World's Largest Aircraft Crashes Its Second Flight (theverge.com) 173
Not too long after it completed its first test flight, the Airlander 10 -- the world's largest aircraft -- has crashed its second test flight. Since the 300-foot long aircraft contains 38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull, the crash was all but sudden. You can see in a video posted to YouTube from witnesses on the ground that the aircraft slowly descended to the ground, nose first. The BBC has published some close-up photos of the cockpit, which sustained damages. There were no injuries in the crash, according to a tweet from Hybrid Air Vehicles. The company did also deny eyewitness reports of the aircraft being damaged in a collision with a telegraph pole.
well, at least the W10 update didn't do it (Score:2)
Telegraph (?) Pole (Score:5, Funny)
Really? They flew into a telegraph pole? When were they flying it, 1937?
Attention ladies and gentleman and all the ships at sea! The Hun is invading Europe, but airship travel is SAFE!
Re:Telegraph (?) Pole (Score:5, Funny)
Really? They flew into a telegraph pole? When were they flying it, 1937?
I watched the video and distinctly heard someone say "Oh, the humanity!"
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Re: Telegraph (?) Pole (Score:3, Funny)
Yes. It hit 88 mph though briefly momentarily causing a rip in time where it was damaged by a telegraph pole. Dr. Brown who led the test flight was reportedly thrilled with the outcome saying "this should be much safer than the DeLorean."
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At least when we call them telephone poles, it is conceivable that a telephone cable could be attached to it. I have seen telegraph lines before, and last I checked, they were not actually used anymore. Do you commonly receive telegrams?
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The telegraph poles I have seen look nothing like utility poles, but if you think they look alike, good on you.
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The only time I have seen telegraph poles was along I-70 in Maryland, down near Big Pool. They used glass insulators, and it was shaped like an upside down "L".
I am not lying, but no, I have no pictures, as stopping on highways like that to take pictures is an unwise decision. I am not trying to argue, I just think that calling them telegraph poles, after an archaic and outdated technology is odd, as you don't really see actual telegraph lines much anymore, they are a rather rare thing.
rough landing (Score:1)
When will they learn? (Score:2)
Building these things that are at the mercy of the elements is a bad idea.
Re:When will they learn? (Score:5, Informative)
Building these things that are at the mercy of the elements is a bad idea.
This is the set of all things.
Now get out of my cave.
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LOL exactly what I was thinking!
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No to mention all that wasted helium. People should be aware that helium is a non-renewable resource and there are signs that it is becoming scarce.
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Some people refer to solar power as 'renewable'/ It is not but it will continue converting Hydrogen to Helium for a few billion years or so.
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Do we? Helium is so worthless because it is common that most oil wells just vent it into the air. Helium is quite common in the Earth's crust, it really isn't as rare as you might think.
The only Helium shortage we are experiencing is that the US national reserve might run out since they are selling it off as fast as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I think I'd rather lose the party balloons than the experiments in airships.
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They call this thing the world's largest aircraft but it's TINY compared to the Hindenburg
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The Hindenburg isn't an aircraft. Well, not any more anyway. I know Slashdot is a bit slow reporting news but it caught fire and crashed 80 years ago.
Every damn "biggest" ship, plane, tower or building that we've constructed in the past 50 years has been bigger, usually MUCH bigger than anything built 80 or more years ago, so what exactly is your point?
The legendary structures of yesteryear are ordinary or unremarkable compared to what we're capable of building now.
The Titanic *might* land somewhere in the bottom half of 100 biggest ever cruise ships; the storied (sorry) Empire State Bldg is 30th tallest
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Not so much with airships. The age of airships is long over and despite the occasional attempt to bring them back, it will probably never return. The Hindenburgs-class of airships still stands as the largest airships ever built and it's likely that record will never be broken.
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"Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."
Yep, and it's a great landing if they can reuse the plane.
Crash is in the eye of the exaggerator (Score:2)
the aircraft slowly descended to the ground, nose first.
It seems clear why this will leave less of an impact historically than the Hindenburg.
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Indeed. I saw in some of the pictures from earlier a big gash in the envelope that they were putting a temporary patch on. And the crash ripped open the compartment that contains a lot of electronic equipment.
That would have been an unpleasant day with hydrogen. :
Hindenbutt (Score:2)
Hindenbutt: Oh the huge-fannity!
