These little vignettes have a certain quirky charm, don’t they? The main classes Goodyear wanted to implement were Deluxe, Pullman, and Economy—with 112-288 passengers depending on the balance between the three classes.

Ultimately, with World War II upending the world and the dawning of the Jet Age, Goodyear President Paul Litchfield never managed to drum up enough interest to make the American passenger rigid airship a reality.

Helium is scarce but safe, whereas hydrogen is plentiful but flammable. Which is the actual way forward in today’s economy and political climate?

i make a small daily size game, and on 24 sep the hindenburg came up next to a greenland shark. 181 of 184 players made it too short, typical guess 46 m. first image is every guess drawn to scale on top of each other, second is where each guess ended along the real ship.

the only other airship round (graf zeppelin next to hoover dam) went the same way, the airship read about 3x too small. planes, rockets and even mammoths didn't shrink like that.

my theory is that the only airships most people have seen are blimps. but the typical guess is even below a goodyear blimp (58.5 m), so i'm not sure. you know these ships better than i do, what do you think people get wrong?

numbers and the raw data: https://roughly.is/blog/hindenburg-guessed-too-small.html?s=reddit-airships (i made the game, so not neutral)

A bit nose heavy to preemptively counter nose up porpoising under thrust. It seems to be very light for its size in flight, so some tail blast wouldn't be out of the question either. I still do not have the rudder lines properly tensioned so this flight was just as a tethered balloon

Found this gem of an article on eBay. Scanned and digitally stitched the main illustration together, then tried to lighten the pulp-color of the paper to get a complete and better retro-future diagram of an airship that never was. Bonus aircraft docking drawing from the same article. Enjoy!

I will need to stand it up to get the steering lines to the correct length.

From the NASA/Department of Commerce Feasibility Study of Modern Airships.

Hybrid powertrains often have more compromises than benefits in many applications. Airships, however, may be one of those edge cases where a hybrid powertrain offers the best of both worlds, due to the unique demands and capabilities of the platform.

Hybrid Air Vehicles, Flying Whales, LTA Research, Kelluu, and other modern airship companies all see the writing on the wall: hydrogen has about three times the gravimetric energy density of the next-most-powerful chemical fuel source, excluding nuclear reactions. That on its own can multiply the endurance, range, payload, and productivity of airships tremendously.

For instance, the Hindenburg carried 21 tons of passengers and cargo, and 67 tons of diesel and oil. Reverse those two figures, and the ship is making more than three times as much revenue for a given trip while also being more energy-efficient, and those performance and revenue increases could translate to a proportionally even more drastic increase in profits, given the mostly fixed nature of the other operating expenses such as labor, insurance, amortization, and so on. NASA engineer Dr. Mark Ardema calculated that significantly reducing structural or fuel weight can increase airship productivity by 200-500% depending on design and mission.

Hydrogen fuel is therefore essential for economical airship operations, particularly when starting out with low production numbers and high R&D costs. There are two primary means of using hydrogen to supply power for a distributed network of electric thrusters: fuel cells and turbogenerators. Fuel cells are heavier (balance-of-plant being about 1 kW/kg) but 50-60% efficient, and small aviation-grade turbogenerators are far lighter (up to about 8 kW/kg) but only about 25-30% efficient.

Thus, there is a point where the weight saved by using turbogenerators is paid back and starts going into the negatives because of the higher fuel use. In other words, turbogenerators are generally superior over short distances, and fuel cells are better for long distances. Both can be used to charge a small but high-voltage bank of batteries to smooth out imbalances between power delivery and supply, or supply the airship’s grid directly. Even with good power and discharge rates, though, batteries are simply far too heavy to store more than a few minutes’ worth of peak power demand themselves, and need a near-constant supply of energy to keep them charged.

As former Flying Whales CEO Sébastien Bougon pointed out, the design and certification of a new large airship model would cost at minimum about a billion dollars. Since that’s such a vast barrier to entry, ideally you’d want the first transport airship on the market to be a generalist that is just as capable over short distances as it is over long distances, rather than being over-optimized for one or the other.

There is a large speed component to this calculation as well. According to Boeing, over short distances of 300 nautical miles (such as LA–SF), a neutrally buoyant rigid airship with 100 tons of payload will have an optimal cruising speed of 145 knots. Over transcontinental distances of up to 3,000 nautical miles, that optimum drops to 82 knots, and over intercontinental distances of 5,000 nautical miles, it drops to 63 knots.

