Featured Image Credit: Aeros
Our futures could be taking some influence from our past, as a 555-foot airship could be floating into Los Angeles. As the likes of Musk and Bezos take to the stars to explore the cosmos, most of us are happy flying around at 30,000 feet in a standard passenger plane.
Since 2005, the world's biggest commercial passenger plane has been the Airbus A380. Boasting a wingspan of nearly 80 meters, a maximum takeoff weight of 565.92 tons, and enough room to hold 850 passengers, you can't exactly miss one flying above you.
We've come a long way from the Wright Brothers' first manned flight of a heavier-than-air craft in 1903, and similarly, we've hopefully learned from the mistakes of the past following the hydrogen airship disaster of the Hindenburg.
While the Hindenburg was thankfully the last of the great airship disasters, they're still used for niche purposes like advertising and even military surveillance.
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You might've seen how Amazon can now deliver your packages by drone, or what about self-driving KFC delivery trucks? Now, a concept from designer Igor Pasternak reveals a giant floating warehouse that can deliver all sorts of colossal packages to places around the globe.
Whether providing wind turbines as humanitarian aid or floating above Los Angeles as a giant delivery warehouse, Pasternak is adamant that airships could be a solution to our not-so-distant future.
As reported by FlightGlobal, the Aeros Aeroscraft concept could soar to a whopping 555ft in length, and with a cargo hold around twice that of a Boeing 747-800, it's hard to get your head around just how big this would be. If you want to crunch the numbers, the ML866 airship could carry 8,800 square feet of cargo, which equals 66 metric tons.
Despite just being an idea, Pasternak is confident these giant airships could start testing with one of the in-production airships before the end of the year.
Even though a trial above Los Angeles will use a Sky Dragon airship (effectively a 900kg payload surveillance platform), the designer says it will prove the concept.
He's partnered with a drone delivery and fulfillment company called Shipbots, with an Aeroscraft production line next on the to-do list: "First, we want to prove the commercial business model. Then it is about scaling."
In terms of what makes Aeroscraft so special when compared to the vehicles Aeros has been building for 30 years, the latest innovation uses a system that's similar to a submarine's ballast.
With compressed helium being released back into a hull’s tanks and forcing out air to create lift, he refers to this as the 'holy grail': "This type of airship must be able to pick up and drop parcels without landing. Its buoyancy control keeps it stable and means it does not need to touch the ground, so can operate anywhere."
After raising enough money, Pasternak wants to establish an assembly line in either California or Nevada, hoping to get three ML806s in production by 2027.
An IPO later this decade could raise funds for an even bigger ML888 that could potentially operate with intercontinental operations.
As the 2016 list price for an A380 was $432.6 million, we dread to think what this Goliath will cost.
