> There's no doubt they'll be big, but will they be practical, economically viable and successful?
Frankly no.
Its like every few years people remember about airships and suddenly start shouting how its the answer to the world's problems.
I mean, just search here on HN... 11 years ago there was "Blimpocracy - Is the airship the transportation system of the future?"[1] .... now here we are 11 years later, and, well, yeah ...
The trouble is that the present system already works well.
If it's not urgent, you can put tons of it on a massive ship. That ship can make multiple stops along the way.
If it's urgent, you can put it on a plane. Modern airfreight is reasonably efficient and not that expensive.
I really don't see what airships all bring to the party. Except perhaps being a slow-moving target for miscreants and bringing high-profile failures in newspaper headlines.
As for the people who say combine AI + airships ... yeah, like that's going to seriously happen any time soon. AI can't even do FSD in a Tesla properly yet. Putting AI in an airship, in today's complex busy airspace, add in real-life weather conditions and real-life technical issues ... yeah, erm, thanks but no thanks.
In general, where there's limited infrastructure, there's limited demand for infrastructure.
I can't speak for Kazakhstan, but most of rural Alaska is adequately serviced using tiny Cessna-sized aircraft for shipping, and the parts that aren't (say, Prudhoe Bay) already have existing ground and/or marine infrastructure to supply them.
> What about places with limited rail/roads like Alaska and Kazakhstan?
What about them ?
If there's no cargo facility there already, then nobody's going to suddenly turn up and build an airshipport (or whatever you want to call it).
The way modern day logistics works is like an inverse pyramid, you fly/ship/train in bulk somewhere, and then you go smaller and smaller scale to the remote/rural areas ... right down to a man on a bicycle or whatever.
Cargo airships, IF they ever happen, are not going to change the fundamental way modern logistics works. Basic economies of supply and demand. Sending the man on the bicycle will always be the cheapest and most sensible option for remote areas where only a handful of people live, especially if they live many miles from each other (e.g. rural farming).
As I recall, about 1/3 of the population of Alaska is in the vicinity of Anchorage which has a port and is connected to Fairbanks by road. Juneau, the third largest city, is also on the water--as are other cities in Southeast Alaska. Many other cities--such as they are (the 4th largest city in Alaska has a population of 20,000)--are also on the ocean.
> "I really don't see what airships all bring to the party"
Heavy lift. Put hundreds of tons of house(s) from a house factory or skyscraper level(s) from a skyscraper factory on them, airlift them to the building site around the country.
Centralise most of the building work in one efficient scaled up factory, deliver an enormous buildings quickly piece by piece by air instead of slowly by having all the parts driven around windy roads and through closed city streets and assembled by a crews of people travelling to the building site and home every day.
they could automate overseas transport of (e.g. fruit and other time-critical) cargo, with no pilots and very much reduced fligth costs, while being much faster then ships. Then off the coast its remote take-over and steering towards the freight air-port of destination.
The critical part here is good enough automation to keep the thing on track and prevent accidents, while not trying to integrate it into the airways like a traditional plane.
They might even over time grow into a "2nd class - slow - but cheaper transport" for people in no hurry, but with limited funds.
It is highly unlikely that uncrewed cargo aircraft will be allowed to operate in most US airspace any time soon. They can't reliably see and avoid other aircraft operating under VFR, and so are restricted to only limited designated airspace.
Airships are unable to cruise at high altitude due to loss of lift, and are vulnerable to damage from severe weather. For ocean routes it's not always possible to route around storms.
People keep wanting cargo airships to be a thing for some reason. It's not likely to happen. The costs are too high and the range of potential applications too limited to produce a real industry. At most we might see some limited military use where cost is less of a factor.
If/when forecasts will be good enough to only dispatch and route airships when they can be safely flown to either destination or safe harbor, is the wildcard I could imagine to make them viable options. But as you say, is the niche large enough to make work?
I think the pull for wanting them isn't so strange - they offer the promise of much lower fuel costs, which is a big stigma and problem of current aircraft.
The atmosphere is a chaotic system. How could forecasts be improved enough to enable safe flights across the Pacific Ocean during storm season?
Concerns over fuel costs seem a bit silly as those are only a fraction of air cargo costs. There are significant fuel efficiency improvements already in the development pipeline with lighter composite structures, higher aspect ratio wings, open rotor turbine engines, and perhaps even blended wing-body fuselages.
Not an option under current FAA rules. The available optical sensors are still generally inferior to human eyes in terms of dynamic range, depth perception, and slew rate. The US military does fly remote-piloted aircraft (Predators being the most prominent example) but they're only allowed to operate in limited pieces of designated airspace due to the risk of midair collisions.
Communications reliability and latency is a problem. We still have no way to guarantee solid bidirectional comms. The mishap rate for RPVs is much higher than for comparable manned aircraft.
I'm not comfortable relying on these being crewless, I've seen too many mobility projects die. When freight trains and trucks can operate crewed, a cargo airship will have no different rules to profitability.
I don't think you can send perishable goods via a very slow and delay prone transport medium. More likely this can be used for the opposite sort of goods: durable, low urgency supplies.
They are only 'very slow' when compared to aircraft, which are kind of poor vehicles for transporting cargo in the first place.
A dirigible flying with the jetstream is almost twice as fast as a cargo ship doing the same.
I think they're impractical for lots and lots of other reasons, and your "delay-prone" critique is probably salient, but "slow" needs to be contextualized somewhat.
Twice as fast as a cargo ship is still only 50kph right?
And the Jet stream only goes one way and only West to East (in the northern hemisphere) and only at certain latitudes right?
So if you're only competing against cargo ships. And you happen to want to head East (only, no returns). And you need to go faster than a ship, but not over 100kph. And you are already at the right latitude and so it your destination. And you're cargo is not going to perish any time soon, and is not too dense, then this can work?
You're exactly right, but perhaps missed that the trade route you're describing is China to Los Angeles, which alone accounts for $132 billion in trade every year, and perhaps that cargo vessels allegedly account for 20-25% of anthropomorphic carbon emissions.
Also probably worth pointing out that airships going against the jetstream are still faster than cargo ships which are also going against sea currents.
I'll repeat my disclaimer again here, that "I think they're impractical for lots and lots of other reasons" but there is a definite benefit to cutting the carbon emissions of the world's most popular trade route by 90% and halving the time spent in transit even if you assume that there are no other applications, which is probably not correct.
I also find the idea of "they have to land at a airport" pretty murderous for autonomous vehicles. Like no they do not. They can deliver cargo to autonomous barges, which then deliver the cargo slow and steady and reliable to cargo terminals. No autonomous vehicle ever has to touch land..
100%. It seems obvious when thought about (but most people haven't thought about it) -- but airships don't need runways. Moreover, the only land-space that needs to be accommodated for them is the footprint, so a landing spot could be on the top of a skyscraper within a city center, or a parking lot, stadium, etc.
And that's not even counting the possibilities for water landings
