| The Giant Rigid Airship and the Restoration Technique |
The shift from the industrial civilization of mass wasting to the technological civilization of harmonization with the natural environment
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18th AIAA Lighter-Than-Air Systems Technology Conference
4 - 7 May 2009, Seattle, Washington
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AIAA 2009-2857
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Hiroyuki WATANABE Mr.
Representative Director, President
Nippon Airship Corporation (NAC)
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| Zeppelin NT and Mt. Fuji |
Zeppelin NT cockpit at night flight |
Fly over Tokyo Metropolitan |
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 The new industrial civilization in the 21st century
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In the incredibly long history of human beings which is about a million and several hundred thousand years long, it has been only two hundred years since some of us emerged from starvation.
Mathematically, this is less than 0.02% of the whole of our history. Until then, mankind made living by hunting, gathering, fishing and farming often fearing the fury of nature. We managed to survive by adapting / succumbing to the environment. However, from around fifteenth or sixteenth century, quite an opposite thought emerges in Western Europe. It is the thought that we dominate over nature by means of taming / manipulating nature according to our desire.
Arguably, the English philosopher, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is said to be the first person who entertained this thought. He interpreted the description in Genesis <Old Testament>, "On the last day of the creation, the 6th day, God created man and gave him the nature, animals and plants", as "God created man to be a master of the nature. So, we can cover and control it as we desire." This new thought altered people's attitude toward the nature. It accelerated the development process of the germinating modern science and technology in those days and ultimately led to the industrial revolution in the 18th century. We can say that the advanced industrialization society we live in today was built on top of the high production system and the high mechanized productivity brought by this radical development.
Let me call all these phenomena, such as the ideas, politics, economics, laws, production techniques, life styles, and so on as "Civilization". 'Civilization' spread throughout the world due to western advancement and colonization of the non-west that began in the 15th century and peaked from 19th to early 20th century. In addition, one characteristic of this 'Civilization' lies in its nature and structure that encapsulates or involves the contacted society.
This phenomenon has long been discussed in terms of imperialistic invasions of the western powers.
However, another side of this phenomenon can be called 'the wave of industrialization' that spread throughout the world if we look at the matter from a more comprehensive perspective.
Industrial civilization has given us various conveniences that range from bicycles, sewing machines, refrigerators, washing machines, cookers, televisions and audio equipment for enjoying music and images, motorcycles and cars, and recently, personal computers and mobile phones.
Once you taste the convenient life saturated by these products, and the "benefits of industrial civilization", you cannot go back to the life without them. In the sense that "the civilized life" of convenience and technologies spread over to the non-western area, this has surely given us various benefits and dramatically reduced our sufferings. Medical treatment technology is an apt example. Also, productivity has released human beings from fears of starvation.
Japan, after the Meiji era, became engulfed in this worldwide movement, and as Japan became its core player, it became difficult for this country to sustain its people and the society without this 'Industrial civilization'. However, from the latter half of the 20th century, this great industrial civilization of mass wasting rapidly ruined the organic balance of ecology by wasting huge amount of natural resources and energy and destroyed the environment to an irretrievable extent (increase of the entropy). This led to many serious problems such as global warming.
Surveying this history, I notice that the hunting and pre-industrial farming civilization, that lasted from the beginning of human species up to the Middle Ages, was based on the worldview of depending on and adapting ourselves to the environment. Then, after the middle Ages, the giant industrial civilization based itself on the worldview of converting and controlling the natural environment. Now, the advanced technological civilization (post-industrial civilization) appeared, bearing the element of global information society, in other words, "the Internet Age". However, just as people cannot live without agriculture, forestry, or fisheries even in the age of giant industrial civilization, the advanced technological civilization we live today can neither grow without manufactures that support it. This structure can be understood as an analogy that the idea of mathematical three dimensions is inclusive of both one and two dimensions.
What we need to consider is what new industries and technological innovations of today's advanced technological civilization should espouse as their fundamental proposition and essence. In other words, we have to think about how Japanese should face this problem. Japan is surrounded by sea and
mountains and abounds in natural scenic beauty, and its people have lived in awe of nature from ancient times. They cherished and nurtured nature over generations for their descendants. However, this country of immense natural beauty has dramatically changed into modern industrial state just within the
past few hundred years. Once the country experiences the modern civilization, it is impossible to destroy it and turn back to the Middle Ages. Generally, after a country industrializes, its population increases by
three to four fold. In the "Edo Era", Japanese population was slightly below thirty million, and now, the population increased to hundred twenty million. If Japan must support its massive population just by the pre-industrialized society's capacity, three fourths of us will die due to starvation.
