Airship Holland

Rigid Airship Design B.V. was an unsuccessful project to build a modern rigid airship. Airship Holland continues where Rigid Airship Design stopped.

[edit] History

In 1996 the eccentric Scottish intellectual and Airship expert Ian Alexander initiated a project in The Netherlands in co-operation with the Technical University of Delft, to design and construct a modern classic rigid airship based on proven technology. The project involved leading Dutch companies RDM Aerospace N.V., Nevesbu (designers of ships and submarines), Stork N.V., and Fokker Aviation. Consortium Rigid Airship Design was established on 26 May 1998 but went bankrupt 1 August 2001.

The initiative provoked series of discussions in the Dutch Parliament and on governmental level. As a result ‘Platform Luchtschepen’ (Airship Platform) was structured to investigate the attainability of projects like this in The Netherlands. The platform consists of representatives from governmental bodies, industry and environmental organisations. Results of the platform and the creative legacy of the Rigid Airship Design project are the cornerstones of a feasibility study on how to deploy a classic rigid airship to International Relief Organisations for rapid disaster relief after tsunamis, earthquakes and other calamities.

[edit] From Airship Holland archive

[edit] An airship

An airship is an airborne vehicle obtaining most of its lift from lighter-than-air (LTA)gas (generally helium) contained in the vessel’s envelope (or in separate gas cells). Helium is not only non-flammable but can actually extinguish fire. Additional lift is provided by the aerodynamic contour of the vessel; this may be supplemented during take-off and landing by the application of vectored thrust provided by the engines. Since most of the airship’s lift is derived from the helium, the engines are needed mainly to move the vehicle through the air and, to a lesser extent, to provide power for the avionics.

[edit] A Rigid Airship

An open rigid airship

A rigid airship has a fabric outer skin stretched over an aluminium frame which contains a series of separate gas compartments which also provides room for the engines, cargo and passenger accommodation – all of which lie inside the skin. The only things which protrude outside this skin and thus interrupt the vessel’s aerodynamically perfect cigar shape are the propellers, fins and the pilot’s control cabin. This distinguishes it from two other types of airship: the ‘blimp’ and the semi-rigid type. The blimp is effectively just a large balloon filled with gas. This is also true of the semi-rigid type, except that it has a keel. Thanks to the combination of its aluminium construction and separate gas compartments, the rigid airship is the safest type of airship. The rigid airship has a robust skeleton construction consisting of lightweight aluminium ring girders, longitudinal girders and bracing wires. Between each set of ring girders lies an immense, fireproof laminated PET film cell into which helium (He) is fed.

[edit] Future of classic rigid airships

These days’ classic airships would be able to reach a maximum speed of 150 km/hour, have a maximum radius of action of 20,000 km and could remain in the air for weeks at a time. It can relatively quickly reach places or objects that are difficult to access, such as locations at sea or remote regions. Moreover, it can take off and land almost anywhere and under almost any conditions to pick up or drop off passengers and/or cargo, and can hover over the same spot for at least several days. Starting with straight-forward mathematics and physics, we can determine that one cubic meter of helium lifts 1 kg of mass. The total lift is therefore a function of volume. Double the dimensions of an airship and the volume increases by a factor of 8. No Zeppelin ever failed in flight through structural failure. Accidents resulted either from hydrogen (which has now been replaced by non-flammable helium) or from limited understanding of the forces involved (now known to all approved designers) or from poor understanding of the weather, a problem overcome by modern avionics.

[edit] Environmentally friendly

Airships have many advantages over and above other forms of air, land and water transport. To begin with, they are quiet, clean and energy-efficient. To keep an airship aloft, all that is needed is to fill it once with non-combustible helium, which is widely available. Relatively little fuel is needed for propulsion. The airship’s low noise emissions make it extremely useful for flying over densely populated areas and areas governed by strict noise restrictions.

[edit] Safety

Until 1937, after decades of passenger operations conducted worldwide, not a single fare paying passenger had ever been injured, far less killed, in a Rigid Airship. The universally known disaster to The Hindenburg on 6th May 1937 was because its lifting gas was explosive hydrogen. This is very debatable because proponents of the Incendiary Paint Theory say that hydrogen burns invisibly although this theory in turn is controversial. What is less well-known is that two-thirds of those on board survived. Today’s Airships are required by law to be filled with non-flammable helium, which presents no fire risk whatsoever, and can actually be used to extinguish fire. Two other causes of accidents to Airships in the past were lack of understanding of aerodynamic stresses in the evolution of their design and the lack of adequate weather information in flight. In the early years of the 20th century there were no pilot training schemes other than experience and the crew did not have today’s navigation systems, radar or weather satellite information.