{"id":10938,"date":"2011-08-31T09:11:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T13:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10938"},"modified":"2011-08-31T10:18:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T14:18:43","slug":"far-north-transportation-solution-heavy-lift-dirigibles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/08\/31\/far-north-transportation-solution-heavy-lift-dirigibles\/","title":{"rendered":"Far north transportation solution: heavy-lift dirigibles?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s like the airborne equivalent of the monorail: the wonderful solution to various air transportation problems. Unfortunately, they usually fail to live up to expectations. A joint British-Canadian effort to introduce <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2011\/08\/31\/nwt-aviation-company-plans-for-fleet-of-futuristic-blimps-to-haul-cargo\/\" target=\"_blank\">heavy-lift airships<\/a> for transportation in Canada&#8217;s far north hit the news today:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Last week, Yellowknife-based Discovery Air signed a preliminary agreement with British aviation startup Hybrid Air Vehicles to buy a fleet of futuristic dirigibles to haul cargo and supplies across the Canadian North<\/p>\n<p>Costing $40-million each, the massive vehicles will be able to haul 50 tonnes of cargo, stay in the air for several weeks at a time and use a fraction of the fuel consumed by standard fixed-wing airliners.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, the largest aircraft in the current Discovery fleet can only carry 7,000 pounds and stay aloft for a matter of hours before refuelling.<\/p>\n<p>The new vehicles, which are still in the early testing phase, may look like little more than sleek reboots of Depression-era dirigibles, but actually are a unique marriage of four different aviation technologies, say designers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt actually works more like an airplane than an airship,\u201d said Gordon Taylor, marketing officer for Hybrid Air Vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>The aircraft fly using a combination of aerodynamic lift and helium buoyancy, manoeuver by using a helicopter-style thrusters and they land on a curtain of air like a hovercraft.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;ll be great if they can work as designed, and also survive the extreme weather conditions of Canada&#8217;s far north, but the smart money isn&#8217;t likely to bet that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s like the airborne equivalent of the monorail: the wonderful solution to various air transportation problems. Unfortunately, they usually fail to live up to expectations. A joint British-Canadian effort to introduce heavy-lift airships for transportation in Canada&#8217;s far north hit the news today: Last week, Yellowknife-based Discovery Air signed a preliminary agreement with British aviation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,15],"tags":[123,607],"class_list":["post-10938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-cancon","category-technology","tag-aircraft","tag-northwestterritories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Qq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10939,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10938\/revisions\/10939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}