Blue Skies Ahead

Airships again? With the weather getting rougher and more difficult, and more damaging than it used to be (partly due to urban and suburban construction), is it something we should consider here, to “save climate” instead of using jet aircraft?

The Guardian (UK newspaper) is agog in airship worship these days. Non-polluting, no carbon emissions to destroy the atmosphere, just that slow but steady transport of foodstuffs, goods and passengers from the European continent (France) to the UK

The link is here:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/23/britain-could-lead-carbon-free-transport-create-booming-green/

From the article:  Zeppelins and dirigible airships are with us again after eighty years out of favour – faster and hopefully much safer than in the inter-War era – promising ultra-low carbon air transport for the net-zero age.

It may not be long before we can start eating air-flown vegetables from Peru or blueberries from Kenya without feeling pangs of guilt. Fresh food may reach us in cargo Hindenburgs without the unconscionable CO2 footprint of jet freight.

If all goes well, we will be able to hop virtuously from Liverpool to Belfast in point-to-point travel, or Stockholm to Helsinki, almost in the time it takes for a regular flight from door to door. We can hope to lift off quietly from a field close to London in the early evening, retreat to a couchette after dinner and wake up in Barcelona, Rome or Val d’Isere.

As it happens, Britain is a throbbing centre of the airship revival, going head to head with France for global leadership. It could arguably capture part of the $120bn air freight market and displace a slice of the vastly greater truck haulage business in congested zones or regions with poor infrastructure. – article

The US Navy did use LTAs (blimps) up until 1961, but shut down that program because the damage during storms was too costly.

https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/last-one-out-shut-off-the-helium-29682773/

And as you may recall, blimps were used in World War I by the Germans to drop incendiaries on London at night.  The blimp is still used today, mostly for advertising purposes and tourist rides, so it’s not as though that durable craft is going away. But deciding to use it to transport fresh produce from France to the UK because the horrifying “carbon footprint” is supposedly zilch ignores the fact that to get anywhere, the blimp has to have a working engine to move it and a guidance system to navigate the oceans of the sky.

But it’s all about the “zero carbon” levels, so that the planet won’t burn up, or some such thing.

A proposed hybrid airship, the Airlander, is discussed here:  https://medium.com/@glenhendrix50/hybrid-airships-could-change-the-economics-of-asia-and-africa-748603da92d7

Now, that one is a proposed design, not in production as yet. It sounds wonderful, but it’s kind of like the thorium reactor: looks good on paper, but not feasible at this time. More work needs to be put into development, and some of us may recall the financial cash grab that was  Solyndra. Lots of cash went into it, but it went belly-up so fast that papers flew up off the floor, without ever producing one watt of electricity.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/remember-solyndra-loss-of-taxpayer-millions-seems-forgotten-expert-says

From the article:   On March 20, 2009, then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced Solyndra would be the recipient of a $535 million loan from his department under the Obama administration’s revamped loan guarantee program. Solyndra used the money, along with hundreds-of-millions more from private investors, to build a new facility where it would be mass-producing its easy-to-install cylindrical solar “panels.” The whole thing lasted about two years.

The ill-fated energy company had initially asked President George Bush for cash under the loan guarantee program, which was created to help companies working with clean energy technologies that might be considered too risky for private investors. – article

I’m completely in favor of things that don’t leave a disgusting pile of polluting crap behind.  No one should have to clean up the messes that others make.  But when the Bright Idea Club (no special knock required) wants to do things that will cost the plebeian population of groundlings more than they can afford in goods and services, then the broom, shovel and dustbin need to be handed right back to the members of the Bright Idea Club.

In addition, since this is currently a Brit/Euro thing, it is not likely to replace our own advertising and tourist-ride blimps. The impracticality of it includes really foul weather shutting down air traffic, as if we’ve never seen that before, and commercial air traffic near cities. If those things have already been worked out (article does not address that), fine. But is this really more practical in execution than land freight by rail and truck? I don’t think so.

Category: Blue Skies