Boeing and SkyHook have announced plans to develop airships intended to lift up to 80,000 of heavy machinery, lumber, or other industrial stuff into remote areas, sans roads.
This news prompted a great riff for me, suggesting applications for relieving cross-town commutes in dense urban areas, not to mention becoming a great marketing opportunity.
First, we're not talking about your grandfather's Hindenburg.
The proposed SkyHook JHL-40 looks like a dirigible pulled straight out of a computer videogame, or maybe some steampunk fantasy. It's sleek like a giant, flying egg, powered by reliable Chinook helicopter rotors, and buoyant thanks to a lighter-than-air gas other than flammable hydrogen.
It'll be slow and traverse only short distances (200+ miles before needing a gas refill of one sort or another), which is why its designers have targeted industrial uses which the zeppelin could could actually complete faster, and execute for a longer period of time than currently available options.
Think remote roads, funny-sized materials, and you can see the potential.
But what about moving people?
Imagine that the JHL-40s get into service sometime around 2012, and rack up however many thousands of the flight hours/miles required to qualify as safe:
- It might make for a better way to get across Manhattan during a weekday. Picture the Staten Island Ferry, only in the sky and traversing Midtown. Another line could traipse the island from top to bottom. Speed wouldn't be an issue, as any movement would be an improvement over surface street gridlock. Picture getting from Burbank to Santa Monica. Or from your hotel to DisneyWorld. I'd put money on the likelihood that somebody in Boeing's government affairs office is already figuring out the regulatory hurdles, of which there are certainly many
- Maybe it provides an airplane alternative for leisure travelers? Imagine a jet flying to a destination that could be served by a zeppelin that took twice as long to get there; if price were, say, half as much, lots of vacationers might line up to buy tickets. How about rides that are themselves destinations, like floating casinos or, well, brothels? I wonder how far decency and tax laws extend into the upper atmosphere
- What about becoming giant, floating billboards? I'm seeing that blimp in the movie Blade Runner, with a loudspeaker intoning "...a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies..." The technology exists to bring photo-realistic imagery to a thin, light screen, so this use would be a great improvement over those flimsy couple-of-word banners that trail the prop planes buzzing beaches this summer.
Shipping industrial stuff is a smart idea for this new/old tech, but moving pedestrians (and branding) might be the bigger opportunity.
This dim bulb is volunteering for the project.
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