ideas", I deleted the section because of its notability issues, and because of two year old fact tags that went unanswered. The Aeroscraft paragraph concluded that it was not an airship, so why was it present? Terzi's 1670s vacuum airship should have been introduced in the history section. In this reversion, you restored my deletions. I stand by my deletions as helpful to the article. Binksternet (talk) 16:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the advice, I'll have this section cleared up (to the best of my ability) by this time tomorrow. Fixblor (talk) 23:59, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hybrid Airships? How much of the worst of two world can you tolerate?Mark Lincoln (talk) 02:39, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A proposed merger of two articles[edit]

I think that the articles on airship and zeppelin need to be merged with each other, and the the remainin article have redirects from both titles airahip and zeppelin. Just look at the two articles, and you will see that the overlap to a huge degree. There are two ways of explaining this:
A. About 75% of all airships have been zeppelins (German-made and used, during the First Reich (the German Empire) and the Third Reich, or B. The word zeppelin became a generic term for an airship no matter what country built or flew them. From this point of view, even the United States and the United Kingdom have flown zeppelins (look up the U.S. Navy's zeppelins named the Akron, the Macon, and the Los Angeles. 98.67.161.233 (talk) 22:28, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, as there is a huge amount of source material solely devoted to the Zeppelin. Binksternet (talk) 22:45, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Rigid and Non-Rigid airships have sufficiently diverse natures from an engineering sense as to make putting them in the same article is questionable.

The Semi-Rigid embodies the worst of both.

That the editors of Wikipedia have such limited technical and historical competence that they insist upon hammering round pegs into square holes is something that contributors have no ability to influence.

Wikipedia will eventually atrophy because a few have positioned themselves as the absolute arbiters of reality based largely upon their personal relationships and their common ignorance.Mark Lincoln (talk) 01:47, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

UFOs[edit]

Is it worth mentioning somewhere in this article that airships are frequently reported as Unidentified Flying Object sightings due to their rarity and the unusual ability to silently hover and manouver in the air ? --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 02:22, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I actually had this experience in 1965. My mother called me to come and see the UFO. It took about 1/10 of a second for me to realize it was N2A coming head on. The Goodyear blimp proceeded the length of Key Biscayne and then turned to head back to it's base at Watson Island.

There are not, or have been, since 1947 to account for any significant number of 'UFO sightings."Mark Lincoln (talk) 02:42, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Final Fantasy[edit]

Hey guys I think there should be a section about the Final Fantasy series of videogames. I wasn't born yet when the first one came out but I'm pretty sure it had the first airship and thus became the inspiration for the first real airships. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.49.68.151 (talk) 05:32, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although airships are no longer used for passenger transport[edit]

Is not sightseeing a kind of transport?--MathFacts (talk) 01:25, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it can be worded differently... I understand the intent to be that airships no longer operate as airliners taking passengers from point A to point B for pay. Sightseeing where the passengers are picked up and dropped off at the same location is not transport. Binksternet (talk) 04:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Propulsion methods[edit]

Propulsion methods are not described. Also, I think it would be best to also detail the mantaray & jellyfish propulsion method by Festo (see http://www.festo.com/inetdomino/coorp_sites/en/c79c5d07d5805095c12572b9006f04f5.htm ) 91.182.168.67 (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

LTA gas does not make airship stay aloft[edit]

File:Air layers.png
Air layers image; more LTA gas is required for lower layers

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.182.236.7 (talk) 11:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the article we read: "Unlike aerodynamic aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, which produce lift by moving a wing through the air, aerostatic aircraft, such as airships and hot air balloons, stay aloft by filling a large cavity with a lifting gas." --> Airships do not stay aloft, they are neutrally buoyant, meaning they skim the surface but do not hover. Instead, the propellers themselves create the thrust required to hover. Else, the airship would go into a continuous climb, since the air is pressured most at ground level (thus right above the ground, more LTA gas is required than at air layers above it)

