Morphing Materials and Young Aerospace Engineers Will Bring On the Future of Dirigible Flight
A few months back I was down at the beach and a friend of mine asked what my fascination was in watching the jellyfish from the pier.
Well, I was marveling at how evolution had solved the propulsion challenge and how effortlessly this species was able to glide through the water.
I explained that from an engineering standpoint it was a brilliant and simple design and we humans ought to take note of that, and so I was.
I guess my intellectual comment went over their head.
Non-the-less, I also said that dirigibles are also a nice engineering concept on our part.
"What's a dirigible," they asked me.
Well, it's a blimp or balloon type design simply put.
Now then, just the other day I got an interesting contact from someone who'd designed a very smart way to fight a fire using a dirigible design.
In this case, that's not necessarily a revelation, but his design seems to be.
Indeed, I've often considered that old Popular Science Magazine idea of dirigible airship blimps making rain and delivering them onto a fire.
The fire makes heat and would allow an airship of quite a bit more weight to buoyantly float above a fire, plus all that CO2, soot and smoke helps make rain and precipitation faster.
Further, I felt it was pretty unfortunate when the military (US Army) had announced the cancellation of the blimp mover program research (LEMV).
Interestingly enough, I just happen to see one once, it was flying around all day in Palmdale CA, it looked very stable to me, heavier-than-air, by a little bit but very controllable, I thought that was a decent start.
My grandfather was at Moffett Field in CA in the US Navy Blimp program, and during WWII he was once in a Navy Blimp 200 miles off the NJ coastline, estimating the weather for Eisenhower and D-Day invasion, all secret stuff, and the weather was a real bear, but they went ahead with the invasion anyway (under cover of storm), in the end it's all history now.
Also, I always thought Fred Smith of FEDEX was ahead of his time looking into the moving of containers by airship, and believe that new materials will make dirigibles more transparent (good for military), and extremely lighter, morphable for STOL, and this adds so much more in the way of applications, such as fire fighting amongst other things.
You see, I believe it is short-sided to sideline dirigible technologies right now, there are just too many applications, here and abroad, even on the moon Titan, they have considered using a balloon-like craft to help us explore there.
Indeed, I hope you will continue to think here, I am, and so is our think tank.
Well, I was marveling at how evolution had solved the propulsion challenge and how effortlessly this species was able to glide through the water.
I explained that from an engineering standpoint it was a brilliant and simple design and we humans ought to take note of that, and so I was.
I guess my intellectual comment went over their head.
Non-the-less, I also said that dirigibles are also a nice engineering concept on our part.
"What's a dirigible," they asked me.
Well, it's a blimp or balloon type design simply put.
Now then, just the other day I got an interesting contact from someone who'd designed a very smart way to fight a fire using a dirigible design.
In this case, that's not necessarily a revelation, but his design seems to be.
Indeed, I've often considered that old Popular Science Magazine idea of dirigible airship blimps making rain and delivering them onto a fire.
The fire makes heat and would allow an airship of quite a bit more weight to buoyantly float above a fire, plus all that CO2, soot and smoke helps make rain and precipitation faster.
Further, I felt it was pretty unfortunate when the military (US Army) had announced the cancellation of the blimp mover program research (LEMV).
Interestingly enough, I just happen to see one once, it was flying around all day in Palmdale CA, it looked very stable to me, heavier-than-air, by a little bit but very controllable, I thought that was a decent start.
My grandfather was at Moffett Field in CA in the US Navy Blimp program, and during WWII he was once in a Navy Blimp 200 miles off the NJ coastline, estimating the weather for Eisenhower and D-Day invasion, all secret stuff, and the weather was a real bear, but they went ahead with the invasion anyway (under cover of storm), in the end it's all history now.
Also, I always thought Fred Smith of FEDEX was ahead of his time looking into the moving of containers by airship, and believe that new materials will make dirigibles more transparent (good for military), and extremely lighter, morphable for STOL, and this adds so much more in the way of applications, such as fire fighting amongst other things.
You see, I believe it is short-sided to sideline dirigible technologies right now, there are just too many applications, here and abroad, even on the moon Titan, they have considered using a balloon-like craft to help us explore there.
Indeed, I hope you will continue to think here, I am, and so is our think tank.