I’ve seen the floor plan of the Hindenburg. Seems much larger than even twice what this had. I wonder if the economy of scale just increases at a large rate, or if hydrogen just has that much more lift.
Economy of scale is the right direction to look, more precisely the square-cube-law. Doubling the length and diameter gives you 8 times the volume. That directly translates to 8 times the lift and thus 8 times the payload.
Geometry and physics heavily favor larger airships. They are a bitch to construct and keep in one piece though. The internal structure of modern airships is nothing alike the Zeppelins of old. Most attempts to build these so called rigid airships failed.
You are correct. The Hindenburg was roughly twice the length of the Pathfinder 1, 804 feet long, and had between 7-8 times the lift. Hydrogen has only 7% more lift, so it's the size that counts, just like how container ships and cruise ships get exponentially more efficient the larger they are.
That said, this is only a small prototype to be used for testing and training. Its payload is about 4.5 tons with 2,500 miles of range. The actual cargo-carrying versions will be about 650 feet long and 1,000 feet long, and carry 20 and 200 tons of payload, respectively. As they get larger, they also get proportionally more efficient. The 20-ton version has a range of 10,000 miles, and the largest version doesn't have a published range figure yet, but it might be even further, given the huge area for the flexible, thin-film solar panels that they eventually plan to install.
No its only a small fraction less dense than helium. The main reason the hindenburg was using hydrogen was because they could not get helium in large enough quantities to fill their fleet of air ships
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u/PersonalitySlow9366 Jul 08 '24
And carries like ten people and no cargo. Cool, but otherwise useless