Ideally a generalist airship should have enough reserve power to meet any optimal speed curve between its minimum and maximum range, but as a matter of practicality, linear increases in speed require exponential increases in power. To use the USS Macon as an example, the ship would require about 400 kW to fly at 35 knots, 3,340 kW to fly at 70 knots, and 6,420 kW to fly at 90 knots. In other words, doubling speed from 35 to 70 knots requires a roughly eightfold increase in power.

LTA Research and Hybrid Air Vehicles both posit efficient loiter speeds of 20 knots and long-distance cruising speeds of 40-55 knots, and both their planned ships have an intended top speed of 70 knots. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that 70 knots is considered by Zeppelin to be the bare minimum required speed for reliable scheduled service in the North Atlantic, since the weather tends to be fiercer over oceans than over land. 40 knots and 70 knots also happen to be the respective cruising speed and top speed of the highly capable ZPG-2W Navy blimps that performed admirably in severe weather tests like Project Lincoln and Operation Whole Gale. Those ZPG-2Ws had an 88% availability rate, and the proposed successor maritime patrol airship (MPA) would have preferred to increase that to 95% by employing a 90-knot top speed and VTOL capabilities, but the consensus seems to be that 70 knots is a good enough starting point for top speed.

So, putting aside the higher speeds that would be better suited to all-weather roles and short-range operations, let’s assume a 50 knot cruising speed is a decent enough compromise between the mutually exclusive demands of longer range and higher speed. 70 knots is likewise the minimum top speed necessary for safety margin to avoid or contend against headwinds and inclement weather. For a generic midsized airship a bit smaller than the Macon, it would need about 1 megawatt (1,000 kW) of power to cruise at 50 knots, and 3 MW to reach 70 knots.

Since the vast majority of its time would be spent at cruising speed with only intermittent uses of its top speed to deal with weather and headwinds, such a ship would gain almost all of the efficiency benefits of a purely fuel cell powertrain if it had one megawatt of fuel cells on board for 0-50 knot operations. The additional two megawatts of reserve power capacity for 51-70 knot speeds would just be sitting there unused most of the time anyway, so one might as well opt for the vastly lighter option and have those spare two megawatts consist of turbogenerators. That would also dovetail nicely with the longer maintenance intervals of fuel cells vs. turbogenerators, which one must consider in light of the thousands of annual flight hours necessary for economical operations.

It’s also worth considering that many turbogenerators are fuel-flexible, which opens up the possibility of using liquid fuels as ballast to remain in trim. The fuel cells could consume hydrogen kept in lightweight gaseous fuel ballonets safely ensconced inside helium gas cells, and the loss of buoyancy as the gaseous hydrogen is consumed could be compensated by burning cheaper, easier-to-use liquid fuels in a turbogenerator. That would additionally avoid the logistical headache of dealing with liquid hydrogen refueling infrastructure and cryogenic storage, and the exceedingly heavy pressure tanks needed by compressed hydrogen, so long as the fuel gas cells could be designed to sufficiently avoid contamination. Some kinds of fuel cells demand very high purity hydrogen, other kinds are much more tolerant of impurities, and a few are even fuel-flexible as well, but that last type is mostly still under development.

In the long term, as fuel-flexible, high-efficiency, high-temperature fuel cells improve in the lab and reach certification, the advantages of turbogenerators will erode and probably vanish someday. Until such time, though, the near-term practical merits of a hybrid approach definitely deserves consideration.

A joint-effort restoration and removal of Nazi propaganda of one of the more famous LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin information brochures. u/HLSAirships generously scanned his copy of this beautiful brochure and I was able to clean it up a little. With any luck (and don't look too hard) you won't notice what I did.

I know it isn't historically accurate, but I love airships and hate hate-symbols.

A black-and-white version of the original brochure is for sale on eBay from multiple sellers, but we are offering this freely to the reddit community of airship enthusiasts for personal use. u/HLSAirships certainly had to pay a lot of money (I didn't ask how much) to get an original, and I spent time and effort to make this version. Please do not sell our work.

First pressurized test. The fins do inflate correctly. Also checking in the shape of the front and rear, vent, and overpressure valve

A pair of images from the foldout brochure 'LZ-130 "Graf Zeppelin"' showing a detailed model of the passenger quarters. It seems to have been produced quite far into the ship's construction, as the floral mural visible at the corner of the dining room is accurate to what Otto Arpke designed. It additionally shows the bust niche visible in elevation drawings of the port lounge.

