Airships float back to the future

You may think the grand old days of airships are long gone, but with concern over aviation's carbon emissions mounting, a group of small companies is trying to bring them back in a reinvented form.

With fuel costs likely to remain high, several companies are predicting demand could soon emerge for very large aircraft buoyed up by gas that is lighter than air and capable of transporting huge quantities of freight.

US airship manufacturer Worldwide Aeros Corp is developing an initial craft that business development director Edward Pevzner says will sell for $30m (£16.8m). "That will be a technology demonstrator and can be used for business travel, short-haul commuting, sightseeing, or as a private sky yacht," he says, adding that a 60-tonne freight craft will follow based on customer demand.

The advantage of using craft that float to transport freight is that fuel costs are substantially cheaper. "Aeroplanes take 60 per cent of the power they use to keep them aloft, while a helicopter uses about 80 per cent of the power, " explains Pevzner. "For this craft it will be a lot less and that is where you save money."

Notions of traditional cigar-shaped zeppelins such as the ill-fated Hindenburg are outdated and ill-informed, say the new generation of manufacturers. For one thing, the Hindenburg was kept aloft by hydrogen, which is what caused it to burn so quickly during the disaster that effectively ended the first age of airships in the thirties. In contrast, the proposed modern craft are buoyed up by helium rather than hydrogen.

The other key difference between these craft and their predecessors is that they have as much in common with aeroplanes as with ships. Aeros' ship may float along on helium, but it will have a rigid hull, like a conventional plane. "The only challenge will be that since it's a new type of aircraft, it cannot be certified as an airship or aeroplane," says Pevzner. "The new regulations of how this will fly and the regulations for the pilots will be pretty much brand new. "

Infrastructure costs are also an important part of the equation. Billing his concept as "roadless trucking", Ohio Airships' founder Robert Rist wants to see his Dynalifter helium-powered aircraft carrying heavy goods into areas underserved by traditional freight transportation. Currently, for example, heavy goods are transported into central China from the coast using rail and trucks. With the Dynalifter not requiring any roads, and being able to fly over central China's mountainous territory, Grist says that shippers could save 75 hours and $110 (£62) per tonne lifting material from Beijing to Urumqi.

Similarly, oil and diamond-mining companies forced to extract resources in remote areas such as Canada's arctic region might find trucking relatively expensive, and rail impractical. Pevzner points out that ice roads enabling road transport are only open for short periods of the year – and as the north gets warmer, unexpected outages could be more likely. In this context, flying in large amounts of heavy machinery using a new type of craft designed to lift much larger loads and to land without a long runway could be commercially attractive.

"Our cargo bay is large, so oil-drilling equipment does not have to be disassembled to ship as it does on a boat or aircraft," says Tom Millett, co-founder of Millennium Airship, which is hoping to bring a craft to market by the end of 2013.

He adds that the system could also be useful in developing countries, where airports, sea ports and road infrastructure are lacking. Rist's Dynalifter, for example, is already being courted by those hoping to take it into South Africa for freight delivery.

Rist says that the FAA is willing to certify his Dynalifter as an aeroplane. "We are happy that they decided to certify as an aeroplane rather than an airship, " he explains. "Most of the people that understood airships are dead now."

The Dynalifter, which uses conventional kerosene as a propulsion medium, has wings like a plane. And even though helium helps it stay aloft, it is still heavier than air. This makes it more stable than traditional airships when it comes to loading and unloading freight, says Grist. It also means that it would not take off and land vertically and would still need a runway. But for the 250-tonne cargo that it could carry, a runway of under 4,000 feet is relatively acceptable, Grist argues.

However, these companies have a long way to go before realising their dreams. The hangar housing Dynalifter's prototype was recently damaged by a storm, putting back its efforts to develop a craft. Meanwhile, Millett's plans seem ill thought out. He has switched from conventional jet fuel as a propellant to hydrogen, which is not as easily accessible in large quantities. "Our idea right now is to probably have between seven and nine major depots around the world, so each of those would have their own hydrogen," he says. Ideally, hydrogen would be produced by either a nuclear plant, or by carbon separation as part of a clean coal plant’s operation, he adds.

It's a nice idea in theory, but both those options take a huge amount of money, and Millett admits that he has not fully thought the process through yet. The gap between his available assets and what he needs is also daunting. It will take $600m (£336m) to $700m (£393m) to bring a craft such as the one Millenium Airship is proposing to market, and after five years of investment, Millett has just $20,000 (£11,000) – and a significant amount of chutzpah.

But despite these challenges, the environmental and commercial appeal of airships is strong enough to attract other companies to the technology.

World SkyCat hopes to fly a craft without the use of a runway by the end of this year and plans to eventually produce 1,000-tonne-capacity freight ships, and Turtle Airships is planning a round-the-world flight of its solar-powered design next year, although not everyone is as enthusiastic as its owners about the project. Meanwhile, Skyhook appears to have pulled off one of the biggest coups to date for an airship company, inking a partnership with Boeing on a vertical takeoff craft with a 40-tonne capacity and a modest 200-mile range.

With so many companies vying for position in the embryonic airship market, one of them will hopefully make it to market with a suitable product. One thing is for sure: whoever gets there first will arrive gracefully, in their own good time. And they won't take up very much room when they land.

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