Since we cannot turn back, we have to progress. However, it is too inane to go forward haphazardly and inadvertently tread the way to our own destruction. We will neither obey nature blindly or dominate and destroy it. Instead, we will focus on respecting the rule of the natural world and apply it in our lives through harmonizing with nature and by implementing the advanced technologies that we have acquired today. In other words, it is most important for us to choose the way to compromise with nature in order to live and let live. In this respect, shifting to the technological civilization that harmonizes with the natural environment is our duty and an objective that we must carry out without delay.
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 The glory and the demise of giant rigid airships |
In 1929, 'Graf Zeppelin' measuring 236.6 m (776 feet) in length traveled around the world for 21 days, 7 hours, and 33 minutes and was greeted with a storm of cheers everywhere. The total flight distance was 32,790 km (17,705 NM) and the total flight time was 288 hours and 11 minutes. The airship with its capacity of 20 passengers and 40 to 45 crewmembers was built from the idea of flying a cruise ship. It had not only all private rooms, a dining room, an observation room, but also shower rooms and lavatories. It is certainly a luxurious cruise ship. During the flight, the passengers took pleasure in watching the beautiful aurora, the great Siberian nature, and skyscrapers in New York that stood below. (The top of 'Empire State Building' was built for the purpose of mooring the mast for airships.) Flying at an altitude of 200 m (667 feet) over the ground and at 600 m (2,000 feet) over the sea, the passengers could fully enjoy the city views changing continuously and the beautiful panoramic view of nature. The flight range of 'Graf Zeppelin' was 11,000 km (5,940 NM) with the average speed of 75 knot (140 km/hour). It crossed the Pacific in 79 hours (3 days and 7 hours). It takes 10 days for a modern cruise ship on a transpacific cruise.
Following this success, 'Hindenburg' was built in 1936. It was larger than 'Graf Zeppelin' and the area for passengers was divided into two floors. It had everything from guest rooms, a dining room, a library, and even a smoking room. There was a grand piano in the lounge and the service in the ship had improved from that offered aboard 'Graf Zeppelin'. Although people point out only the tragedy that Hindenburg caused, the airship made fifty-six flights before it went up in flames in the fifty-seventh flight. Including regularly scheduled flights across the North Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro in South America, the total flight distance reached 340,000 km (183,585 NM). The flight range of this giant rigid airship measured 18,000
km (9,719 NM) with the average speed of 140 km/hour (75 knot), and the endurance was a surprising five to six days.
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| LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin (I) |
World Cruise route1929 |
LZ-129 Hindenburg |
It was a tragedy that it went up in flames at its fifty-seventh flight. Recently, a NASA researcher found out the reason. The aluminum paint was a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum powder and was extremely flammable. Flying through the thunderstorm, the body of the ship was charged with static electricity, and as it approached the ground, a spark caused by the contact with the earth set the gas inside the airship aflame.
Since modern airships use safe paint and nonflammable helium gas, the cases of flaming out and the explosion are practically non-existent today. Although the accident in 1937 was a horrible disaster, 62 out of 97 passengers and crew aboard survived. Compared with plane crashes today, it is a surprisingly high survival rate that 64% of people stayed alive. It is because mostly passengers died of burn, not from the crash injuries like plane accidents. Moreover, at the present day, hydrogen gas can be used safely like fuel cell vehicles if it is handled properly. In 1930's, since synthetic fibers were not yet discovered, they used goldbeater's skin for the cell of hydrogen gas and canvas painted with aluminum paint for the envelope.
Since Dr. Hugo Eckener, who was the head of the Zeppelin business at that time, was against the Hitler regime, the remaining airships, 'Graf Zeppelin I' and 'Graf Zeppelin II', were destroyed inside a big hanger in Frankfurt am Main by the order of the aviation minister of Germany, Hermann Göring. It is said that the duralumin collected from afterwards was used for bombers during the World War II. Eventually, the company gave up rebuilding airships because of the prohibition on aviation in Germany by the Allied
Forces. However, with their technology of processing metal and of manufacturing precision instruments such as transmission technologies, they acquired through building the airships, 'the Zeppelin' group became one of the biggest enterprises in the world today.