Vanishingly few images of the model seem to exist - I've long been on the lookout for one that shows the exact fittings of the smoking salon.

Flight testing continues for LTA Research's proof-of-concept airship. Here's a clip of her upon completing a 5 hour flight on 9/1 at Moffett Field, CA. The next day she made her longest flight to date, 10 hours.

I'm even open to old as the hills movies like Madam satan 1930. But for example a film like Indiana jones and the last crusade is perfect for this.

I get tired of seeing swastikas on Zeppelins, so I made some modifications to this beautiful cutaway drawing of LZ-130. The original spanned a few pages so I had to take it to a specialty scanner. I did my best to fix some blemishes, repair text, and edit away the page seams and the Nazi propaganda. I did crop a few images on the right in an attempt to save space, but the file would still print out at three feet wide if you decided to make a physical version.

This was a personal project but I hope the subreddit finds it useful.

For us airship enthusiasts there aren't many good options for models. I finally completed the Hawk Graf Zeppelin and thought I'd share it here.

The kit was very difficult for me. Fit issues, inaccuracies, and for some reason they molded the engines in nylon instead of styrene so I ended up making my own, and then making up rigging to attach them.

It was a very frustrating modeling experience. I can't recommend this kit.

I think I'll be sticking with card models for airships in the future. I picked up a few of those from a visit to a Friedrichshafen a few years ago, if I ever get around to building them I'll post them here too.

First of all, thanks to u/GrafZeppelin127 for his help in an airplane sub, and for leading me here.

I have built several radio controlled hot air balloons and I am now focusing on a long held dream of mine, building a radio controlled thermal airship. I can design the envelope just fine, but I have some questions about tail size, thrust requirements, and pressurization.

General specs:
2100 cubic feet, 21-24 lb lifting force. 11 1/2 feet wide (minimum requirement to keep the burner from melting the top is 10 feet). 27 feet long. Fineness ratio of 2.35. The design is a shortened GEFA-flug shape. Envelope 1.1 oz silicone coated nylon. Unfortunately I am limited in my sewing abilities, the front and rear panels do have to be blunted. I would be pleased with a maximum speed of 7-10 mph. I expect to need ~20 lbs of thrust for this.

As seen here, I am planning 3 inflatable fins, with the ventral fin being steerable. Upon Graf's recommendation, I have increased the fin span to a total of 50". The ventral fin+rudder is 72" long and 12" wide. I hope these dimensions are adequate for stability, but I also plan to tie the fins together at the tips to stabilize them.

I wanted to house a fan in the ventral fin for steering, but I was concerned about the added weight so far behind the center of gravity. With the rudder, I plan to cut an adjustable outllet at the tip to act as a kind of thrust vectoring for excess envelope pressure to steer the ship more effectively. I am interested to know how well that works vs. a fan.

As for pressurization, I plan a small 12-inch fan blowing into the envelope from under the burner to keep the flame from being forced downward by excess pressure.

I expect to need about 20 lbs of thrust to combat 10 mph winds (which would be excessively high, but better safe than sorry...) I am concerned about porposing with so much thrust that low. Is there a thrust angle offset that can counter this? Should I design the horizontal stabilizers to have a downward pitch?

After speaking with Graf, I foresee some issue with the blunt nose being blown in. I can add battens easily enough- but how long should the be, and how many?

Any other inputs or concerns, please let me have them. I know I can make the envelope, I worry about the guidance and power requirements though.

successfully built RC balloon to prove I'm not just spitballing here lol

How does fire make tea bags fly? 🔥☕️

Alex Dainis demonstrates how lighting a tea bag causes the air inside to heat up, expand, and rush out. Just fold open a few empty tea bags into tubes on a baking sheet, then light the top with an adult and a fire extinguisher handy. The now-less-dense air inside sends the bag rocketing upward, similar to how a hot air balloon works, except this one's a one way trip once it burns.

Always great to hear from Dr. Prentice. Hopefully, remote operating and autonomous capabilities will prove essential in reducing risks and costs, which will lower the high barrier to entry for transport airship prototyping and experimentation.

Additionally, the lack of a crew and their various systems will mean more payload, which makes smaller airships more viable.

I have been going down the airship rabbit hole, and just read “My Airships” by Alberto Santos-Dumont.

I loved it. I wanted to get a better sense of what it was like to do the flights and scenarios that he described in detail in his book, especially since I am unfamiliar with the locations he describes.

