NationStates Jolt Archive

For reasons explained later in this thread, I have decided to cancel the superzeppelins. Anyone who ever bought these unrealistic vehicles can have their money back. Sorry

I don't know if a zeppelin is designed or capable of going 360 MPH.

I don't know if a zeppelin is designed or capable of going 360 MPH.can you explain why? I don't understand

The shape of a zeppelin is not aerodynamic. Attempting any kind of turn would require a drastic decrease in speed. Etc.

The shape of a zeppelin is not aerodynamic. Attempting any kind of turn would require a drastic decrease in speed. Etc.That's why 360 mph is MAX velocity. Maybe I should make that clearer. To turn, you would obviously need to slow down considerably.

What is the purpose of it? I mean sure, I love Zeppelins, but I realize how obsolete and relatively useless they are.

What is the purpose of it? I mean sure, I love Zeppelins, but I realize how obsolete and relatively useless they are.there are many uses for them in my military. The main uses are to transport heavy artillery emplacements, and serve as airborne aircraft carriers... we recently built an armored battleship one, but that's a whole other argument.

*Starts band named Super Zeppelin*


This has been an OOC post

I don't know about everyone else, but I like the concept. Higher cargo capacity than aircraft, but faster than ships. Great compromise. As for the armor, I see no problem with 6 inches, as long as that is within it's carrying capacity. Keep up the good work Raysia

I don't know about everyone else, but I like the concept. Higher cargo capacity than aircraft, but faster than ships. Great compromise. As for the armor, I see no problem with 6 inches, as long as that is within it's carrying capacity. Keep up the good work Raysia6" was not within its carrying capacity... 6" of liquid metal in just the outer hull alone would be over 10 million pounds.... max lift is 6 million. I'm sure you could set the volume equal to the density and find some volume that would work... but the blimp would be sooo insanely massive

Now that that one is over, Moving onto the skybase:

http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/carrier.jpg

The Raysian Aerospace RT-3307 "Sky Base"
Type: Mobile Command Center/Dirigible
Length: 290m
Lift: 2 Balloons containing 2 25,000,000 cu. ft helium balonettes each (6,000,000 lbs force upwards at 10,000 feet)
Hull: Balloons and Balonettes encased in 1/8" LiquidMetal envelope with Aluminum frame. Runway is grated steel.
Propulsion: 2 Raysian Electric PJ-1002 Golaith Pulse Detonation/Jet Hybrid Powerplants, rated at 700,000 lbf max thrust each, and 300,000 at normal cruise.
Crew: 40 Operating, 22 C&C, 22 Gunners, 36 Pilots, 72 Mechanics
Dry Mass: 1,400,000 lbm
Max Mass: 5,500,000 lbm
Max Load: 4,100,000 lbm
Armament: 32 Reloading QAAM Launchers (12 missiles each)
12 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles
6 Flak Cannons, manned
52 50 Cal Guns, wired to computer control
Carrier Capacity: Up to 36 Sky-Base Capable Aircraft (Meaning STO, NVTOL, VTOL, or Drop-launch capable), or 72 UCAVs, or some mix of them. Should have enough lift ability remaining to hold extra ammo and fuel for the fighters. Runway is entire length of airship, and has catch wires where needed, but has no catapult. For the most part though, the planes land while the Zeppelin is in motion, and simply match speeds with the deck while a remote-controlled tether locks them down onto a slot-car-like mechanism that tows the plane to a bay off to the side, where the pilot may exit the vehicle and lower the aircraft on the elevator to a lower deck.
Max Linear Velocity: 600 km/h (360 mph, Mach 0.5) [Must slow to turn]
Ceiling: At normal weight (5,500,000 lbs) 25,000 ft

(Glad you took my advice)

Make sure you keep the weight carried well below the maximum(including armor, guns, fuel, the engines themselves, and obviously the crew space) or the thing will go so slow as to be un-viable. A balloon that can lift 6 million should never carry more than 4-5 unless you want to burn fuel staying at high altitudes.

The cheapest way to save gas would be to put on solar cells; they don't do much, but they weigh almost nothing and last forever(but you can't use them at night).

