![]() These are almost impossible to transport on normal roads and moving from factory to wind farm poses a significant challenge, which could be solved by the airship. The biggest windmill today, The Haliade-X offshore turbine has a 220-meter rotor, and a 107-meter blade. And some of the largest windmill manufacturers collaborate on having airships transport windmills. You can already pre-order an airship cruise to the North Pole. Airships could also replace cruise ships and even commercial heavy lifting to areas with low infrastructure without much redesign. Where consumers usually choose planes for their speed, slower transport is steadily becoming more popular with the slow living movement, nostalgia and green consciousness. Even hydrogen could be safely compartmentalized to avoid a comparable disaster. Although largely discontinued as a means of passenger transport after the Hindenburg disaster, there is an argument to be made that replacing hydrogen with helium, will open many new possibilities for the airship. They still can’t compete with a big multi-seat airplane on many levels, but they could possibly pave the way for a different vision and new regulation.Ī low hanging fruit is to reconsider the commercial use of the airship. They surfaced when distributed electric motors became efficient enough to compete with central motors. The eVTOLs are a result of different techs bundled together. The ideas below illustrate this approach (ignoring for now the pitfalls, challenges and expensive development), if one were to bet or invest in new alternatives to air travel.Ĭurrently, I think the big attempt at a paradigm shift is happening by merging the typologies of a helicopter and the electric car in some way. ![]() Updated versions of some historical ideas could soon be feasible, or more likely, parts of them could be appropriated in new combinations to shape new typologies.Ĭombining ideas or clashing them is actually a very successful technique for ideation and innovation. Many of these ideas might have been ahead of their time, and that time could be coming very soon. ![]() Over the years, however, we’ve seen a number of alternative designs for air travel, which weren’t necessarily discarded for objective reasons. In the case of air travel, the obvious examples would respectively be regular airplanes with electro fuels and eVTOLs (electric vertical take-off and landing). It is often assumed that a clean sheet approach entails further development of validated technology or radically new tech. That is, of course, if we believe that incremental improvements to existing designs is the only way forward.Īnother approach is to look at clean sheet designs. Compared to urban transport, which with the right support could be made emission-free fairly quickly, it will be almost a decade before technology improvements (green fuels, batteries, solar powered planes) will allow airplanes to roam the skies without polluting at the levels they do today. The pandemic has only highlighted that we need innovative solutions for long distance travel. To mitigate emissions as part of adapting to the climate crisis, we’ve yet to solve how to create sustainable cross-continental travel and transport solutions.
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