Comments on: Why Don’t We Build An Atoms-For-Peace Dirigible

By: Eliyahu

Eliyahu — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:33:10 +0000

Substitute a large array of photoelectric cells for the reactor, and it might be feasible today. We sure can’t afford to keep flying the large jet transports we now use…

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:21:52 +0000

The airship’s maximum gross mass would be over 375 tons (based on the weight of the 12 million cubic feet of air it would displace). With a payload of 100 tons, that leaves 275 tons for reactor, structure, and helium.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:58:44 +0000

Jay: I’m not sure I have that issue, but if I come across it I’ll make sure to scan it.

By: Eamon

Eamon — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:21:26 +0000

If you made the design into a hybrid airship with more modern materials then it would probably become more feasible for lifting the amount of weight described here. Also a pebble bed reactor would help to limit damage in a crash.

By: jayessell

jayessell — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:42:04 +0000

Charlie, can you post the microelectronics article from MI 1963 May?
The article predicted laptop PCs!

(Well… sort of.)

By: Rick Auricchio

Rick Auricchio — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:23:01 +0000

I think its registration number should be NCC-1701.

By: Baron Waste

Baron Waste — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:39:40 +0000

Oh, that would make for an interesting fictional treatment of this: The US Government goes ahead and builds an “Atoms For Peace” airship - but a nasty alliance of bottom-feeding trial lawyers and neo-Luddite Greens cause court orders to be issued preventing any nuclear fuels, materials or fissionables from being loaded aboard! So the airship must sail using only simulated nuclear power, colored lights and ‘working models,’ &c. in a drastically stripped-down airframe, and using smoky Diesel fuel for its hastily-installed outboard engines.

Needless to say, the entire project becomes a laughingstock, and after two dismal weeks the world tour is curtailed and the project discontinued. The airship is broken up for scrap…

And no one dares to say why it all went wrong.

By: Casandro

Casandro — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:50:53 +0000

Well I guess the main problem with that idea is what would happen if the ship would crash. You don’t really want a reactor to crash.

By: Baron Waste

Baron Waste — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:42:39 +0000

Ah.

I do most sincerely thank you. This is one of those articles never forgotten once read.

It’s odd, though: F Tinsley completely flubbed one major element of this. He posits a 1000-foot long airframe with, as he says, “10 to 12 million feet of helium capacity and a 100-ton payload” - yet this spotlit aerial palace would weigh far more than a mere 100 tons. To lift all the bric-a-brac he describes, the pontoons and the hangars and the giant radar dish and the helicopters and the exhibition hall and the nuclear reactor and the passenger quarters &c., &c., would require science-fiction stasis fields enclosing hard vacuum, to get the necessary atmospheric displacement!

Well, there ain’t no stasis fields - but there is an atomic reactor. And non-flammable gas in the gasbags. Why not make a hot-air Zeppelin? Charles’s Law. you know: Heat the helium to a red-hot vacuum, and you’ve got all the lift you need! You can do that sort of thing, with atomic power…