Article:
Bring Back the Airships

Cargo aircraft are one of the world’s largest consumers of fossil fuels and for years scientists have been looking at more efficient engines, lighter chassis and a myriad of other ways to help reduce fuel consumption. However, one of the ideas that keeps popping up is the use of massive airships to transfer perishable commodities across continents. Now that idea is being revisited after receiving a scientific thumbs up from former chief science advisor to the New Labour government, Professor Sir David King.

His comments came while he was addressing a green conference at Oxford University where he currently holds a position. He said that while we currently have small scale blimps for advertising and a few slightly bigger ones for joyrides, the ones needed for transporting cargo would need to be much bigger. He then referenced the US army’s recent push into Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles which saw them receive over half a billion dollars which will see several large airships launched based on British technology.

While these will be aimed at height and endurance so they won’t be able to carry much cargo, King still believes that this sort of design will be the first stepin creating massive air cargo-blimps which he believes will be ready to roll in about 10 years time.

Airship technology hasn’t really been looked into much since WWII where the large push for the platform came to an abrupt end when the Hindenburg caught fire mid-air thanks to its use of the highly flammable gas Hydrogen. Up until this point airships had been considered a very useful piece of kit when it came to air travel, with trips around the world not taking long at all.

Despite David King saying that modern airships won’t run into problems, and will have massive fuel consumption reductions over traditional planes, not everyone agrees though. Some other research from outside sources claims that when it comes down to it, there will only be a .5% decrease in fossil fuel usage compared to traditional planes. Considering the blimps could only travel at an expected 75MPH also, it seems like the environmental impact would be relatively small.

Funnily enough, SkyCat, a firm looking to produce airships have said that that their developments could cut emissions by a massive 90%.

It seems a little hard to figure out who’s telling the truth in this instance, but personally I’m hoping for the airships as they look pretty badass. They look all futuristic-y.