Add in article; its incomplete without it. 91.182.236.7 (talk) 11:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your statement is wrong on all points. Airships are neutrally buoyant, meaning there is no force acting on them to cause them to gain or lose altitude. They can hover just fine without the propellers (and routinely do so when they need to be quiet, or have suffered engine failure), and can change altitude by dropping ballast or venting lifting gas. The volume of lifting gas needed does change with altitude, with a greater volume of gas needed at higher altitudes: this makes a neutrally-buoyant airship stable with respect to altitude. --Carnildo (talk) 21:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm no airship expert, and that is partly why I made the image: the theory of requiring less lifting gas at higher altitudes weirdly enough seems to make more sense to me (given that the higher up, the further from the earth, the less gravitational force, the less air pressure); and I heard from someone (more) experienced in airship design that airships either hug the ground or ascend to a very high altitude. He also explained that thus neutral buoyancy isn't a feature of (most?) airships; it may be so however that this depends on airship to airship. I know that atleast small airships can only hover using the propellers, the LTA gas simply reduces the weight of the aircraft. I agree though that my image is a bit oversimplified, and it would have been better made with a gradient color (rather then other colors "per layer"). You can thus do with the image as you like, but I do think it makes things more understandable, definitly so with the calculation of m³ of LTA-gas for lift/neutral buoyancy, which in an airship has narrow margins. The whole is part of a research at http://www.appropedia.org/AT_CAD_Team/AT_airship

91.182.191.83 (talk) 12:49, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, what a concept! I guess you have never read Hugo Eckener's "Brief Instructions and practical hints for piloting Zeppelin Airships for the flight personnel of the "DELAG." It is the pilot's manual for the LZ-120 and 121. Another sound discussion of the subject is given in Harold Dick's 'The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships." See "Appendix C" "Crew Manual of the German Zeppelin Reederi."

There's only a limited amount of ballast to jettison (to climb) and lifting gas to release (to descend), so some early airships used elevator controls to move within the range permitted by their (largely neutral) buoyancy for a given altitude. So it was and perhaps still is always a compromise, depending on conditions. --TraceyR (talk) 16:48, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are so many misconceptions in your (91.182.191.83) statement that I don't know where to start.
Helium airships are never neutrally buoyant: because helium is so expensive, venting it is only done in an emergency, and so for financial reasons they fly "heavy" (ie. not enough lifting gas to get off the ground) to ensure that they can return to the ground without venting.
Hydrogen airships often flew heavy as well: as TraceyR notes, ballast is a limited resource, and back when hydrogen was the lifting gas of choice, it could not be replenished in flight. When maximizing range or duration aloft is important, flying heavy and using aerodynamic lift to make up the difference is a way to conserve both.
The few hot-air airships in the world fly neutrally buoyant: hot air is easy to replenish in-flight, and the amount of lift generated per volume of air can easily be adjusted.
The change in gravity with altitude is so small that it can be ignored.
The change in pressure with altitude means that the higher you go, the less effective your lifting gas is. At sea level, a thousand cubic feet of hydrogen can lift 72 pounds; at 18000 feet altitude, a thousand cubic feet can only lift 36 pounds.
Airships either fly low to maximize the cargo load they can carry with a given amount of lifting gas, or fly high to avoid anti-aircraft guns.
As for the Appropedia project, it's one of the most impressive collections of wrong information I've ever seen. (Quick hint: airship crews have no need for parachutes.) --Carnildo (talk) 21:14, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Carnildo for saving me a whole lot of typing!
If anyone is seriously interested in the problems of airships, then a very good read is Len Deighton's book Airshipwreck (Yes, Len Deighton the spy novelist - he also wrote non-fiction on aircraft). This explains something of how they work, a lot on how they can fail to work, and lists the vast numbers of airship crashes. It's a good argument not to fly on one! It's particularly good on the problems of the vent valves and how to crash into the ground by flying too high. A large number of crashes were caused by excess height, the automatic vent valves opening to release excess hydrogen, then the airship now having insufficient buoyancy to stay aloft and crashing when it returns to a lower altitude in a now uncontrollable state. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:55, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I found that ballonnets are generally used by airships to control the elevation. Weirdly, it's not really mentioned as such in this article, and no English article on it exists neither, a Dutch one does (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballonnet) Basically, ballonnets are 2 balloons filled with air inside the LTA-gas balloon. Additional air can be added or removed; this compressed or decompresses the LTA gas in the main balloon, and depending on the compression level, the airship increases/decreases altitude.

