Following Einstein's quote for inspiration - "Any fool can make something bigger, heavier and noisier, but it takes a smart man to make something smaller and quieter” - Israeli industrial designer Gosha Galitsky decided to create a futuristic fuel-efficient air transport vehicle. The resulting design, the AirShipOne is a 25-passenger hybrid airplane that takes off and lands vertically, while remaining elegant and eco-friendly. The trade-off is the speed and huge passenger capacity of current airliners.
“Modern commuter planes may be fast and efficient, but they are also crowded, noisy, dependant on huge and complex airports and are hungry as hell for jet fuel,” explains Galitsky. “It is a less known fact that a Jumbo Jet on a transatlantic flight burns about 186 tons of fuel. That is 1.5 times more than the combined weight of all the passengers and cargo carried on such a flight, and is equivalent to each of its 500 passengers running their private car for two months without ever switching the engines off.”
The endless cycle of striving for more payload capacity, and the resulting creation of bigger, heavier airplanes, fueled by subsequently larger, more powerful and heavier engines, is not sustainable and needs to change, explains the designer. The solution is hybrid airships.
“A hybrid airship is actually a hybrid between an airship and an airplane, deriving roughly two thirds of its lift from buoyancy of lighter than air gas, and the remaining third of its lift is generated with aerodynamic lift from the wings,” explains Galitsky.
The innovative airship, when loaded, is only slightly heavier than the air displaced by its own volume due to the lift provided by the helium, and therefore requires very little effort to become airborne and even less effort to cruise comfortably at an estimated 120mph.
The structure is built from an aluminium and fiber composite frame supporting ballonets filled with non-flammable Helium gas for lift. Propulsion is provided by four DC electric motors that receive their energy from solar panels mounted on the hull and wings during cruising, and during takeoff from a bio-diesel generator.
Visit: www.coroflot.com/gosha_id
World SkyCat Ltd.
Tel: +44 1865 725015
written by clive richardson , July 27, 2009
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Try a normal blimp design with diesel electric drives assisted by a simple solar panel array for good fuel economy.
written by Joe. , July 26, 2009