I retract my idea on fuel cells, they would be weaker, weigh too much, and the fuel(hydrogen) would cost more in the volumes you'd need.

(also your skybase says "Hull: Balloons and Balonettes encased in 1/8" LiquidMetal envelope with Aluminum frame. Runway is grated steel with", with what?)

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Oops, thanks for the correction on the skybase... I was going to write something, forgot to delete "with" when I decided not to :P typo

As for the other point.. how about a cruising drive? Like say a large screw suspended below the main hull the has a couple fans on it, powered by solar cells or hydrogen fuel cells?

The cheapest way to save gas would be to put on solar cells; they don't do much, but they weigh almost nothing and last forever(but you can't use them at night).Which is why you use daylight storage cells inside the ship to operate at night. Er, I can't remember where I saw them at, but they are simply cells that retain energy from solar panel cells, and hold the energy until activated for night-time use.nah, To fly this thing, I'd need 100% of the output of those solar cells... diverting half the power to batteries is a waste.

SC: Where I come from, we call those 'batteries'.

Raysia: You could try, but mother nature has a thing called wind, and in the upper atmosphere it tends to hold a great deal of power over lighter than air objects with millions of feet of surface area.

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SC: Where I come from, we call those 'batteries'.

Raysia: You could try, but mother nature has a thing called wind, and in the upper atmosphere it tends to hold a great deal of power over lighter than air objects with millions of feet of surface area.That's why all carrying stats etc. are based at 10,000 feet... I figure it's a good cruising height for a zeppelin of this size. Do you disagree? I could lower it to say, 5,280 ft (mile)

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The only problem I see with a striling-type solarthermal engine, is that if the blimp is moving, it'll be hard to keep the thing pointed at the sun... I'd need some serious tracking drives/sensors.

Can someone help me find power outputs of hydrogen fuel cells? Or how about a hydrogen engine that simply used a tank of water and sends it through electrolosis (sp)?

On the solar thing, why would you follow the sun?, you can coat the top of each balloon with a skin of solar cells, that is a lot of area covered and therefore a lot of energy taken in.

The altitude is fine, but be wary of going over 20,000 ft. The jetstream is found between 25,000 and 40,000 ft and has winds of around 150mph.

Right, good points Sil.

Check this out:
http://www.ballard.com/tD.asp?pgid=35&dbid=0

A Fuel Cell/Natural Gas generator that outputs 250kw of electricity... imagine a stack of those in the blimp?

Upon calculating, if I coated every square inch of the top of the blimp, I'd get less than 300kw

oh crap, I think I just found a serious miscalculation...

I calculated the surface area to be 120,000 square feet... I don't know how... but it's actually near 700,000... I think I forgot to do my metric conversions lol

Aww man, I'm going to have to strike this whole zeppelin thing... it really doesn't work

I might be able to do it if I make the balloons a lot bigger

OOH! OOH! Problem solved!
(I know I am talking to myself here :P)
If I make the balloons 500m x 100m x 100m... I'll get over 17,000,000 lbs of lift! Of course, armoring the thing would be rediculous, but it would be able to hold the infrastructure and engines and stuff.

OK, so in short... I'm ditching the armor.

Its not as if 1/8th of an inch is going to do particularly much against, say, a missile.

OK, Redone math again:

2 400m x 80 m x 80 m ballons will get me 8.8 million pounds of lift.

If I don't armor the envelopes, and just make them a layer or 2 of some cloth, then I could actually make this thing work

They would be possibly the coolest weapon the world has ever seen. I'd love to have an airship aircraft carrier in my air force. If Raysia ever started producing them........

Raysia(love the airships)
Speed has to do with aerodynamics as much as the strength of the vessel and the Gs pulled by the occupants.
If Liquid-metal is only as strong as aircraft aluminum, then the earlier poster is correct and you should slow WAY down on the turns.
However, you may sacrifice aerodynamics IF the strength of your skin and frame are up to the challenge. Also bouyency (s/p?) when coming out of the turn how badly is inertia going to 'spin your vessel out.
I am sorry I dont know the the proper terms but I do understand the physics.
You can go fast, if your vessel can handle the stresses.
Nice ship.

gah this is so screwed up.