91.182.40.154 (talk) 15:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ballonets (one "n") are used to adjust trim and pressure, not lift or altitude. --Carnildo (talk) 01:30, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ballonet control two different things. First they control the fore-aft center of lift. Second they control the pressure inside the envelope (and thus the shape/integrity of the blimp).

Lifting Gas does not make airships stay aloft? Just try and fly one without any gas in it.Mark Lincoln (talk) 02:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but this could be a technical (though not completely trivial) point - the lifting gas could be thought of as displacing air from the 'fuselage' of an airship, thus lowering its weight, to the point at which the atmospheric pressure gradient (the physical manifestation of the atmosphere which the craft displaces) is sufficient to fully offset the weight. The point being that it's the lack of weight which is important, not the presence/'power' of the lifting gas. This is important in so far as it means that the 'best lifting medium' is a vacuum, and/but even though a vacuum is infinitely lighter than hydrogen, and hydrogen is 'twice as light' as helium, all 3 are similarly effective, because the critical metric is the difference in density between the lifting medium and the atmosphere, and it's the atmosphere which makes the airship stay aloft. This is important in understanding the physics involved, and, for instance why more gas is needed at high altitude - higher altitude, 'less atmosphere,' less buoyancy. Just a thought. 80.229.172.13 (talk) 01:20, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps even better: higher altitude, less atmosphere density, less buoyancy – thus the need for even more 'lifting gas' which has still less density than that atmosphere, to lower the average density of the entire airship. Things less dense than the surrounding medium float; denser things sink. (This is also why overloading water-ships is dangerous.) – .Raven  .talk 19:10, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Airships Today[edit]

J4Mii (talk) 00:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC) Do people still use airships as a form of transportation? Why is the airplane better? Why were there so many accidents? If there were so many accidents with hydrogen, then why couldn't helium have been made more available? Can the airship be Mede to go any faster? And finally, can someone answer my questions? J4Mii (talk) 00:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Airships only have an advantage in that it is unnecessary to expend fuel to produce lift.

Airplanes are capable of much faster flight, less susceptible to weather and require far fewer persons for landing and ground handling. Airplanes may operate at much higher altitudes with far less compromise of load carrying ability and structural strength.

Airships suffered accidents due to several reasons. First the number of airships was small compared to aircraft and thus the rate at which experience and development could be achieved was much lower and slower. Airships were particularly affected by weather in that even low winds made ground handling difficult and their low airspeed magnified the effects of winds. Last the high unit cost, limited crew experience, and fragmented nature of development programs (German, Italian, British, American and Russian) resulted in repeated learning curves with only one approaching a satisfactory level.

Helium is a very limited resource on this planet. No attempt has yet been made to stick a hose into the sun and extract helium from the source which contains well over 99% of the element in this solar system.

The problem of airspeed in airships is a function of the Drag Equation. That is FsubD, the force of drag, is a function of 1/2 of the mass density of air (necessarily high due to low altitude) times the velocity of the object to the air squared, times the Coefficient of Drag of the object, times the Area of the object.

Needless Air Density is relatively unimportant, though high due to the need to avoid expending all lift in ballast to achieve high altitude. Drag goes up as a SQUARE of the velocity and as a direct function of the Area.

Which is to say no matter how fine the Coefficient of Drag of the design, an airship will need an astounding increase in thrust to achieve a small increase in speed.

The airship had an advantage only until the power-to-weight ratio of engines improved enough to make it possible for aircraft to fly much faster.

From that point on the advantage of the airship declined. making it useless in war where aircraft were available by 1916, and for long distance flight by 1945.

