Aircruise is concept for a airship designed to carry 100 passengers in utter luxury on slow trans-oceanic cruises. The designs look charming, but I fancy that if it ever goes into production the backers will very quickly discover that airships are airship-shaped for a reason. It generally involves not crashing into skyscrapers, mooring masts, mountains, and other very hard, pointy objects that are not healthy for airships and other flying things.
4 comments:
I was thinking crossing the Atlantic under a big bag of hydrogen might stir some ugly memories of Lakehurst and be a slight detriment to ticket sales.
You can explain that "it was the paint" business all you want but it only takes about 30 seconds of "oh the humanity" footage to put everyone back on the Airbus
It is kind of Marconi sloop-shaped. Maybe the diamond shape is more than just aesthetics. I could see traveling in a craft like this. Floating on the air rather than flying through it lets you lift more; put in wifi and a quiet room, a gym and a Pullman-type cabin to sleep in, and I wouldn't even need to take time off from work to get from here to there. And the views would be spectacular. Of course, since a trip requires spending more time high in the air (an environment for which evolution did not equip us), the risk of bad things happening also increases. Bad winds, unexpected storms, lightning strikes---just off the top of my head. If this were to become a commercial service, I would expect the safety record to be worse than that of heavier than air craft, if only because more hours must be spent tempting fate.
As for using hydrogen as a lifting gas... yeh... Smoking isn't as fashionable these days as it used to be, but, yeh... Probably won't be serving many flaming shots at the ship's bar.
The illustration looks like something from "The Sims".
Like many of the previous comments, I too thought Hydrogen... Great for fuel cells but a bit of a PR problem on the crash and burn front. I know from forensic analysis that the fire in the Hindenburg was not hydrogen (wrong colour and in the wrong places) the damage is done. The shape is OK for generally drifting but that sort of thing loses its attraction when faced with, well you know, hills, tall buildings and trying to land. Unless they want to bring a whole new angle to the Flying Dutchman legend.
TTFN :)
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