Chinese airships

SteelBird said:

Back to WWII, US airships were filled with helium, and German airships were mostly filled with hydrogen because helium wasn't vastly available in Germany while the US had great stockpile of them. When airships became outdated, the US sold most of their helium reserve and it is rarely available today. Does anyone know what kind of gas which was filled in these airships?

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Feel free to correct me if Im wrong but I think I read it somewhere that helium was more freely available as it was a by product of natural gas production.

wasn't some American aircraft company playing around with airships with the object of using them as long endurance surveillance craft for the middle east/afghanistan? only a couple of years or so ago.Im think I saw it on TV or youtube.

B.I.B. said:

Feel free to correct me if Im wrong but I think I read it somewhere that helium was more freely available as it was a by product of natural gas production.

wasn't some American aircraft company playing around with airships with the object of using them as long endurance surveillance craft for the middle east/afghanistan? only a couple of years or so ago.Im think I saw it on TV or youtube.

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I don't think it's so available as last time I wanted to find helium for balloons in a party, and found that helium's price is 4 times higher than hydrogen.

I found a website talking about world's helium production, reserve and demand. And this sentence might well reject your opinion "The industry’s move towards fracking could reduce supplies further, because shale gas contains very little helium."

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Hmmmm Very interesting, However theres some acknowledgement that it is being wasted and there is little incentive to process the element, so perhaps incentive is whats needed.

Helium is now largely used for cooling in super conducting magnets. US Congress has mandated that the US strategic reserves are to be sold off by 2015(?), which is why it is now so very cheap. It is still used for toy balloons but that might disappear with the end of the sell off.
Some natural gas sources contain a lot of helium, other very little but it is recovered from these in several countries. If you want to use airships on a really large scale you will have to design them to use hydrogen safely.

Germany tried to use its last zeppelin, Graf Zeppelin II, to measure the wave length and strength of British radar beams in August 1939 but for still unexplained reasons was unable to measure anything.
US blimps were used to protect convoys against submarines and were very successful.

The US (the USAF if I recall correctly) is looking at an aerostat or blimp to patrol Washington DC for enemy cruise missile attacks.

Given the Ohio SSGNs, the PLA would be very remiss in their duties if they are not exploring the same idea.

Skywatcher said:

The US (the USAF if I recall correctly) is looking at an aerostat or blimp to patrol Washington DC for enemy cruise missile attacks.

Given the Ohio SSGNs, the PLA would be very remiss in their duties if they are not exploring the same idea.

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I read in The Washington Post IIRC about stationing a pair of cable balloons near Washington and that there is a fear that they will be used to spy on US citizens with optical telescopes as was done with similar equipment on towns in Afghanistan.

Not like there would be any difference with out them . I mean any police helicopter can do the same.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Not like there would be any difference with out them . I mean any police helicopter can do the same.

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You need many more than a hundred police helicopters to do the same and they make a hell of a racket warning everyone who is doing something illegal.

One, Any aircraft mounted or mobile is only going to be able to see what is in it's visual range.
you might be able to pull a eye in the sky but if any one wants to hide what they are doing they just have to go indoors. think about it we already have security camera's, traffic camera's, GOOGLE Earth, police helicopters ecta, ecta. If you walk outside it's fair game. now seeing though walls? IR camera's are standard on Police and traffic helicopters. If your indoors your not always going to hear a helicopter fly by. basicly this changes zilch

But if we were simply talking about surveilance, like watching along a section of a highway, or a dam when you don't need to move much, then the airship have much more endurance than a helo and less expensive to operate. They can be autonomous and don't require quick response time when controlled as UAVs. Then if you discover a situation needing attention you may dispatch helo and other vehicles over.