Does this help?Mark Lincoln (talk) 02:13, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

> "Do people still use airships as a form of transportation?" – The Goodyear Blimp (now perhaps more accurately Zeppelin) pilots sure do! – .Raven  .talk 18:59, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing....[edit]

J4Mii (talk) 00:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC) There should be a section showing the interior design of airships. And where does the article describe the engine? What about the different airlines, if there were any? J4Mii (talk) 00:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning of Aerostat[edit]

I question the statement, "The narrower and more technical meaning of aerostat refers only to tethered or moored balloons: here, airships are distinct from aerostats." This distinction is less technical rather than more technical, since it arises from a misunderstanding of stat meaning stationary, i.e. moored. It actually refers to the lift for the craft being aerostatic, as opposed to aerodynamic. I would suggest changing this to say, "A narrower meaning of aerostat refers only to..." and then go on to explain the cause of the confusion. For further information, see the wikipedia article for Aerostat. Ericthefred (talk) 15:58, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree..As you say the second usage is less technical rather than more technical, and is dependant on a misunderstanding of the word's etymology. The OED cites for usage are all non-specialist journalistic sources, the first being the Christian Science Monitor, so the genesis of ths usage is merely some hack using a long fancy word when she/ he coud have used two simple ones (ie tethered balloon). But doesn't the whole clarification simply belong in the aerostat article? Otherwise it's just linking round in ever decreasing circles, ad we all know where 'that ends. It certainly adds nothing to one's knowledge of dirigibles.TheLongTone (talk) 07:54, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strange sentence structure in introduction[edit]

Is it just my limited knowledge of English, or does the sentence structure in the introduction sound really strange, especially towards the end? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Intrr (talk • contribs) 20:21, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This?

Unlike aerodynamic aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, which produce lift by moving a wing through the air, aerostatic aircraft, and unlike hot air balloons which stay aloft by filling a large cavity with a lifting gas.

Yeah, it looks like someone did a "I'll just add an '...and' clause" edit and left that "aerostatic aircraft" hanging. I'm not quite confident enough about the dirigible/hot-air-ballon distinction to know how to fix it, however.—86.9.3.250 (talk) 21:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Units of measurement[edit]

There's a reference to the Hindenburg being ' more than five times as long as the height of the Statue of Liberty without the pedestal'. Apart from being a really clunky sentence, the Statue is not a standard unit of measurement unless you are american. Even if you are american, it's a measurement of height, so probably the correct unit of length would be the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever. Here in the UK we use the ot the Nelson's Column as standard units of imprecise large sizes for height and the football pitch as a unit of length, but I don't think the use of such terms really appropriate. You might as well say 'as big as five big things'.TheLongTone (talk) 07:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and I have added a comparision diagram and made a tentative reword. -84user (talk) 17:16, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nice work. btw I'm a bit shocked that whichever edit that produced a total banjaxing of the opening para had gone so long uncorrected. This is an excellent article, many people on reading that sentence (all you'd get in the result page of a google search, btw) would assume the rest of the article was equally incomprehensible & go elsewhere.TheLongTone (talk) 09:35, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Envelope[edit]

The summary for this edit asks whether "envelope" should be linked. I think it should, and there used to be an entry in Envelope (disambiguation), but it was removed with the comment "rm unambiguous entries and ones with no article". I guess what is needed is a section somewhere that describes the various constructions of such envelopes. Here is what my summary used to say, if anyone can improve it and find it a home:

"The structural outer covering of an aerostat (such as a blimp, airship, gas balloon or hot air balloon) that holds buoyant gas[1][2]"

  1. ^ The Chambers Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. 2000 [1998]. p. 541. ISBN 0-550-14005-0. the gas-bag of a balloon or airship
  2. ^ The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. 1976 [1975]. p. 281. fabric enclosing gas-bags of airship

-84user (talk) 17:16, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Safety[edit]

This whole section is very similar to http://www.worldskycat.com/skycat/safety.html The information about resistance to small arms and mortar fire is out of place. This is not an issue for civilian airships and I doubt that the articles about cars, bicycles or aeroplanes mention what happens when they are fired at :) Furthermore, I think the section should at least mention some of the safety issues and causes of previous accidents, such as vulnerability to bad weather, turbulence and strong winds. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.186.128.215 (talk) 18:15, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bartolomeu de Gusmão[edit]