Meanwhile, before 'Graf Zeppelin' was built, the American navy owned a giant rigid airship fleet and a flying aircraft carrier which could carry five biplanes such as 'Acron' and 'Macon'. However, the materials, the engine, and the techniques in 1920's to 1930's could not provide such a big airship with enough strength and propulsion, and the carrier lacked prompt movement and steering capabilities. Moreover, weather observation data was very limited at that time. The aviation had to depend on astronomical observation, contributing to the reasons why the airship was thought to be insufficient. In addition, according to the story of the late Admiral Rosenthal, the airship was lost because one US commander maneuvered the airship in stormy weather even by ignoring the warnings from navy airship fleets.
However, despite these difficulties, the United States managed to own the airship fleet until 1962. They switched their main airships from rigid airships to non-rigid airships manufactured by 'the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company'. The airship fleet achieved success in escorting the merchant convoys against
U-boats and in early reconnaissance flight. The US navy airship fleet as a whole attained very good results with a normal operation rate of 87%, including the risky outdoor mooring in the water and air space that often got hit by hurricanes.
After the U.S. fleet was dissolved, airships were mainly used for advertisements and relays in the western countries. New airship companies were eventually established in England, the United States and Germany. They developed new types of airships, but all of them were basically conventional non-rigid airships.
Airships are classified into following four categories by their structure: non-rigid airships (they have no frames), half-rigid airships (only bottom half of airships have frames), quasi-rigid airships it is (they have frames, but the gas cells are not separate from the envelope), rigid airships (they have frames and the gas cells are separate from the envelope to provide space for the crew and passengers). In English translation, above "half-rigid" and "quasi-rigid" are included into one word as "semi-rigid" type, but they are exactly different type. Other than these types, soft shell airships are being devised, which have crust structures with new materials that resemble crab shells. In fact, the US navy built a metal-clad airship measuring 44.5 m (146 feet) in length before the World War II. However, the hard work it required to join the thin duralumin boards with three million rivets made it unsuitable to adopt as a primary type of airship.
With new materials and joining techniques available today, it is worth reconsidering using this type of airships.
As long as the core airship technology rests in its use of buoyancy that results from the difference between the weight of lifting gas and the airship's weight, a small airship is a suitable size/structure for non-rigid airship, a middle size one for half-rigid or semi-rigid, and giant ship for the rigid airships. Since the gas capacity exceeds the increase rate of the airship's weight, the buoyancy level increases considerably. A good example is polar bears; they float because their body capacity is large for its surface area. In this sense, a giant rigid airship has superior buoyancy compared to any other airship types. However, for nearly half a century after the end of Hindenburg, giant rigid airships were thrown into complete oblivion amidst the twentieth century emphasis on speed.
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 Revival of Zeppelin NT and its new possibilities |
In 1993, Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH was reestablished and started to develop a new type of semi rigid airship, the 'Zeppelin NT (New Technology)'. In August 2001, they started commercial passenger flights and marked a new beginning in the 21st century. As of January 2009, ninety thousand passengers have boarded on the airship, and ten thousand people are on the waiting list. This airship has an inner framework structure made of carbon fiber, three 200 hp movable tilt aircraft engines, and three propellers mounted on the sides and at the tail end. The light and sturdy envelope is made of new synthetic fiber.
While conventional non-rigid airships did not have self-control ability after landing and required about a fifteen ground crew members to move it to the mast, Zeppelin NT can move and control on the ground by itself. Due to this, only a three ground crewmembers are required in the mooring operation. In this respect, we can say that the Zeppelin NT revolutionized the airship's future applications. Back in 1920-30s at the time of conventional airships, the personnel cost was not such a big problem. But today, personnel cost has become an important element for the budget. Labor-saving in mooring operation for take-off and landing is an essential technological innovation in this sense, and this field will see further automation. Moreover, advancement in the technology of ground support system will surely improve the problems such as the maximum permissible wind velocity for flying, and it may also be a key to improve flight punctuality performance.
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| Zeppelin NT (New Technology) Quasi-Rigid airship |
Author in cockpit of NT |
The maximum permissible wind velocity for 'Zeppelin NT' is 12.5 m/sec., and this in fact almost equals that of helicopters and small planes. Even a conventional non-rigid airship can fly at 10m/sec wind velocity and the annual flight time reaches one thousand hours. Considering that the annual flight time of helicopters and small planes is about one hundred hours, we can say that conventional airships are a considerable achievement, even though this fact is not very well known.
