=FUTURE>FLIGHT - an airship story - Part 2

It's been a while since Paul Boldt sent us his first installment of =Future>Flight but today it's time for part 2. For those who missed part one go ahead and read it before reading part two, so that you are up to date.
Airshipworld: =FUTURE>FLIGHT - an airship story - Part 1
and now follows part two of our FurtureFi Story

=FUTURE>FLIGHT

Installment Two: Whale Stats
©2007 by Paul Boldt

The ship being: 300 meters long, 66 meters wide and had a height of 37.5 meters. With 282,150 cubic meters of biohelium capacity (helium mixed with a freefloating adjustable agent that regulated the helium temperature for optimum lift) the ship had a gross lift of 302 cubic tons less the ships weight of 180 cubic tons left a useful load of 122 cubic tons for fuel, passengers and crew, luggage, food and supplies. With the tanks topped off with biodiesel fuel she would fly 8062 kilometers at a cruising speed of 140 kph with a full load of passengers with their needed entourage for a total of 225 very exclusive people. Wink. For shorter flights, as this one would be, the amount of people or cargo carried could go up quite a bit as less fuel weight was needed thus increasing the amount of people carried.

Hitting the translation button automatically pulled the key figures from his speech and displayed for me the English conversions of:

Length: 984.252 feet
Width: 216.535 feet
Height: 123.031 feet
Helium: 9,994,033 Cubic Feet
Gross Lift: 665,577 lbs / 332.6938 short ton / 297.0696 long ton
Ships Weight: 396,832 lbs
Useful Load: 201,170 lbs
Range: 5010 miles
Cruising speed: 87 mph (it’s not about the speed it’s about the journey!< I added that part)

Since the ship would be hugging land (advertising revenues) the miles would be roughly 1500 miles each way. Thus with less fuel needed (2000 less miles to fly), the ship could carry an additional 80,720 lbs of cargo or additional people (not actually just 80,870lbs of people because the airships weight would increase due to including the weight of additional modular staterooms installed and food and drinks... don’t forget the libations!) This trip it’d be additional cargo revenues to the Bahamas, no additional living space needed.

The airship would be stopping (well circling in the air) down the coast in New Bern, NC while he (Ole’ Wiley) met with some Senators, and he said that I should try to get out to Topsail Island someday and find some fossilized shark teeth that can be found on the beaches there.

I think I kind of blew it when I said to him that this trip would probably be better than what I usually do when I fly the jet filled skies (translation: fly on a jet-airliner) and I toss back four scotches and strap in for a flight to Florida, and I sure hope the guy up in the driver's seat is making more money than your average entry-level New York immigrant limo driver, or even my own salary, and I'd even be willing to pay the extra thirty bucks per ticket if that what it would take.  Tack on a couple more bucks and make sure there are a few sky marshals flying incognito too.

It's not unreasonable; I'll pay it.  Just lay out the need for it and charge me for it without the gimmicks.  Well, maybe some extra peanuts would be nice.

He kind of looked at me, and then started talking to Lemming, VP of acquisitions. Well maybe I should have gotten into work early and made the regular boarding, would have saved me the extra G.

... to be continued

Well that's it. Did you enjoy the second part of =Future>Flight? If so leave a comment or send us an email. Let us know if we should continue feeding you bite sized pieces of airship fiction.