The blimp, the airship, the dirigible. Whatever you call them, you probably don’t find yourself thinking about them too often. They were an easy way to get airborne, predating the invention of the airplane by decades. And yet, they suffered—they were too slow, too cumbersome, and often too dangerous to compete once conventional planes hit the scene.
And yet! Here you are reading about airships once more, because some people aren’t giving up on this most hilarious manner of air travel. Yes, it’s 2024, and airship projects continue apace even in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the airplane.
Why Float?
As the world reckons with decarbonizing the economy, air travel has fallen under the crosshairs. As you might imagine, lofting gigantic metal tubes full of people into the air takes a great deal of energy. Aviation makes up a significant 2.4% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Work is underway to cut aircraft emissions through new efficiency measures and the use of biofuels, but demand for services continues to increase. Fiddling at the margins here isn’t going to solve the problem to any great degree.
Airships seem to offer some tantalizing bonuses to energy efficiency, however. With buoyancy provided by helium, airships don’t need forward propulsion to generate lift. Airplanes have to burn fuel to generate thrust to get enough speed up for the wings to work. All the while, the process of generating lift also generates drag, which costs fuel to overcome. In contrast, airships simply float upward ..
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