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Hindenbutt: Oh the huge-fannity!
And if it was ALSO a Conservative Talk-Radio host, it would be "Oh, the Sean Hannity. . . . "
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What's the difference between the Hindenburg and Rush Limbaugh?
One is a huge Nazi gasbag, the other is an Airship.
As did all the others. (Score:3)
Every other blimp/helicopter hybrid crashed pretty early on, so this is hardly unexpected. The fundamental problem with all lighter than air craft has been landing, taking off, or being handled on or near the ground. It is an intrinsic weakness that cannot be overcome.
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A design like Airlander 10 is fundamentally a lot more resistant to the common problems that plague blimps during landing, such as susceptability to winds. It has less inherent lift, a smaller cross section, and more ability to anchor itself down with its fans. However, something clearly did not function correctly here. A blimp should never nose down like that. Either lift or thrust was for some reason configured wrong.
Re: As did all the others. (Score:2)
Hmm, actually from rewatching it, maybe it was still in its descent phase. It's common to point downwards and power the craft down to the ground, and then level out when you near the ground. Maybe they had unexpected momentum or loss of low speed maneuvering ability...
Re: As did all the others. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is NOT common, what no pilot would ever do, is to keep the elevators in down-ship position all the way until the thing has crashed into the ground. Watch the video. My guess is control system failure.
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After the crash, the rotatable thruster goes from thusting the nose down position to thrust tilted upward.
Looks a bit like a really late flare.
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He was playing Pokemon Go.
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Gotta catch em all!
Ooo, this airfield is a pokestop, I better spin it one more time before landing.
Less power than a Zeppelin (Score:4, Informative)
The bit about fans doesn't sound like anything new to be honest the engines are less powerful there are less of them so don't add up to the same thrust as was seen in airships which had engines that could pivot in a similar way to this. One airship of the 1920s had five engines - each 410 kW (550 hp). Airlander 10 apparently has four x 350 hp.
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Yes but not 200% or more better :)
Akron + Macon (Score:2)
A quick wikipedia search show that the USS Akron had eight Maybach VL-II 560 hp (420 kW) engines while the Airlander 10 has four x 350 hp engines.
It's a step in front of some other current small blimps but has less ability to thrust itself down than airships of the past.
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Did you also perhaps notice that Akron had 5 times the enclosed volume of the Airlander? Five times as big but only three times the engine power.
Weight of lighter than air vehicles (Score:2)
It's a bit hard to do a comparison on anything other than raw thrust especially since the weight is going to be around the same once the things are full of gas.
On a still day the Akron or any of the others would have far "more ability to anchor itself down with its fans" than the Airlander even if they would perform differently in other ways.
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Both rigid and nonrigid airships in operation are so close to infinite structural rigidity (no significant deformation under operating loads; not infinite strength) that there is no difference in reaction to gusts. As to the difference in cross section, what is the point specifically?
I think there is more similarity to smashing the Staten Island ferry into the dock - something that has been done more than once. They are both crashes. Nothing whatever to do with sinking. On 6 May 1956, the battleship USS Wis
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Wind loading and wind resistance relate to that.
I forgot to add (Score:2)
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Highly debatable, and never proved.
Not significantly. At most it has 1.7 times the mass of an equal volume of air. A blimp has close to 1.0 times. An airplane such as the 747 has over 200 times. The Airlander's susceptibility to wind influence during landing is very, very nearly the same as a blimp, and nothing whatever like an air
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"The fundamental problem with all lighter than air craft has been landing, taking off, or being handled on or near the ground"
In any aircraft, flying is easy. It's only the mandatory part of flying that's hard, landing.
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It's more of a blimp than the Norge or Italia. The "hybrid" bit is hype because tiltable engines have been a feature of blimps and airships all along.
Shiny new materials and a different lifting gas but it's still an awkwardly shaped balloon with engines attached.
Article Needs Tag (Score:5, Funny)
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Obligatory: http://imgur.com/r/woahdude/jA... [imgur.com]
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--
Have gnu, will travel.
That is SO wrong. As someone who has been using various FOSS since before it was FOSS, LMFTFY:
Have gnu, will travail.
Aircraft? (Score:5, Funny)
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There are several terms that could be used, but calling it an "aircraft" is completely accurate.
And as for that picture ... damn, son!
