this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Solarpunk technology
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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
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These "fundamental problems" are not really problems for airships that only rarely touch down and can be loaded and unloaded with electric quadcopters which recently became available in suffient sizes.
Rigid hull airships regularly made transatlantic journeys with tight schedules, so your "gust of wind" problem is evidently wrong, and larger storms also effect airplanes starting and landing resulting in similar delays.
I think it makes way more sense for airships to be anchored down while loading and unloading, so the buoyancy doesnt need to be constantly balanced.
On the face of it, your point is valid, just like on the face of it landing rockets is too complicated. Both are likely solved the same way - active management by responsive computers to negate environmental effects to behave in a stable manner in an unstable environment. This idea certainly wouldn't have worked 100 or even 50 years ago, but may be quite possible now.
Those transatlantic journeys with airships are no longer done for good reason. And that would have to be a massive fleet of electric quadrocopters with an extreme lift capacity to load an entire airship. That sounds very expensive!
But I hope you're right, the idea is really cool!
Zeppelins largely fell out of use due to limited military application and because fuel was basically free back then due to abundant supplies. I think it is important to keep this historic context in mind.
As for electric quadcopters being expensive, yes, but the proposed business is end to end, so not like an airport that needs to be loaded and unloaded quickly with a large amount of cargo. So for the airships it will be rather pick and load individually replacing not only the airplane but also the trucks delivering the cargo to and from the airport.
It will likely need some good charging infrastructure on the ground to recharge these quadcopters, but the spread of electric cars makes this more realistic these days.