Where is a citation about the inventor priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão? He is best known as inventor of baloon, or aerostat, called by him of Passarola, which flew for the first time on october, the 03 of 1709. His invention was witnessed by Michelangelo Conti, who become Pope in 1721. His achievement was made much before of any other person mentioned in the part of History of that article. Please, what´s happened? It needs a correction. 201.43.152.130 (talk) 21:12, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was more of a fantasy than a practical airship design. There was no lifting agent (gas or hot air) and no propulsion apart from some magnets which were supposed to pull it forward in some mystical way that I don't really understand. According to our Bartolomeu de Gusmão article, he expected that a man standing in the gondola would be able to blow it into the sky using a pair of bellows. Absolutely barking mad, but quite funny. Sadly, he contributed nothing at all to the development of the airship; sorry to disappoint you. Alansplodge (talk) 22:19, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Material for a Footnote?[edit]

The following sentence is parked in the middle of the article:

"For information about the legacy of the USS Shenandoah and its demise over rural Ohio, see Aaron J. Keirns' book America's Forgotten Airship Disaster: The Crash of the USS Shenandoah."

It seems more appropriate as a footnote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.13.241.174 (talk) 19:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC) Agreed, its wikilinkable, will do.TheLongTone (talk) 20:36, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

rise of fuel-consumption with speed in an airship?[edit]

I would be very grateful indeed if you could provide a curve that shows the (probably exponential?) rise of necessary thrust respectively fuel-consumption, if you increase the speed above your "practical limit" of "(130–160 km/h)" to up to 650 km/h??!! this curve would also be interesting below that vague limit! and it would be very good if this curve considered the thrust/PAYload-ratio (because with an airship you have to carry a much lighter structure, right?) thanx in advance! these data are crucial to the developement of a new idea... --HilmarHansWerner (talk) 18:16, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Flying boats in fiction[edit]

This article doesn't see to have any info on the fictional "flying boat" type airships which seem to be quite common in fiction of the fantasy and steampunk genres (such as the ones in many Final Fantasy, Mario and Warcraft games, Spelljammer, Girl Genius, Stardust and The Vision of Escaflowne). IMO we should add either a section or a seperate article about fictional varieties of airship (such as "airships in fiction" or "airship (fictional boat)"). -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:01, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Take it to airships in fiction or similar. Airship is a big, top-level article that has to cover an enormous range within one article. There's no room for fancruft where airships are relevant to the fiction, but the fiction has no commutative relevance to airships. However there is an awful lot of this – there's enough to support a stand-alone article. Sourcing is a problem for doing such things robustly, but there's enough serious meta-comment in the steampunk style-guide books these days to pass WP:RS. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:46, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Golden age[edit]

This section heading should surely be changed to early days or similar... did airships have a golden age?TheLongTone (talk) 06:41, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Updated External Link[edit]

I have updated the external link to the ACS National Historic Chemical Landmarks resource. I am the program coordinator of the ACS-NHCL program.KLindblom (talk) 23:19, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Categorising airship manufacturer articles[edit]

I have started a discussion on Airship categories. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:23, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GravityPlane[edit]

The following was added to the airship article lead but deleted by another editor. I think it was out of place there, but it appears to be genuine and I think with a little work something usable might come out of it.

Another concept known as the "gravityplane" being of the rigid type of airship with gas bags or cells within the rigid shell has been proposed for airship propulsion that uses the forces of gravity acceleration to fly in the same manner as a glider that moves forward and downward by the gravitational pull of the earth and uses buoyancy whereby the airship is lighter-than-air and moves upward due to aerostatic lift in an alternating back-and-forth cycle to create a sine wave flight pattern entirely powered by the gravitation pull of the earth that is referred to as fuel-less flight. Buoyancy is caused by the greater density and resultant greater gravitational pull of air than that of the lower density airship that has less gravitational pull whereby the heavier air flows underneath the airship and effectively pushes it upward. Buoyancy is the mirror image of gravity acceleration with one pulling downward and the other lifting upward, which are both a function of the earth's gravitation pull.

