Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Is anybody buying this?

Their numbers just don't add up

A blimp that size just MIGHT have sufficient lift capability to carry a single M-1A1 Abrams tank, but I doubt it. Those tanks weight over 60 tons each, so I suspect the blimp wouldn't have sufficient lift capacity to carry more than one.

If the vehicle is a hybrid design like the project described in "The Deltiod Pumpkin Seed", it would combine aerodynamic lift with the static lift from helium. However, that design requires a runway and is unable to hover unless it has burnt off a lot of fuel.

A large blimp like that, with limited lift capability, would have marginal usefulness as a military transport. It wouldn't be able to carry as much payload as a C-5 which flies many times faster. It'd be faster than a ship but could only carry a tiny fraction of the payload. They could be built to operate out of relatively short, unimproved fields but a C-17 can already do that.

Where a vehicle like that could be useful is for a very high altitude surveillance platform, most likely unmanned. Such designs have been proposed before for missions like electronics intelligence gathering, communications relay, battlefield surveillance, and even AWACS. An unmanned version could fly at very high altitudes for many days at a time. Combine the high altitudes with stealth and it'd be a hard vehicle to detect and destroy. Flying around big, fat, and slow at low altitudes like the article suggests would be pretty dumb because it would be very vulnerable.

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