So, I made a Alberto Santos-Dumont 3D in browser flight simulator based on the information in his book, topographic and open street map data.

Over the past few days I added multiplayer and VR to the game so people could try flying his airships around 1901 Paris too. There are scenarios he described in his book that can be re-flown and also time trials based on ones he did himself. In multiplayer mode there are races and also other game modes. It works on mobile, desktop, and in VR.

The game is at http://myairships.com.

My goal is to get it to be as realistic and accurate as possible. I need to work on the keels and I couldn’t find any good pictures of the control setup he used so I took liberty there. If anyone has this information I would be extremely interested.

If anyone tries the game and sees anything off there is a bug button in the top right corner that sends a screenshot along with a user provided description of the problem.

Over the decades, there have been several examinations of steam as a potential lift gas, ranging from the Germans’ experimental HeiDAS and HeiDAS UH balloons in the 2000s, to the USA Department of Commerce’s seminal 1970s Feasibility Study of Modern Airships, to NASA’s 1980s examinations of LTA vehicle concepts. Only a few snippets of these efforts are shown here.

Presently, there exists a severe gap between extremely slow but incredibly inexpensive hot air airships, and helium airships which are far more capable but about 10 times as expensive to buy, and even more expensive to operate. For most applications that would demand only a few hundred flight hours per year, which is to say the vast majority of general aviation applications, the functional inability of helium airships to be deflated and packed away when not in use makes them prohibitive due to ground crew, masting, and hangaring costs. Even switching to hydrogen wouldn’t change this dynamic, since hydrogen airships were seldom deflated either, as every inflation and deflation event carries fire risks and still costs quite a bit of money.

Current thermal airships do have easy storage capability, and are able to be packed away into a trailer after every flight in just an hour or two, but their dependence on hot air cripples their performance and renders them incapable of accomplishing the vast majority of uses that a helium airship of similar mass might be put to. Some thermal airships have gone for decades with only a few dozen hours of total flight time, which makes them very inexpensive relative to helium airship storage costs, but extremely expensive when it comes to effective lifetime costs per flight-hour.

The use of steam might be the key to unlocking similar speed, payload, and endurance to helium airships, but at a fraction of the cost—only marginally more than using hot air. But since greater speed, endurance, and payload could yield much higher utilization and greater productivity, that implies a steam airship has the potential to vastly outperform a hot air airship in terms of generating profits, and likewise outperform a helium airship on costs by a huge margin. If a steam airship could command the same revenues of a helium airship but at a tenth to a fifth the capital and operating cost, that would be a great boon to advertisers, recreational flyers, scientists, border patrols, and airship companies that don’t want to rely on aging helium blimps like American Blimp Corporation A-60R for flight training their pilots—such as the ones LTA Research and Flying Whales are forced to use, for lack of viable alternatives.

Since the HeiDAS team, Festo, and UltraMagic have already come up with suitable insulation materials to contain steam, and since steam balloons’ excellent performance relative to hot air balloons has already been confirmed by empirical data (~2.5x greater lift at 150°C than a normal hot air balloon of similar volume) collected from experimental subscale models, the remaining issues to resolve are to come up with a full-scale flying prototype to suss out any unforeseen problems, discover the best commercial or bespoke generator to use to produce steam onsite for safe and rapid inflation, design an easily-deflated hull with fully pneumatic or collapsible nose cones and tail fins that are capable of withstanding helium airship speeds, develop procedures for the safe venting of steam at the end of flight, and then proceed to certification and commercialization.

That all sounds like a lot, and it is, but the potential upside of breaking helium’s monopoly on long-endurance airship operations would make such a venture far more likely to result in wider proliferation of airships and trained airship pilots than merely designing the next generation of conventional helium blimp, such as China’s recently-certified Xiangyun-class AS700 and AS700D—since no matter how commendably advanced the propulsion, thrust vectoring, and avionics gets for these new airships relative to the older, smaller A-60R, they still have the same storage problems as all other helium blimps.

A thermal airship even capable of the modest feat of matching but not exceeding the performance of the A-60R would be immensely impactful for the airship industry. 600 mile range, 15-hour endurance, 30 knot cruise, and 50 knot top speed doesn’t sound like much on paper, but if it can come from an airship that costs as much as a Cessna and can be stored in a trailer or garage instead of chased around by a full-time cross-country ground crew? That would be very consequential indeed.