Various means are proposed in order to alter the density of the gravityplane from being heavier-than-air to being lighter-than-air. Early embodiments proposed the compression of air in order to change it's density and for its use as a powerful force to power propulsion. Air would be compressed by wind turbines during gliding flight to compress air so that the airship continued to gain weight and store power during it’s decent.

Perhaps the most practical application of the gravityplane concept is the proposed use of a Rankine organic power cycle (ORC) using low-boiling-point-liquids capable of becoming a lifting gas at standard temperatures found near the surface that is also capable of being condensed to the liquid state by the cooler air at high altitude in order to lose its lift so that the airship can act as a glider. Three common low-boiling-point-liquids that can easily perform phase change that meet the criteria and that are much lighter than the density (1.27 g/l) of air are: (1) Water (H2O) is readily available and inexpensive without any form of pollution or discharge that can readily be converted into low density (.804 g/l) water vapor, and, (2) Ammonia (NH3) which is low density (.86 g/l) that is widely available and inexpensive and also is a high quality fuel having 2/3 the power density of gasoline with only non-polluting nitrogen as the only by-product of its combustion, and, (3) Natural Gas (Methane CH4) is low density (.656 g/l), which also can serve as a fuel for propulsion. However, it detrimentally creates carbon dioxide emissions. In one variant of the gravityplane a lifting gas such as Ammonia or Methane is combusted to provide higher speed propulsion and after burning most of the lifting gas fuel, the airship lands heavy like a conventional aircraft using a short runway.

In operation the gravityplane would require an insulated envelope in order to be capable of climbing to high altitude without premature condensation passing though cooler air and capable of gliding back down to low altitude without premature vaporization of the liquid passing through warmer air, thereby lifting the aircraft back upward when doing so is not desired. In order for the density of the airship to change its volume must also be capable of being changing in response to the increase in volume as the liquid vaporizes and then as the process reverses the subsequent condensation of the gas to the liquid state will dramatically decrease its volume which can be useful in landing being heavier-than-air, having smaller volume and making the airship smaller in size.

At height indirect heat exchange with outside air would cool the lifting gas and cause it to condense to the liquid state; the airship would glide to lower elevation whereby the liquid phase working fluid would again be indirectly heat exchanged by with warmer air in order to vaporize the liquid phase working fluid back to the gaseous phase and the craft would rise upward via aerostatic lift once again in a back and forth cycle to form a sine wave flight pattern using this atmospheric power cycle in a process that its Inventor termed as being Atmospheric Thermal Energy Conversion (ATEC), as the process is powered by heat energy in the air near the earth in the same manner as Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) uses the heat energy at the surface of the world's oceans to power giant floating power plants. Actually there is a lot more power efficiency using ATEC over that of OTEC because the Carnot thermal efficiency of a power cycle is determined by the difference between its highest and lowest temperatures and the differential for OTEC is only 40 degrees F. while ATEC may potentially be much greater due the lapse rate in

The gravityplane concept was originally introduced at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) by Robert D. Hunt it's inventor who presented his seminal paper titled, "Atmospheric Power Cycle" described as an Atmospheric Thermal Energy Conversion (ATEC) power generating cycle that employs the natural temperature decrease from low elevation to high altitude. The high temperature reservoir of the power cycle uses the thermal energy contained in ambient higher temperature air at low altitude and heat rejection to complete the power cycle is provided by cooler air at a higher altitude that serves as the low temperature reservoir for the power cycle. www.fuellessflight.com

File:GravityPlane.jpg
The GravityPlane (having Fold-able Glider Wings) Gliding Back to the Ground in Heavier-than-Air Mode of Operation

To date no gravityplane has ever been constructed although it has widely been accepted that the technology is technically feasible. Someday airships may be powered by the gravitation pull of the earth using the ATEC power cycle to produce fuel-less flight driven by the heat energy in low altitude air. The gravityplane video has been placed on YouTube by several different interested airship enthusiast and has been viewed millions of times to date. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEzJpn6ZNs}}

— Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 21:02, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, after I'd deleted it I did some more serious digging & I did come up with a brief mention in Flight. (there was an awful lot of rather flaky stuff). Imo it really belongs in Hybrid airship or in a separate article of its own if it can be relably sourced. Mention in light here: rigt at the bottom, above the graph. Article is from 2008 & it isn't flying yet...not has it been mentioned again.TheLongTone (talk) 21:46, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
His official web site appears to be http://www.fuellessflight.com/ . Also, I notice that the principle of forward propulsion is the same as the underwater glider, working examples of which are in use. Interesting. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:10, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This YouTube post from 2013 makes disturbing reading: "TMr. Hunt's work has continued however in the field of fluid dynamics and he recently conducted scientific experiments that disprove the Bernoulli Principal" (sic), and "He has recently filed for patent protection for a new rocket engine capable of re-using its propellant". I think we need a bit more than the odd one-liner in Flight and, apparently, in Flying January 2004 to establish Hunt's notability. As for the concept, the underwater glider has been around so long that other folks must have come up with the idea of an airborne version, if only we knew what search term to use. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:49, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hunt's presentation to the AIAA can be accessed from http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2005-7346 for those who, unlike me, are prepared to pay. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:08, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The full AIAA paper can be found at: http://www.deepheatpower.com/assets/aiaamanuscriptatec.pdf on the Links page of my Saturated Gas website: http://www.deepheatpower.com/links.html without costs.

I know how revered Bernoulli's Principal being 275 years old is and am merely in search of solid scientific principles. It occurred to me that the direction of applied force is critically important i.e. the optimum ninety degree vector angle and I questioned as to why it would not also apply to pressure. In seeking the true nature of pressure I reconstructed the original Bernoulli experiments. I did get the reading of the low pressure on the low velocity side when I conducted the main experiment that seemed to confirm Bernoulli initially. However, when I simply took the same exact equipment and reversed the direction of flow by 180 degrees. The high pressure reading now was on the high velocity side! The exact opposite results by reversing direction only. Thereafter, I investigated as to why.

I then discovered that Bernoulli was merely reading back pressure of the fluid caused by the reduction in area of flow from the large cylinder to the small cylinder. My conclusion which was then additionally proven with numerous other experiments that firmly conclude that direction is the cause of pressure and not velocity.

Think about vector angles and how force is lost as the vector angle decrease. Vector angles apply to pressure as well. When applied at the optimum 90 degree vector angle pressure is at a maximum and as the angle changes either going to a lower or higher vector angle it begins to decrease.

When pressure is read from behind a deflected area (such as the construction of the Bernoulli Venturi valve whereby the suction comes from behind a nozzle that shields the incoming vacuumed fluid from the direct impact of the kinetic energy of the high velocity flow) it is at the lowest pressure reading, including being a negative pressure creating a vacuum. This is an increased understanding of fluid dynamics that can serve to improve modeling. I am not trying to make headlines. I am merely trying to find out what is really happening in fluid dynamics.

A new vacuum valve resulted from experiments that is many times more powerful than the Venturi valve that I am now marketing to the oil and gas industry to withdraw fluids from reservoirs. They produce on the order of twenty times more suction than the Venturi valve. I have a new aircraft wing and a new aircraft design that apply this new understanding of fluid dynamics that have the potential to dramatically reduce induced drag so that an aircraft or wing can move through the air with highly reduced viscous drag. I think you will hearing a lot more about this development in the future. It is solid science proven by numerous experiments. Direction of flow along with the amount of inertia possessed by the flowing fluid determines that amount of pressure applied. Simply put pressure is a vector quantity and is not a scalar quantity as proposed by Bernoulli.

Feel free to contact me and I would appreciate your assistance in making the work that I have done to help advance airship technology known so that others may benefit from it. I know the gravityplane faces a lot of technical challenges and would be very expensive to build. My only hope is see one fly during my life time. However as is pointed out on the hybrid airship page that few are in actual operation after years of effort and expense. I did consulting for Aeros Corp. on their Walrus Project regarding their superstructure design with emphasis on building internal sealed cells strong enough to support vacuum-lift. One of the gravityplane concepts was to compress the lifting gas that was featured in the video to reduce lift and they have also applied that technology to their new designs.

