Aeroscraft shows off its giant airship
Lighter than air vehicles are, for the most part, relics of a distant past. Despite the past century of flight mostly belonging to airplanes and helicopters, there's been a slight resurgence of dirigibles this century. Not least among them is the Dragon Dream, by the Aeroscraft Corporation. This is only half the size of their planned airship...
Rather than the slow-moving luxury cruisers of old, the Aeroscraft is a working vehicle designed to carry 66 tons of cargo reliably to parts of the world without runways. The 555-foot-long craft is at a design freeze. Aeroscraft thinks they have the vehicle they want, and to meet deadlines on time, they're going to stop tinkering with the design and just make the dang thing.
The Aeroscraft is just one of a small new world of gigantic lumbering dirigibles. In 2013, the U.S. Army canceled its LEMV surveillance zeppelin, but the project has since been revived in the United Kingdom as a working machine, and Goodyear is looking at replacing its soft-bodied blimps with more durable rigid airframes.
Rather than the slow-moving luxury cruisers of old, the Aeroscraft is a working vehicle designed to carry 66 tons of cargo reliably to parts of the world without runways. The 555-foot-long craft is at a design freeze. Aeroscraft thinks they have the vehicle they want, and to meet deadlines on time, they're going to stop tinkering with the design and just make the dang thing.
The Aeroscraft is just one of a small new world of gigantic lumbering dirigibles. In 2013, the U.S. Army canceled its LEMV surveillance zeppelin, but the project has since been revived in the United Kingdom as a working machine, and Goodyear is looking at replacing its soft-bodied blimps with more durable rigid airframes.
The Dragon Dream was strictly a demonstrator, capable of no payload whatsoever. It mever flew. Not once. It made a very timid tethered float like a kid's balloon on a string. Basically they proved that, yes, helium weighs less than air, yes, you can lift things with it, and yes, you can compress and expand it. All that has been well-known for a century. The roof of their decrepit hangar fell in and wrecked it, and they scrapped it, since there was nothing to be gained from it.
Question. Has the hangar roof been surveyed, repaired, and proofed yet? Are they sure they won't overstran it again by hanging heavy weights from it?
I doubt VERY much that they have actual funding to build the full-size model. They might POSSIBLY have enough to crank out another, larger demonstrator.