 Airships, Those majestic giants of the sky |
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 Aug 19 2005, 07:36 AM
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#1
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Target  Group: Members Posts: 54 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,511  |
If the link was public, I'd post it, but I read it in the Air Force News at work: The USAF is forming a committee to look into the possiblilty of bring blimps back into service for stratospheric reconnaissance. (Closer than a satellite, but out of firing range for most hostile combatants.)
Upon reading this, I told myself I'd cross over to the Dark Side for a chance to become a blimp pilot. Has anyone managed to use blimps/zepplins successfully in SR? And were they as prevalent in the game world as the books try to hint at? We got to see one in action once in a game, as it was the floating mansion of some crazy billionaire tycoon. But we were given the impression that even the smallest of blimps were in the upper-echelon of vehicles. I plan on starting up a gang of air pirates once I get ahold of SR4. :D |
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Aug 19 2005, 07:40 AM
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#2
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 279 Joined: 21-March 05 From: Freeport NY Member No.: 7,205 |
Final Fantasy of the United States...?
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Aug 19 2005, 07:59 AM
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#3
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 165 Joined: 30-September 04 Member No.: 6,715 |
Only for surveilance, and that was a mini blimp. As for how prevalent they are, the only things I've really heard about them is that a group used one in an attempt to get off of a tower after trying to bomb it in one of the Missions (Book name) scenarios. Apart from that, I haven't read about most of them. |
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Aug 19 2005, 08:36 AM
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#4
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Uncle Fisty Group: Admin Posts: 13,891 Joined: 3-January 05 From: Next To Her Member No.: 6,928 |
there's a mention to a few zepplins getting hijacked in SOTA 64
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Aug 19 2005, 11:29 AM
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#5
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Prime Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,577 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gwynedd Valley PA Member No.: 1,221 |
The naver used zeppelins in the 1920's with the idea that they could patrol the oceans. The modern, RL US Navy is doing it with blimps. they take very little fuel and can hover so they are very good for searched. Blimps have a very small gondola, about the size of a van, haning beloow the balloon. Zeppelins are not that common in our world. luxury items in a world of speed. they are for expensive trips like cruise ships today when most people fly. Zeppelins can have much larger cabin areas, like small ships, but the bulk is hidden inside the "sausage"
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Aug 19 2005, 11:36 AM
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#6
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 745 Joined: 26-July 03 From: Montréal, QC, Canada Member No.: 5,029 |
My group has also used a blimp for long-term reconnaissance, for exactly the reasons Snow_Fox mentioned: cheap on fuel, silent and can hover forever.
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Aug 19 2005, 11:50 AM
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#7
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,428 Joined: 9-June 02 Member No.: 2,860 |
I've never quite managed to use airships in SR (mini-blimp drones aside). I always wanted to, but there never seems to be a good reason or something gets in the way.
Zeppelins, rigid-framed airships, can have other uses if you let them get large enough. The have the potential to be excellent "skycranes" and can deliver payloads in a VTOL fashion that no rotorcraft could ever match. With moderate growth beyond proven airships, a zeppelin could reasonably deliver 500 to 1000 tons anywhere in the world with no concerns for landing strips or terrain. They're also fuel efficient vehicles for their size and speed; the airships of the 1930s had ranges of thousands of miles. If you find the funding to grow rigid airships to the levels allowed by modern materials technology, then you can get into some truly fascinating applications. For example, a 1km-long airship (quite technologically feasible) could have a sea level lift capacity of 20,000 tons (with helium). You probably don't want to use more than half of that for actual lift (allowing operation to 5km altitude, where atmospheric pressure halves), and some of the lift will go to the frame, but it'd still be reasonable to have an airship carry 5000 tons of cargo...and do so at 200kph over tundra, jungle, Siberian wastes, etc. Imagine, for a moment, building a military shipyard in the center of a continent and having an airship carry the resulting destroyers and frigates overland to the ocean... Alternately, imagine building a skyscraper in several factories scattered around a city (or country) and importing the completed sets of floors to stack atop the growing skyscraper. Think how quickly skyscrapers could be assembled if you didn't have to wait for the painstaking completion of the frame, the floors, the walls...just have five or six factories simultaneously building modular sets of floors. With a 50% scale-up to a 1-mile airship (should be quite feasible with Shadowrun's technology, if not SR's rules), the lift capacities get truly awesome, on par with a smallish bulk freighter (20,000 tons payload to 5km altitude; 30,000 tons closer to sea level). When combined with Shadowrun's fusion power plants, you'd have a high speed (200-250kph) shipping capacity that could deliver goods fast enough to compete with conventional oceanic shipping...but wouldn't be limited to oceanic ports. |
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Aug 19 2005, 12:32 PM
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#8
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 639 Joined: 22-April 02 Member No.: 2,638 |
Check out SkyCats for RL examples of what Cray's talking about.
