On Sat, 04 Jan 2020 08:09:19 -0800, markmocho53 wrote:

Yeah, I am really looking forward to a six day trip to New Zealand at
20,000 feet, through all of the lovely tropical storms over the Pacific.

Indeed, but probably not as high as 20,000 - I'd guess 8000 - 10,000 to
avoid presurised cabins, which are both heavy and need energy to compress
the incoming fresh air. OTOH, pax would most likely have bunks/bars/space
to move round rather than the less than wonderful seats I've travelled in
(apart from the A380, which has really nice seats even in cattle-class).

And helium is so plentiful, too!

True enough, though IIRC these beasts can transfer their helium between
lift bags and storage tanks, i.e. no valving off helium when they land,
and they do use a reasonable amount of aerodynamic lift as well as
gasbags. There are other similar projects, e.g.

http://aeroscraft.com/
https://www.varialift.com/

that will also use some aerodynamic lift and will look and fly quite like
the Airlander.

But, my main point was that something like these aircraft, but using
electric motors instead of the IC engines in the current prototypes, need
a lot less power stored in heavy batteries than anything that depends
entirely on aerodynamic lift.

Airbus and Rolls Royce are retrofitting a BA 146 as a test-bed for using
electric ducted fans as potential replacements for high bypass jet
engines, BUT they will be powering the fan(s) from a 2MW gas turbine
generator in the rear fuselage. It would take a shed load of batteries to
replace that generator, so its not at all clear where the electric energy
needed to power an all-electric Airbus 320 or Boeing 787 would be stored
or how it would be generated in flight. Portable fusion generator
anybody?


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org