Each envelope would have to be 500m long x 100m tall and wide... and it would have cloth skin, not metal.

This could seriously drop the aerodynamics...

let me crunch some numbers if I could have liquidmetal on the skin:

1 mm thick liquidmetal coating the surface area = 8 million pounds.

Yeah, it would need its entire force just to lift the envelopes.

What would happen if I made it cloth? I would have to drop the speed significantly... what do you think would be a good top speed for such a zeppelin?

Well, if you are going more conventional you are not going to like this.
I would say a cruising speed of about 85knts, with sprints around 150knts.
http://www.worldskycat.com/skycat/data.html
check them out, I will look up some military airship info on conventional stuff.
But SkyCat is top of line.
95 kts.

OK, this is pointless, it will never work. Superzeppelins scratched until someone can come up with a working design

http://www.space.com/images/h_stealth_blimp_03.jpg
check with lockhead

Stealth blimp

Large airships are of benefit to the military.

They are capable of carrying extremely large and heavy payloads at a reasonable speed, for which there is a real mission need, Miller said.

The U.S. airlift fleet is getting old, taking a great beating in the last 10 years in such locales as Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Some new aircraft are making it into the inventory, but they still have limits. For instance, to move loads of tanks and other gear requires lots of flights and support.

"An airship that could carry a large number of tanks, troops, and supplies into a region overnight would be fantastic," Miller said.

Erinin that's nice and all, but I have no idea how that can be done. Do you know?

Raysia, I wasnt joking.
Call LockHead Martin, and SkyCat.

I called MEtalStorm Ltd. about their RL ballistics systems to find out facts.
And the people I spoke too loved the chnce to blather about their ideas.
Call, I am telling you you will get e-mail or calls back.
I see the effort you put into your designs.
Oh and um carbon fiber, nano-tube, all could theoretically serve your purpose.
A strong frame and a strong skin(not SUPER strong ,just stronger then conventional aircraft aluminum.) and you ar good to go.
The A-10 warthog banks at 300 mph, the Stealth fighter is about as aerodynamic as a brick.
What is on their skin? there airframe?
I really dont know.
OH I think you might need bigger envelopes too.

Well, either way, I don't know how to lift 20,000,000 lbm with 15,000,000 cubic feet of helium... it just ain't possible.

If these guys know something I don't know... please explain it. I need some basic math here

I would need balloons over a kilometer long... and at that size, It'd be more practical to use a navy ship.

how about using a bit of future tech if nothing else works?

how about using a bit of future tech if nothing else works?like what? Anything up to 2020 tech level.

Something capable of suspending 2500 tons in air... anything?

a new gas?

a new gas?LOL can't go much lower than helium... you could do Hydrogen, but it would be flammable, and not too much better.

if I could build a metal structure that could contain a vacuum, I might be able to do something... but that's kinda hard...

a bacteria that creates a form of gas? :? there is pretty much no hope for this thing is there?

How about in addition to the helium gas, you use engines to create a downdraft of air? I'm not sure how practical it would be in terms of size/output ratios.

I really liked your zepplins, and I don't want to see them discontinued. Perhaps increase the Raysia tech level to say, 2040. Perhaps then your scientists come up with a way to make hydrogen non-flammable. And for armor, use kevlar. Thick sheets of it. Lighter than liquid metal, but still protective. And, if you are worried about missiles, use a high power ecm package, in combination with a few laser or CIWS defence turrets.

Brandon: Sorry kid, it jsut won't work. If you do the basic math, to get a 2500 ton load capacity, you have to have a blimp capable of carrying itself plus the 2500 tons... that would be up around a kilometer in length.

I'm not going to push 2020. If you want those ships, go to my future tech storefront... I don't do gravships with Raysia.

LOL what would happen if I had like 50 helicopter rotors on it? Would that work? lol

You have a future tech storefront?? Where?

You have a future tech storefront?? Where?http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/

Raysia is modernish, Capsule is future