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View Poll Results: Which Form of Air Transportation is the best?
Airships 5 45.45%
Aircrafts 4 36.36%
Combination Crafts 2 18.18%
Voters: 11. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 05-18-2012, 10:07 AM   #1
unownmew
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Airships or Aircraft? Which is better.

Thought it'd be good to have a more lighthearted/nonserious debate for once.


Which do you think is the better/more efficient form of Air Transportation and why?

Airships - Aerostats or Hybrids?
Aircraft - Fixed Wing or Rotary?
Combination - of which forms, and why?


Debate the merits of each one.
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Old 05-18-2012, 03:13 PM   #2
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Superman: pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft

But in all seriousness, I'd have to go with the airplane as a prefered means of air travel. Mostly because I've never been on an "airship" or anything like that. (Though I do have fun storming the ones that belong to Bowser.)
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Old 05-18-2012, 03:55 PM   #3
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I've never been on an airship either (they're rather rare and expensive atm), but I really like them.

Airplanes are good, but I think Airships are supremely superior.
They can carry a lot more freight then an airplane, offer much more passenger space, and, my personal favorite: Flying Aircraft Carriers
Also safe and quiet, they won't blow up.
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Old 05-19-2012, 02:05 AM   #4
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A combination should be nice... Something easier for a change... The wings and fuselage walls might be filled with a non-flammable lighter than atmospheric air gas, while the entire hybrid would have the resemblance and combined features of an airship and an aircraft... Area/space and Fuel would be saved.
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Old 05-19-2012, 08:31 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coolz8 View Post
A combination should be nice... Something easier for a change... The wings and fuselage walls might be filled with a non-flammable lighter than atmospheric air gas, while the entire hybrid would have the resemblance and combined features of an airship and an aircraft... Area/space and Fuel would be saved.
Tell me where you can find so called gas in large quantities, and get back to me. The only one that would make sense is nitrogen, but it is not THAT much lighter than air.

Also, are aircraft faster than airships?
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Old 05-19-2012, 10:44 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blazeVA View Post
Tell me where you can find so called gas in large quantities, and get back to me. The only one that would make sense is nitrogen, but it is not THAT much lighter than air.

Also, are aircraft faster than airships?
What is Helium?

Generally an Jet will be significantly faster then an airship. I don't know of any airships that have broken the sound barrier recently, generally their speed limit is at around 80-100 knots per hour, if built for it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Coolz8 View Post
A combination should be nice... Something easier for a change... The wings and fuselage walls might be filled with a non-flammable lighter than atmospheric air gas, while the entire hybrid would have the resemblance and combined features of an airship and an aircraft... Area/space and Fuel would be saved.
You mean something like this?

:P

Actually, I think you mean something like this only with airplane wings, right?
Spoiler: show

That could work, but I think this would be the better LTA+fixed wing design:
Spoiler: show


Problem with a fixed wing+LTA design though, is, you get the worst of both worlds, you're losing lifting power by reducing the size of your Gas capacity, but increasing the handling and landing area required. You also need a runway and other support infrastructure to take-off and land, which a general airship does not need.


Personally, I'd love to see airships like this flying around instead:
Spoiler: show

Last edited by unownmew; 05-19-2012 at 11:15 AM.
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Old 05-19-2012, 05:26 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by unownmew View Post
What is Helium?

Generally an Jet will be significantly faster then an airship. I don't know of any airships that have broken the sound barrier recently, generally their speed limit is at around 80-100 knots per hour, if built for it.



You mean something like this?

:P

Actually, I think you mean something like this only with airplane wings, right?
Spoiler: show

That could work, but I think this would be the better LTA+fixed wing design:
Spoiler: show


Problem with a fixed wing+LTA design though, is, you get the worst of both worlds, you're losing lifting power by reducing the size of your Gas capacity, but increasing the handling and landing area required. You also need a runway and other support infrastructure to take-off and land, which a general airship does not need.


Personally, I'd love to see airships like this flying around instead:
Spoiler: show
Helium is in limited quantities, read, VERY limited quantities. Plus, it can be hard to capture because it is usually found around oil deposits, most of which are not adapted to capturing gases.

80-100 knots is how many MPH???

You do make a good argument for the non-fixed wing design, wings should be able to tilt and rotate. Plus, I did notice one thing, those airships are HUGE! Airports would have to be changed to accompany these massive flying vessels.
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Old 05-19-2012, 07:25 PM   #8
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Knots is roughly a mile. 1.15 something.

And I believe the fastest airship never broke past 100 mph, only reaching the lower 80s. It's really not capable of extreme speeds purely because of how fragile and light the ship has to typically be to maintain lift-to-weight ratios.