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Airplanes, helicopters, and airships are all aircraft, Skippy.
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Actually it is an IFO.
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It's a craft, it goes it the air, therefore...
38,000 cubic meters of helium? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?
Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium? (Score:5, Funny)
The helium shortage is a myth! It is a lie perpetuated by Big Noble Gas to drive up prices!
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
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Sigh, not this "blimps causing a critical helium shortage" meme [slashdot.org] yet again....
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Should have used Hydrogen.
Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium? (Score:5, Informative)
An MRI machine needs 1,700 litres of liquid helium, which needs to be topped off regularly. That's the equivalent of 12,724 cubic meters. The airship needs 38,000 cubic meters of helium, which I assume also needs to be topped off regularly.
In other words, the airship uses Helium at the rate of three MRI machines (according to my layman calculation). I'm not making a judgement one way or another. I just wanted to quantify the comparison.
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And, I bet it costs more to purify and liquefy the helium for MRI machines than it does for the gas itself.
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You forgot the Liquid to Gas conversion.
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We can fill it with hydrogen if you want cheap out
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We can fill it with hydrogen if you want cheap out
Put the ship on dihydrogenoxide instead. You don't live near a source? Move?!
Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium? (Score:5, Interesting)
The helium market is more complicated than people think. MRIs and superconductors need very pure helium, often in liquid form. Party balloons and (I assume) airships don't. So when helium becomes contaminated with air (which it does very easily) what do you do? Answer, you mainly vent it to the atmosphere, because your average research institute or hosptial can't possibly afford to install the equipment to recover pure (and possibly liquid) helium (what they need) from a helium-air gas mix. It makes more sense to sell the helium-air mix to balloon and airship manufacturers.
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Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?
1. MRI needs high purity helium. Airships do not.
2. Helium reserves are running out. That's because the government is flooding the market with it for cheap and because of that price no one is capturing it.
3. A large portion of helium originated from mining for natural gas. We still mine for natural gas. We were producing more helium in the 70s than we were doing now purely due to economics. The government wanted it in the 70s which made it economical. If the price rises it will be economical to increase pro
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Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?
That kind of thinking is so sixty days ago [cnn.com].
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Because capitalism and/or free markets rarely if ever work correctly?
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Capitalism! (Score:5, Interesting)
the real tragedy here is not the crash, but the fact that 38000 cubic meters of a very rare gas used for everything from advanced medical diagnostics to research into superconductors and even nuclear fusion is squandered into a single aircraft that cant be bothered to run through a computational fluid thermodynamics simulation before enjoying public humiliation.
im sure it sounds callous, but i hope this thing takes a life next time because clearly no ones thought through the ramifications of such a wasteful endeavour.
Hypothetically speaking, suppose someone offered you a job at that company (and you lived near enough for an easy commute, and so on) for $100,00/yr. Would you take it?
Or would you refuse, knowing that the helium could be put to better use in other ways?
Now suppose you own an MRI company. Do you spend part of your profits purchasing stores of Helium for future use, or do you pocket the profits (or give it to shareholders) and hope that societal pressure will fix the problem sometime in the future?
Or that governments will step in and do something about the Helium supply?
Welcome to capitalism.
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It is capitalism that will likely save the helium. If it is as rare as people say then the price will reflect that, that's capitalism.
As prices rise the ability for people to afford helium for things like airships diminishes. As prices rise it becomes affordable for people to invest in new ways to obtain helium and pay for ways to prevent it being lost.
If we have the government dictate that no one can use helium for fuel saving airships like this then you have tyranny.
Seems rather unfair that we must choo
Re:Capitalism! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, quite the opposite. The cost of Helium depends not on how rare it is, but how much it costs to extract it from the ground. Since it's actually a byproduct of natural gas production, the cost of extracting it is cheap (basically, free) and the main cost is actually the cost of separating it from the methane, storage, and transport. Because of this, a lot of helium isn't even captured and instead is vented to the atmosphere, where it eventually escapes to space. Why? Because capitalism. It's not profitable to capture it, so it's not captured. Nevermind that it's a non-renewable resource used for many important applications that has no substitute available. So Helium is cheap, until all of sudden it won't be.
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The helium supply issues aren't due to capitalism, they're due to the US government fucking around with their massive stockpile they're supposed to be selling off.
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The helium supply issues aren't due to capitalism, they're due to the US government fucking around with their massive stockpile they're supposed to be selling off.