And here's an example of the military using blimps as portable radio towers. |
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Aug 19 2005, 12:45 PM
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#9
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 637 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,528 |
Please excuse me while I go out and shoot some Kraut politicians and MBAs! That's basically CargoLifter but someone in GB was smart enough to generate the necessary financing. Great work Limmeys! Birdy |
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Aug 19 2005, 01:49 PM
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#10
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,546 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
*sigh* You make me pine for Crimson Skies. I've been dying to get my hands on that book. Needless to say, it's 'unusual'.
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Aug 19 2005, 02:58 PM
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#11
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
I have to ask, how big would the airframe have to be to support a small arcology? |
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Aug 19 2005, 03:35 PM
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#12
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Shooting Target Group: Validating Posts: 1,618 Joined: 29-January 03 From: Montevideo, Uruguay. Member No.: 3,992 |
Wait until the metal joints, built by the lowest-bidding contractor, start to get rusty... :evil: |
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Aug 19 2005, 03:40 PM
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#13
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Chicago Survivor Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 5,079 Joined: 28-January 04 From: Canton, GA Member No.: 6,033 |
In the Rigger Black Book, one of the zepplins detailed there was some shadow talk of a group of runners using it as a staging base for a salvage operation, using modified VSTOL aircraft along with modified launch and recovery gear.
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Aug 19 2005, 03:44 PM
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#14
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Shooting Target Group: Validating Posts: 1,618 Joined: 29-January 03 From: Montevideo, Uruguay. Member No.: 3,992 |
Damn, I hope SoLA sees the light at some point. :(
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Aug 19 2005, 03:49 PM
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#15
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,066 Joined: 5-February 03 Member No.: 4,017 |
Well, I haven't tried anything as impressive as industrial use LTA craft, I just work with what's already in the book.
The result: House-zeppelins! Thanks to the joys of suncell and an EFC, your roaming high lifestyle only needs to land to shop and dispose of unwanted, overprocessed biomatter. Since it's EFC and solar, even those tree-hugging (and worse...) hippies can't find much to complain about as you request access into their airspace. It's not hard to make a basic roaming residence with room for 6 that costs less than a single permanent high lifestyle and has comparable amenities. |
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Aug 19 2005, 05:11 PM
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#16
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,428 Joined: 9-June 02 Member No.: 2,860 |
To what standard of living and population? You can probably fit in 1 person into 1-2 tons of mass for all amenities and support equipment, so you can have a town of 5000 in a 1-1.5km airship, albeit in spartan conditions. You want about 10-20 tons per person for a better standard of living - more park space, more business space, etc. - if built with lightweight materials. That'd call for a mile-long airship for 1000-2000 people, which would be a "small arcology" by some definitions. There's a cubic relation between airship scaling and its lift capacity. Double the size, increase the lift 8-fold. Triple it, lift increases 27-fold. |
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Aug 19 2005, 05:16 PM
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#17
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Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445 |
Yeah, but if you build an airship too big, dosen't the weight of it's own materials start dragging it down? Of course, we are talking about using SR's 2060+ smart materials and stuff, but still...