As someone who doesn't particularly like flying, I'd choose aircraft speed over airship... lax attitude any day.
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Old 05-19-2012, 08:34 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blazeVA View Post
Helium is in limited quantities, read, VERY limited quantities. Plus, it can be hard to capture because it is usually found around oil deposits, most of which are not adapted to capturing gases.
You are right on both accounts, and it's expensive because of it, but, it's not SO limited as to prevent airships from using it. Generally it can be found in natural gas deposits, which we (at least in the US) have plenty of (if we were allowed to drill for it). Personally though, I'd rather use hydrogen for the lifting gas-virtually unlimited quantities, greater wight-to-lift ratio, and it's cheap. Not to mention it could possibly also be used as the fuel as well as the lift gas.



Quote:
You do make a good argument for the non-fixed wing design, wings should be able to tilt and rotate. Plus, I did notice one thing, those airships are HUGE! Airports would have to be changed to accompany these massive flying vessels.
Well, without having to rely on dynamic lift, you gain much increased control at slow speeds. The stingray design for a hybrid is probably the best because you keep the ability to go fast without sacrificing so much of your static lift.

As for size, Airships don't need to be large, but they certainly benefit more from it due to the square-cube law, granting them more lift for less volume as the size increases.

If you think that ship's big, you should have seen the Hindenburg
Spoiler: show



The plane is a Boeing 747, and the ship is The Titanic.

Somewhere I saw a picture depicting various airships and military airship concepts, compared to a 747 and an aircraft carrier, but I can't find it at the moment. Some of the concepts were almost the same size as the Carrier.

Edit: I found another comparison, with a better sizing perspective.
Spoiler: show

#29 is the Hindenburg
#33 is the USS Enterprise Aircraft Carrier
Full Key can be found here

The Hindenburg is so far the largest vehicle ever to fly in the sky.
[/edit]


Quote:
Originally Posted by Raptor Jesus View Post
And I believe the fastest airship never broke past 100 mph, only reaching the lower 80s. It's really not capable of extreme speeds purely because of how fragile and light the ship has to typically be to maintain lift-to-weight ratios.

As someone who doesn't particularly like flying, I'd choose aircraft speed over airship... lax attitude any day.
You're right in that they never topped 100 mph, but it wasn't solely because of structural limitations, it was inferiority of the engines back then, along with the massive unaerodynamic surface area being pushed against the air.
If we make the ship more aerodynamic and include our modern powerful engines, I'm sure we could get faster- but it would still never compete with jet speed, airships are just better suited for slow speeds and long endurance, like a real ship.

Depending on your reason for disliking flight, an Airship might actually be better suited for you. Out of curiousity, what puts you off?

Last edited by unownmew; 05-19-2012 at 08:59 PM.
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Old 05-19-2012, 09:21 PM   #10
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Heights.
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Old 05-20-2012, 09:51 AM   #11
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Ah, I see. Well, I won't try to convince you, but I have heard numerous times that a Hot-Air Balloon doesn't trigger fear of heights because there's no perspective. I presume it may also hold true for Airships.
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Old 05-20-2012, 07:56 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by unownmew View Post
Ah, I see. Well, I won't try to convince you, but I have heard numerous times that a Hot-Air Balloon doesn't trigger fear of heights because there's no perspective. I presume it may also hold true for Airships.
That's interesting, but, I don't see how that is possible. could you possibly explain that to me?
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Old 05-21-2012, 08:26 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blazeVA View Post
That's interesting, but, I don't see how that is possible. could you possibly explain that to me?
Well, I won't claim to know exactly, but, without a perspective, you can't quite tell how high you are. And since a Balloon/airship travels much lower then an airplane, it might also be that you don't get that same sense of vertigo.

Of course, this just an explanation based on what I know (which isn't nearly enough), it could be totally wrong.



I'm surprised no ones told me to "get out" for my avocation of using hydrogen as a lift gas. That's generally a big issue with people, "it'll blow up!"
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Old 05-21-2012, 08:33 AM   #14
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Would you rather have a volatile gas or an inert gas as your only companion while at a few thousand feet above the Earth?
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Old 05-21-2012, 09:19 AM   #15
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Hydrogen's not that volatile. Yeah it burns, but, only if it mixes with oxygen, and if you have a burning leak, it'll burn like a pilot light- going up as it leaks, unless you were stupid enough to surround your hydrogen with a form of thermite paint or burst (and burn) numerous gas cells at once. In which case, THEN you explode like the Hindenburg.

Hindenburg: Hydrogen lift
Service length: 14 months, 17 trips across the Atlantic before accident.
Survivors: of the 97 on board, only 35 died.