Rubbish. The helium supply issues are due to the fact that helium continuously escapes from the atmosphere into space, and is frittered away wastefully on toys such as party balloons and blimps.
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But most helium is produced as a by-product of natural gas production, no? So you've got to either store it, use it, or vent it.
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Store it, we have a winner. It is no great trick to find a capitalist willing to store a commodity that is certain to appreciate in value substantially in the future.
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There is over a billion cubic metres of helium stored by the US government. The price fluctuations are due to them saying they were going to sell it all off, then not selling at the rate they said.
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How cool is that?
Room temperature.
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If it was pressurised at ambient temperature then you let it all out, it would be colder than ambient temperature.
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Except in this case, no helium escaped in the crash.
I'm sure they can make the next crash better though.
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the real tragedy here is not the crash, but the fact that 38000 cubic meters of a very rare gas used for everything from advanced medical diagnostics to research into superconductors and even nuclear fusion is squandered into a single aircraft that cant be bothered to run through a computational fluid thermodynamics simulation before enjoying public humiliation.
im sure it sounds callous, but i hope this thing takes a life next time because clearly no ones thought through the ramifications of such a wasteful endeavour.
I am sure they were doing it to lower the carbon footprint of air travel and fight Global Warming,
Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull (Score:4, Interesting)
the real tragedy here is not the crash, but the fact that 38000 cubic meters of a very rare gas used for everything from advanced medical diagnostics
Let me stop you right there and start correcting you before you even finish your sentence.
1. 38000 cubic meters is not a lot of helium. It's about the same as used in a big MRI machine, maybe a tad more. But two small MRI machines already use more gas than this.
2. Helium is such a very rare gas that we vent it to the atmosphere as a byproduct of extracting natural gas from the ground. It's such a rare gas that we can extract close to 2 orders of magnitude more of it from the air than some other noble gasses. Basically it's not rare at all.
If you were remotely concerned about helium you'd be attacking the people who use it for cryogenic freezing of lines, or for welding, or those who vent it to atmosphere because they couldn't be screwed capturing / purifying it (which doesn't make economic sense anyway), not this airship which has used a pittance of the total helium used for lifting purposes which is using somewhere about 10% of the worlds helium supply and doesn't rely on high purity like your medical machines do.
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very rare gas
Uhh... even on Earth it isnt that rare, otherwise we would not be putting it in party balloons.
What is it really? (Score:1)
How does this thing qualify as an "aircraft" rather than "airship"?
Seriously [youtube.com].
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How does this thing qualify as an "aircraft" rather than "airship"?
I totally agree. That was the lamest crash vid I've ever seen.
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Because an airship is a type of aircraft, ignoramus.
Videos of slow things crashing (Score:2)
After watching the video, it reminded me of other things crashing very, very slowly. [youtube.com] Though this one wasn't quite as entertaining.
I know what this means (Score:5, Funny)
Ryanair is going to order fifty of them.
The most amazing part (Score:5, Insightful)
The crash happened so fast.... (Score:2)
Glad to Hear the Crew is Safe (Score:2)
"did also deny" - WTF? (Score:2)
Is this an americanism? i.e. the use of 'did' to clumsily change a present-tense verb into past-tense, instead of just using the past-tense form of the verb (e.g. 'denied' rather than 'did deny' or 'also denied' rather than 'did also deny').
At first i thought it was just bad writing, but I've been seeing it a lot lately.
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OH THE... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 2016-08-24 17:07 (#52765709)
*cough* ... ...ties shoelaces ... ... ...
HUMANITY!
LMAO I nominate this for Funniest Post of the Year!
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Regardless of how much ground crew (an expense, by the way, that Airlander is designed to minimize) you have, blimps are not supposed to land nose down. This is a Problem(TM) that needs to be investigated and fixed.
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That's great if you only want to land where a ground vehicle already exists.
Somewhat limiting requirement though don't you think?
Although I'm sure you thought of that already down the pub with your napkin.
Re: Ground crewing issue. (Score:3)
Duh! It carries the ground vehicle with it and drops it by parachute or with a bit of string.
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Wasted? It's still all contained in the airship. If someone needs it for another use, they can buy it.
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Airships are marvellous, nearly perfect aircraft for applications where speed is not vital and severe weather is not an issue.
So, never?