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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

The thing has a cargo capacity of 20,000lbs who is this for? Military? This thing can only carry 4 humvees at most and about 1/6th of a a main battle tank by weight.

Civilian transport? 20,000 lbs is a lot if you need to resupply an Arctic research station manned by 3 people but not for anything at scale.

Tourists? Maybe a novelty but you wouldn’t really need more than 1 or 2 of those.

Edit: 1/6th instead of 1/3rd forgot that MBTs are 60,000kg not lbs.

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For the military, intel collection seems to be one obvious use case:

1. 5 days airtime manned.

2. 92 mph cruise speed.

3. 20,000 ft service ceiling.

4. 23 mph loiter speed.

I would want to know how loud it is and how resistant it is to (limited?) ground fire.

Regardless, I can see it having potential uses.

It'd never be close enough to ground fire to matter. You're using altitude for general line of sight and then some very quality antennas to pick up anything in a very significant radius.

FL 20 ceiling is not high at all. That's the lowest Class A airspace goes, which is where you'll find most commercial flights.

MH17 was shot down from the ground while flying at 33,000 feet, so 20k is definitely not out of reach.

But not by small arms fire, or a shoulder-mounted device — it was essentially shot down by an anti-aircraft installation (wheeled though it is)

But within the ceiling of 37mm or 40mm flak, which are towable behind a pick-up.

These things aren't going to go anywhere near a SA-17 site.

They're for taking on ISIS-style insurgencies, not nation-state actors.

>It'd never be close enough to ground fire to matter.

Famous last words. MANPADS are getting better all the time.

Getting to 20k probably not any time soon

SA-25 tops-out at about 4.5km, 14,800ft, against a manoeuvering target. Each successive generation of Russian MANPADS seems to push another 500m higher.

Bear in mind that the Airlander's ceiling was previously stated at 16,000ft so there's not a lot of margin.

Their Airlander 50 (in development) claims it will hold a 60,000kg payload (https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/downloads/Airlander-77.pdf).

IIRC, it was originally developed as a prototype for the US Department of Defence, but when they weren't interested, the intellectual property was sold back to the company that made it and they decided to try and take it to market for faster-than-sea-but-cheaper-than-airplane transoceanic cargo shipments.

But now it sounds like they've pivoted to trying to make a flying cruise ship, which admittedly does sound awesome.

In that case they should name the first 2 Sterling and Babou.

Same thought here. An Mi-26 can easily do 50% more [1]. I thought the whole point of renewed interest in airships was their cargo carrying capacity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26

> Same thought here. An Mi-26 can easily do 50% more [1].

But probably not at the same price per pound, or so would the expectation be.

> I thought the whole point of renewed interest in airships was their cargo carrying capacity.

A mix of cargo capacity and cost. And this model (or others being developed right now) are probably not the high-end of what they could theoretically do, they're around where they expect financial sense is for an unproven system, they need to get buy-in and sales.

> not at the same price per pound, or so would the expectation be

Exactly:

> between 20% and 40% of the fuel consumption and operating costs of equivalent traditional aircraft

> Minimal ground crew are required: two for an Airlander 10 and none for an Airlander 50.

https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/downloads/download/Airland...

Operating costs are tricky, a helicopter with cargo lift capabilities can serve many more roles and is much more flexible which means that the total operating costs are spread across a multitude of mission profiles.

Having a dedicated vessel that has rather limited use might have a much higher TCO since it will not replace traditional aircraft but rather supplement them.

> Operating costs are tricky, a helicopter with cargo lift capabilities can serve many more roles and is much more flexible which means that the total operating costs are spread across a multitude of mission profiles.

The vast majority of operation costs for an aircraft are maintenance and fuel, both of which are pretty direct functions of operation time. So being more flexible does not actually spread these, each role incurs its own operation costs which would not be incurred in a more limiting device.

And helicopters have high operation costs.

>a helicopter with cargo lift capabilities can serve many more roles

Which helicopter do you know that can loiter for 5 days without refueling while carrying a 10t payload?

It was designed for the US Army LEMV program as a high-endurance ISR platform. The cargo capacity is/was intended for minimal cargo and mission kit (radios, defensive EW systems, etc.)

Mind unpacking all those military abbreviations?

LEMV = Long Endurance Multi Intelligence, in this case a specific programme [0]

ISR - Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance - a generic term

EW = Electronic Warfare - a generic term

There is recent operational history of using blimps in the ISR role [1]. Things don't always go according to plan, though [2]

[0] https://www.army-technology.com/projects/long-endurance-mult...

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=blimp+iraq&tbm=isch&tbo=u&...

[2] https://frieze.com/article/eye-sky-what-surveillance-blimp-a...

I won’t attempt the unpack all of the ancronyns but in layman’s terms the military application of the aircraft is to have an automated eye in the sky with a suite of sensors that capture as much as possible. When you’re combatting guerilla warfare it’s difficult to identify the operations of your enemy as they blend in with civilians. With a 24/7 recording of everything happening you can rewind the data feed from a point in time of attack and find the who, what, and where.

To add on to the other reply, a big problem in mountainous operation theaters is that soldiers can't talk to other squadrons or base, because of the mountains. Reception is shit. This big ol blimp thing could float around at 20,000 feet and act as a communication hub so soldiers can talk to each other, while also having cameras on board to be an eye in the sky for said soldiers, or painting targets for the soldiers or other aircraft's targetable weaponry.

Sorry. Someone already beat me to the punch. My whole day is speaking in TLAs (Three-Letter Abbreviations).

In Canada there are a lot fly in only or winter road(and the period of time with these roads is reducing due to climate change) communities. A large capacity would allow bringing in machinery and supplies. Airships have been looking like a strong solution

I think (medium confidence) the sales pitch is that it can hover. So it can deliver that cargo to wherever you ask. As opposed to the nearest big runway, or the nearest bit of paved road.

They should rebrand it as a Flying Wall and sell lots of them to ICE for extraordinary amounts of money.

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