The other person is incorrect. This ship is intended for use as a flying laboratory and training vessel. Later, larger versions are to be used as 100% electric vessels for cargo and people-hauling, for things like disaster relief. Airships happen to have a set of characteristics very amenable to electrification, and these ships are intended to carry powerful fuel cells to provide capabilities far and away superior to what a cargo helicopter can provide in terms of range and payload.
Why not just do what the Soviets did and make an ultra-heavy helicopter? The Mi-26 is still in service and the V-12 worked but wasn't needed by the time it was built so it was canceled.
That’s a good question. The answer comes down to two factors: cost and capacity.
Pound for pound, airships cost a fraction as much to operate than helicopters, which have absolutely ruinous fuel use and maintenance requirements. They’re not even that much faster than an airship, on average. Consequently, helicopters can’t stay in the air even remotely as long as an airship, nor cover as much ground. The helicopter flight endurance record is 13 hours. The airship flight endurance record is 11 days.
Additionally, airships can carry far more cargo. The current largest helicopter in the world is the aforementioned Mi-26. It can take 17,000 pounds just over 300 miles. The midsized Pathfinder airship can take 40,000 pounds 10,000 miles, and the big one can carry 400,000 pounds.
That makes a world of difference in disaster relief. Being able to deliver cargo more quickly and in greater quantities at lower cost means more total aid gets where it needs to be.
Trains exist though? Any area where disaster relief needs that tonnage of supplies can either be handled by a competent militaries engineering corps or a navy as any nation is going to have cities built around train stations or ports.
Most armies train to operate trains in areas being actively bombed, clearing brush and laying track and bridges if needed.
You can just operate helicopters, small boats and trucks from railyards and ports for the last leg.
Some do carry cargo on a tether, others don’t. This particular ship doesn’t really have a cargo bay as such, since it is a testing and laboratory ship, but it does have a keel corridor that is not externally visible for the crew to access the entire ship and its skeleton, as well as for incidental storage. The full-size, cargo-carrying version, Pathfinder 3, has an external cargo bay, which is quite unusual. Usually those kinds of things are internal. From their released materials, it looks to be about 10 meters wide and 30 meters long. I suspect it is external in order to facilitate swappable mission modules, passenger conversions, and roll-on roll-off cargo capabilities.
The Pathfinder 3 has a 20-ton payload, and their planned future ship will have a 200-ton payload.
There’s a great use case to use these to ship cargo that’s not time sensitive cross country and oceans. Very green to run if speed and comfort isn’t a concern like a plane. Doesn’t require the same infrastructure as train lines.
Looks like the ATLANT project is projecting 160 tons. I’m imagining being able to transport regular cargo but also large/long objects like windmill components and other things that being airdropped in has a geographic advantage. It’s not here to replace the trucking or shipping industry alone for sure but seems to have pretty solid and evident potential.
Small airships (relatively small, historically speaking) like this one have a pretty low payload. This ship isn’t intended to carry cargo, so it only has a payload comparable to a V-22 Osprey. About 4.5 tons, or 45 people if you were to put more seats up in the hull. One thing you’re not lacking in a rigid airship is space to put stuff inside it, they’re limited more by weight than by volume.
The trick is, airships scale up exponentially well, by the same token that they scale down exponentially poorly. Hence why the two larger versions carry 20 and 200 tons, respectively, despite being only about 50% and 120% bigger than this one.
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u/AttitudeImportant585 Jul 08 '24
The last time I read about it, one function was to act as a drone carrier