In any event, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and the bigger a target they are. And if you thought Deus was bad taking over the Renraku Arc, give him a mobile platform.... Hoooo boy. |
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Aug 19 2005, 06:07 PM
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#18
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,428 Joined: 9-June 02 Member No.: 2,860 |
No. Big airships get more efficient with their structure. The structural weight of an airship is (roughly) defined by its surface area, while its lift capacity is defined by its volume. If you have two airships of the same shape, but one is a 2-fold scale-up of the other, then... *The larger airship has four times as much structural material as the small one *The larger airship has eight times as much lift as the small one This means that as you scale airships up, you have more spare lift capacity to reinforce the structure than a smaller airship. You can use cheaper and more primitive materials than a smaller airship, or you can use a stronger frame of the same materials. Incidentally, the shrinking amount of surface area compared to lift also means that bigger airships can go faster with less (proportional) horsepower because aerodynamic drag is related to surface area. For each ton of cargo and engine it's carrying, a bigger airship faces less drag (even if the total drag is higher).
Airships can be incredibly tough in some ways. Airships like the Hindenberg had 16 separate gas cells - the loss of one or two might soil underwear, but it wouldn't be a disaster. A big airship like those I proposed earlier can lose up to half their gas cells and, in theory, stay aloft (if they don't have much cargo). (Though rigid airships usually depend on each gas cell carrying its local burden - if you blow too many cells in one spot, that spot will "sink," causing the airship to buckle in that spot.) And those big airships - even something the size of the Hindenberg - have big gas cells. A large bomb is only going to poke a sizable hole in one or two gas cells. Little shrapnel holes won't bother the others. Meter-wide holes on the undersides of gas cells won't bother them. Unless the airship is hydrogen-lift, you can have small wars on big airships and only the insurance company will care. But, yeah, they are big and easy targets. A fighter will find its autocannons are useless, but a brace of contact-fused rockets spread along the hull will cripple an airship. |
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Aug 19 2005, 07:49 PM
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#19
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,362 Joined: 3-October 03 From: Poway, San Diego County, CA, USA Member No.: 5,676 |
I read about that plan a couple years ago. It's way off into the future, but when it happens it will be awesome. They can't make the blimps until they invent some much more efficient solar power cells though.
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Aug 19 2005, 07:50 PM
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#20
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Chicago Survivor Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 5,079 Joined: 28-January 04 From: Canton, GA Member No.: 6,033 |
Another issue with Helium is that at certain altitudes, it will escape no matter what you do, so such vehicles have a built-in safe ceiling.
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Aug 20 2005, 02:05 AM
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#21
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Prime Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,577 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gwynedd Valley PA Member No.: 1,221 |
Cray raises some very good points, but misses a verey important one. all his calculations are based on helium. I believe hydrogen has much less lift. Unless I'm badly off there is only one source for helium in the world and that is the south west of what is today the USA. That would mean that the PCC or the Ute's would have a monopoly. construction and luxury companies might not care but I cannot see UCAS or CAS tying their military to a material that can only come form the NAN.
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Aug 20 2005, 03:32 AM
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#22
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Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445 |
Hydrogen has a lot more lift than helium. However, it also is a lot more explosive.
OMGWTF PWN'd explosive. :) |
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Aug 20 2005, 03:51 AM
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#23
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
New Spell: "Create Hydrogen"
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Aug 20 2005, 04:00 AM
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#24
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Uncle Fisty Group: Admin Posts: 13,891 Joined: 3-January 05 From: Next To Her Member No.: 6,928 |
talk about a multiple application spell. Think about how much it can create (compare to create water for example). THat's going to be a lot of castings.
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Aug 20 2005, 04:00 AM
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#25
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,546 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
Hydrogen is not significantly more flammable than gasoline, however. And wouldn't helium be a natural result of hydrogen fusion reactors? If we could get that going, we'd have something with waste products we could sell.
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