![]() ![]() It’s also possible that once airships break into the market, other uses may be discovered. “Airships can serve numerous missions ranging from humanitarian relief to natural resource extraction to heavy cargo operations. “We have identified a need for a safe and sustainable solution that can deliver heavy cargo and personnel to remote communities that have little to no infrastructure.” ![]() “Demand is created when customers have unmet needs,” says Robert Boyd, Lockheed’s programme manager. When Lockheed have secured the double-digit orders for their airship that they want the assembly line will be at a Lockheed Martin factory in Palmdale. Like its British rivals, Lockheed first built a technological demonstrator as proof of concept, but – unlike HAV – they are only now in the early stages of development of the prototype. Launched at the Paris Air Show in 2015, the LMH-1 is similar in size and shape to the Airlander. Engineers and pilots have spent whole careers in an industry that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. New, bigger, hi-tech airships were built by Zeppelin in Germany. The American Blimp Corporation manufactured airships for advertising. The US Navy continued to use blimps for anti-submarine warfare during World War Two. In the history books, the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 marked the end of the brief, glorious era of the airship – except it didn’t. They expect there to be about 150 of these airships floating around the world within 10 years. The manufacturers have some Boeing-sized ambitions for this new age of the airship. Its job: heavy lifting in some of the toughest places on Earth. ![]() About the same time, a vast new airship the shape of a blue whale, at 150m the length of an A380 and as high as a 12-storey building should rise up above its assembly plant, out of the heat and humidity of Jingmen, China. The Airlander won’t be alone in the skies either.
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