[IW] Zeppelins mean Alternate Timelines. So, how are they made feasible?

[talonthehand]

Well, the first example of a setting with a bunch of zeppelins that jumped to mind was Crimson Skies. It's an Alternate History where America broke into smaller nations after the flu pandemic and the Great Depression. If memory serves me, as a result of that, most (now) international railroads got torn up, the setting is still in the '30s, so interstate highways are nonexistant, and it's still noteworthy whenever a plane travels long distance. I suppose they made zeppelins so popular in that setting because of a lack of alternatives.

[StevenH]

Dean Ing wrote a great book that dealt with modern airships, called The Big Lifters. The "delta dirigibles" (basically flying wing shaped LTAs) were proposed to be used in conjunction with freight trains. They could match speeds with the trains and load/unload cargo while in motion, reducing the costs to the railways. They then use their VTOL/STOL capability to bring the cargos to local stations where short run truckers do the local moving. (The character that had this plan wanted to reduce the amount of long-haul trucking.)

Another use I have seen for LTAs is as a forest fire suppression device (in a Popular Science some years back). It had huge water tanks with a "dumping funnel" on its dorsal surface for planes/helicopters to refill the tanks while it "rains" the water in its tanks on the fire below (or perhaps to wet an area ahead of a fire to slow its spread).

I think that with modern carbon composites, photovoltaics, and electric motors, zepplins can make a comeback, if for only specialized roles. With a large zepplin covered with photovoltaics, fuel costs can be minimal. Of course, they are also big enough to mount a rectenna on it, and receive broadcast power from the solar power satellites in space.

[roguebfl]

Having the chopper develop earlier (possible an earlier rediscovery of DeVicni's notes) And the Airship becomes a secure base camp with chopper "rovers". Combin this with the less flamible dope...

Explaoration and the role of the modern Cruiseliner

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Unfortunately, they have others options available - automobiles and trains (and ships, for oceanic transport). That's what you need to compare the economics of airships to - the economics of auto transport. And airships tend to lose out pretty heavily on that. They need more support infrastructure than trucks, and they need far more crew to manage start and stop locations.

Good point. In that Harry Turtledove/Richard Drefyuss novel I mentioned upthread ("The Two Georges"), automobiles were still largely steam-powered. Train and airship were the two main means of overland long-haul transport.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by StevenH

nother use I have seen for LTAs is as a forest fire suppression device (in a Popular Science some years back). It had huge water tanks with a "dumping funnel" on its dorsal surface for planes/helicopters to refill the tanks while it "rains" the water in its tanks on the fire below (or perhaps to wet an area ahead of a fire to slow its spread).

I've seen the return of the dirigible in things such as popular science for decades. Despite this fact, dirigibles have not, in fact, returned in significant numbers. There are a variety of reasons for this; one major one is that they handle wind very poorly (and the wind conditions over a forest fire are not friendly).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

3) There are more modern designs of airships that could carry a couple of times the payload of a 747-8. In fact the CL160 exceeds that by 22 tons.

Which airship designs lift in the neighborhood of 300 tons? I thought the CL160 was about as big as had been seriously proposed so far, and 22 tons out of 160 does not make 'a couple of times'.

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Unfortunately, they have others options available - automobiles and trains (and ships, for oceanic transport). That's what you need to compare the economics of airships to - the economics of auto transport.

Part of the reasoning on Gernsback, apart from the Rule of Cool and improved
technology, is that airships can go places where trucks cannot or where
providing the motorized ground vehicle infrastructure would be more
expensive/less cost effective.
I've been lead to believe that airships do compare favourably with the speed
and cargo capacity of mules, yaks and dogsleds.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Xenarthral

airships can go places where trucks cannot or where
providing the motorized ground vehicle infrastructure would be more
expensive/less cost effective.

However, they probably can't land there. Airships need large ground crews to land safely and to load and unload. So airships might be able to overfly that sort of area, but they won't really be able to deliver to there. Plus, of course, the fact that there's often not much call for large cargo shipments to that sort of terrain anyway.
And it takes a very big detour before the airships taking the direct route over an area of rough terrain becomes more cost-effective than the trucks going around. And building a railway track through the region will probably still be a better idea than airships.

[Urban]

Add in some sort of big antigravity machine that can lift but not push things and the concept of having heavy flying "ships" that by pure coincidence looks alot like a zeppelin would appear.

No need for flimsy construction and volatile gas, adds capability to carry armor and lots of cargo but perhaps only at zeppelin speed since the propulsion engines have to be huge as well to move the great mass forward.

Think steam powered big flying ships with airplane propellers or basic jet propulsion.

[Woodman]

Airships need large ground crews to land safely and to load and unload.

I cant see why an airship would need more crew to land/load/unload then a cargoship today. Just one idea that came to my mind, shoot 4 anchors-cables down with hooks at the end that can be extended via hydraulics to stabalize the position, then you can either winch down the whole airship to unload via a cargodoor or have the cargo lowered on a platform.
Or build a device that catches the lowered anchoring cables, something V-shaped that reacts when the steel cables come close enough to the narrow end and is fixed on the ground (could surely also be build into tracked vehicles for use in the field)

Even with docking masts i could see some kind of small line beeing launched to a target on the mast to mover over a heavier cable and then tow in the ships nose to dock