My information is on my user page User:Rhgravity2602:306:2598:5FB9:EDE9:C0AB:38B4:F0A1 (talk) 17:48, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the technical ideas, especially the challenge to accepted lore on Bernoulli, need peer review and endorsement before we can safely accept them here. Documenting such a challenge as notable is a big step, not to be undertaken lightly. Do let us know if any independent authority publishes on these subjects. Based on the magazine mentions and the AIAA paper I will try and put something in the Hybrid airship article, but I doubt that I will be able to reliably source enough material to make for its own page. Do you know if anybody else has come up with a similar kind of idea to the gravity plane and if so what they call it or its technology? That would really help us to search online and establish stronger credentials. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:24, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

New draft article or section[edit]

I have started drafting my own version of what I think are the notable and verifiable aspects of the Hunt GravityPlane here. If the draft cannot expand enough to stand as an article in its own right, I am hoping it can at least form a new section in the Hybrid airship article. Any comments/improvements gratefully received. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:43, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now merged into the Hybrid airship article. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:18, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Remove this hatnote[edit]

"For the balloon known as a blimp, see Barrage balloon."

A barrage balloon is never called an airship or dirigible, the only titles that redirect here. So what is this hatnote doing other than causing confusion? 216.8.170.184 (talk) 19:24, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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"Parsifal-shaped" What?[edit]

"Streamlined Parsifal-shaped rigid (or semirigid) airships" What is a Parsifal-shape? I Googled and got an opera & watches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mimarx (talk • contribs) 03:51, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think "Parseval" was intended, as in August von Parseval: the design was a rival to the Zeppelin. See List of Parseval airships. – .Raven  .talk 18:52, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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History[edit]

Rufus Porter (inventor)#Airship 1849, attempt defeated by sabotage. -Usergnome (talk) 08:26, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress[edit]

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Urban Airship which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:34, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Environmental benefits section needs improvement[edit]

The section on environmental benefits is very speculative, and based mainly on the non-existent (not to mention environmentally dubious) concept of airborne nuclear power. The section should instead focus on potential environmental benefits of airships with current technologies. The low energy requirement for staying airborne is the obvious focus. 98.128.166.95 (talk) 12:57, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It also makes reference to an 'April Fools' news article about IATA, which I've now removed 134.159.213.71 (talk) 09:04, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
> "... the non-existent (not to mention environmentally dubious) concept of airborne nuclear power." – the 'concept of airborne nuclear power' may indeed be 'environmentally dubious' (I would agree that it is), but it is certainly NOT 'non-existent', viz. Nuclear-powered aircraft. Nor was the specific concept of 'Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion', viz. the Aircraft Reactor Experiment and the Convair NB-36H – which carried an operational nuclear reactor (but was not propelled by it) for 47 test flights in 1955–1957. "The test flights revealed, that with the shielding used, the crew would not be endangered by radiation from the reactor, including with low-altitude flights, but that there was a risk of radioactive contamination in the event of an accident." That program was cancelled in 1961. – .Raven  .talk 18:46, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Bland described his airship as 'atmotic' rather than 'atomic'[edit]

My edit to correct this was immediately reverted- perhaps because 'atmotic' is a much rarer word, but as seen here, it genuinely is the term he used. 72.201.86.125 (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User 72 is correct. I've reinstated 'atmotic' = "atmospheric", esp. traveling by airship. – .Raven  .talk 18:25, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification needed on cost-effectiveness of large modern airships[edit]

"Today, with large, fast, and more cost-efficient fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, it is unknown whether huge airships can operate profitably in regular passenger transport though, as energy costs rise, attention is once again returning to these lighter-than-air vessels as a possible alternative."

It is extremely important that the reason airships are currently "less cost efficient" is because of regulations requiring the use of helium as opposed to hydrogen. Contrary to popular belief hydrogen isn't a prohibitively dangerous material to use. I'm not sure of the best way to weave this in though. TheSpaceGoat (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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