Graf Zeppelin: Hydrogen lift
Service Length: 9 years, Logged over 1 Million Miles and 64 Transatlantic trips before being decommissioned due to the Hindenburg disaster. (only two "accidents" to it's name, engine failure and a damaged port tail fin from an ocean squall)


What's the difference between having a volatile gas and an even more volatile liquid fuel as your only companion? Jet Fuel burns like the devil, and yet for some reason we all think airplanes are "kosher". How many airplane crashes/accidents have survivor rates better then two-thirds? Just a few extra safety precautions and there's practically no more problems with hydrogen lifting gas then there are with modern day airplanes.

Last edited by unownmew; 05-21-2012 at 09:32 AM.
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Old 05-21-2012, 02:47 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by unownmew View Post
What's the difference between having a volatile gas and an even more volatile liquid fuel as your only companion? Jet Fuel burns like the devil, and yet for some reason we all think airplanes are "kosher". How many airplane crashes/accidents have survivor rates better then two-thirds? Just a few extra safety precautions and there's practically no more problems with hydrogen lifting gas then there are with modern day airplanes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-sh..._b_158362.html
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Originally Posted by The Huffington Post
In fact, according to the US government, 95.7 percent of the passengers involved in aviation accidents make it out alive. That's right. When the National Transportation Safety Board studied accidents between 1983 and 2000 involving 53,487 passengers, they found that 51,207 survived. That's 95.7 percent.
(Thank you to Rangeet for linking to a Cracked article with this same stat a while back.)
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Old 05-21-2012, 05:33 PM   #17
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From your article:
Quote:
When you exclude crashes in which no one had a chance of surviving - like Pan Am 103 - the NTSB says the survival rate in the most serious crashes is 76.6 percent.
lol

If we excluded those, of course the survival rate is going to be high. The trick, is to find out what percentage of crashes actually have a good survivability rate vs the ones that don't. This I honestly don't know, it could be 50% of crashes, it could be a terrible 80%, or it could be a lucky 20% being deadly crashes out of all crashes total.

Even the Hindenburg wasn't the worst airship accident in history, as it had a fairly good survival rate of 2/3, even with the giant fireball it turned into, the worst I'm aware of was actually a Helium filled American airship- the USS Akron, only 2-3 survivors, the ship lost at sea from hurricane winds pushing it far above it's service ceiling that they had to release massive amounts of helium, and then being driven into the waves. And the crew died not because of the crash, but because it wasn't equipped with emergency equipment- lifevests and rafts.

If we rule out all weather related accidents like we exclude all "unsurvivable crashes", Airship survivability also skyrockets. Because except in the most extreme conditions such as blowing up or being slammed into the sea/ground by hurricane-force winds, airships don't crash, they sink, slowly and safely.

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Old 05-21-2012, 05:45 PM   #18
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Okay... that still doesn't change the fact that there is a 95.7% chance of surviving a plane crash, even with including the ones that are considered "serious plane crashes." 95.7% overall, 76.6% chance of "serious plane crashes," excluding those where no one had any chance at surviving, like Pan Am 103. Not all crashes are "serious crashes."

The data is between 1983 and 2000. This includes crashes like Valujet Flight 592 (110 out of 110 killed), TWA Flight 800 (230 out of 230 killed), Swissair Flight 111 (229 out of 229 killed), Egyptair Flight 900 (217 out of 217 killed), and Pan Am Flight 103 (259 out of 259 killed). The 95.7% survival rate doesn't exclude flights like these, it includes them, making that survival all the more impressive when you think about it.
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Old 05-21-2012, 07:26 PM   #19
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Ah, but see, I'm not concerned with "overall survival" rates including all the flights that occurred without accident, no doubt if we had airships flying in as large numbers as airplanes the survival rates would be comparable. But, I'm strictly concerned with the percent of people that survive in a single instance. That is to say, which is safer to be in during an on-board accident? An Airship or an Airplane?

No airplane is going to survive serious mid-air accidents. If it goes up or control of the plane is lost, everyone's dead.

An airship, by way of contrast, if it has a problem, such as gas leak, is going to drift gently down and allow passengers to escape. Loss of control, a manual release of lift gas can allow it to land safely where it is, even if it's still moving forward, air friction will slow it down and the slow speed will cause a rough bump into the ground, instead of spiraling out of control into the ground.
If you're using hydrogen lift, nowadays, I'd presume you're using some safety features such as enveloping the gas cells in an outer nitrogen gas cell, so that'll smother any fire that might occur, as well as not using flammable materials like cotton or thermite nearby.
And since an airship goes slower, you don't need to pack the highly volatile Jet Fuel that creates the deadly fires that claim most lives in airplane crashes.

The only way I can think of to really, completely, kill an airship that would be built with modern materials, is to blast it out of the sky with a large missile. Under any other circumstance it'll light slowly to the ground giving time for emergency procedures and on-board repairs.

Last edited by unownmew; 05-21-2012 at 07:29 PM.
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