Aeroscraft

The Worldwide Aeros Corp. is a company that has been around for 20 years now. And is actively developing airships they just recently got a FAA Type Certification for their 40D Sky Dragon Airship, which is also being used in China for a broadcasting and advertising mission. The 40D Sky Dragon is a small Airship compared to the Zeppelin NT, the Sky Dragon has a length of 46.6 m whereas the Zeppelin has a length of 75m. Also the number of seats in the Sky Dragon is much smaller, with just 5 compared to 12 in the Zeppelin. But let's not talk about the small stuff. Aeros is also working on something big, something really big. It is called the Aeroscraft a concept Airship which would surpass everything ever built the super Airliner would be around 200 meters long and could carry over 500 tons of cargo. Compared to the round about 11 Tons of usable lift that the Hindenburg had quite the big ship. But aeros seems to understand that such a huge airship can not be built easily in one step, thus their plan is to start with the ML16 having "just" 5.4 tons of useful payload and move in numerous steps all the way up to 500 tons . The website is worth a look, since they provide information about what the airship is gonna be used for and has some renderings of how it could look like.


There has been an Email circulating about exactly this airship, this is the complete text:

Even though the Aeroscraft dwarfs the largest commercial airliners, it requires less net space on the ground than any plane because it doesn't need a runway. The airship takes off and lands like a helicopter: straight up and down.

This is not a Blimp. It's a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel. It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their well-appointed staterooms.

Unlike its dirigible ancestor s, the Aeroscraft is not lighter than air. Its 14 million cubic feet of helium hoist only two-thirds of the craft's weight. The rigid and surprisingly aerodynamic body - driven by huge rearward propellers - generates enough additional lift to keep the behemoth and its 400-ton payload aloft while cruising.

During takeoff and landing, six turbofan jet engines push the ship up or ease its descent. This two football-fields-long concept airship is the brainchild of Igor Pasternak, whose privately funded California firm, Worldwide Aeros Corporation, is in the early stages of developing a prototype and expects to have one completed by 2010. Pasternak says several cruise ship companies have expressed interest in the project, and for good reason: The craft would have a range of several thousand miles and, with an estimated top speed of 174 mph, could traverse the continental U.S. in about 18 hours. During the flight, passengers would peer at national landmarks just 8,000 feet below or,if they weren't captivated by the view, the cavernous interior would easily accommodate such amenities as luxury staterooms, restaurants, even a casino. To minimize noise, the aft-mounted propellers will be electric, powered by a renewable source such as hydrogen fuel cells. A sophisticated buoyancy-management system will serve the same purpose as trim on an airplane, allowing for precise adjustments in flight dynamics to compensate for outside conditions and passenger movement.

The automated system will draw outside air into compartments throughout the ship and compress it to manage onboard weight. On a pressurized plane, windows like these would explode outward. The Aeroscraft does not fly high enough to need pressurization.

The company envisions a cargo-carrying version that could deliver a store's worth of merchandise from a centralized distribution center straight to a Wal-Mart parking lot or, because the helium-filled craft will float, a year's worth of supplies to an offshore oil rig.
"You can land on the snow, you can land on the water," Pasternak says. "It's a new vision of what can be done in the air."

Well seeing the first prototype in 2010 doesn't look like we are gonna see lot's of those things in the sky soon but it is an ambitious project which we would like to see succeed.