The first Zeppelin NT that Zeppelin Company built in sixty years is a small rigid-airship measuring 75m (246 feet) in length. It has a boarding capacity of two crew persons and twelve passengers maximum, it flies at 125km/h (67 knot) and its flight range reaches 900 km (486 NM). Even so, it is far from the
Hindenburg class airships that prided 18,000 km (9,719 NM) flight range and the boarding capacity of 100 passengers and crew. The Zeppelin Co. is well aware of this difference, and that is why they plan to build a new type of airships that boards 40 or 85 passengers and crew as the next/future Zeppelin NT.
The introduction/appearance of Zeppelin NT gives us an opportunity to seek the future possibilities of airship businesses. Following is the list of various ways we can make use and benefit from airships; (1) media advertisement, (2) investigation of natural resources, meteorological observation, and
aeronautical survey, (3) research on pollution and environment, (4) security, patrol and rescue purposes, (5) commuting, (6) disaster relief and relay station, (7) freight transportation, (8) sightseeing, and finally, (9) cruising around the world etc.
The airship's transport and speeding capacity against fuel consumption rate/level ranks between seaborne vessels' and airplanes'. That is to say, the airship is superior to vessels in speed in transportation capacity when compared to airplanes. Moreover, by taking advantage of its characteristic long flight endurance and the ability to conduct a low attitude flight, it can be used for meteorological observation, aeronautical survey, and relay station. In my opinion, from the point of view of international transport system, there may be a potential growth area for the airship business just between the existing marine and aviation business. For example, for the transpacific trip, it takes half a day by airplane, 10 days by a vessel, and three days by an airship. In addition, by utilizing its long flight endurance and practical speed, airships can transport goods directly to the inland destination.
As the Archimedes' principle goes, lifting gas such as helium provides an airship with enough static buoyancy by itself. Fuel is used primarily for the thrust. We can say that an airship is therefore an economical aircraft for the transoceanic flight because it hardly consumes fossil fuels. Moreover it makes little noise and keeps gas emission at minimum. Airship is indeed symbolic of technology that harmonizes with the natural environment and that is why the airships will be the frontrunner of the new 21st century industry. In addition, from the economical point of view, reducing fuel cost can cut down the total cost of flight. Moreover, once the ground support systems for take-off improve and are equipped at local airports throughout Japan, it will be possible to use airships as local commuter aircrafts.
Especially in Japan, 'earthquake country', an airship can be used for relay station in case of major earthquakes. It can facilitate the disaster relief procedures by flying and filming over the disaster area and serving as an information station for the disaster control headquarters. If an airship mounts instant relaying equipment for mobile phones and flies over the disaster area for a long time, it can be a replacement of relay station for existing mobile phones that often fail due to overuse of telephones during major disasters. Moreover, airships might be able to save lives trapped under the rubble. There are in fact many more possibilities and public uses we can merit from, such as observing traffic conditions, fire, and crime investigation/prevention.
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 The restoration with the new techniques |
Our ultimate goal for the airship application / operation re-introduces the gorgeous cruise airship fully equipped with the newest technology. If we build a rigid airship as big as 'The Hindenburg' with the latest materials and technologies, we can create a giant airship of great safety and high performance. Now, we can use much lighter and stronger materials for the ship such as carbon fiber and synthetic fiber created with high polymer technology and light alloys, and we can calculate its strength accurately using computers. Also, the airship will have up-to-date systems for navigation, meteorology, and communication. In the future, we will be able to /have the ambition to build a perfect pollution-free airship; we will go beyond using the existent small diesel engines and implement hybrid system that combines solar batteries and fuel cells.
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| Hindenburg & Empire State Bldg. |
Graf Zeppelin on the water |
Although the technology of 1930's failed to provide enough strength and propulsion for a giant airship, I believe that these problems can be solved by efficiently and effectively combining the modern technologies, materials, and engines. It is not just a dream to develop a cutting edge LTA (Lighter-Than-Air) aircraft especially with Japanese technology that is well known for its precise and economical design and assembly, best exemplified by the 'Zero-Fighter' (A6M Zero Carrier Fighter JPN WWII). No matter how Japanese aviation technology progresses in the near future, we can not think lightly of the airship development, as it is a new field of aviation business where we will be able to compete and take a lead against Western countries with our own original technologies.
Moreover, there are shipbuilding sites and dry docks that only require small changes to become plants for developing and building a giant rigid airship. When Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin took the first 'Zeppelin' airship, the LZ-1, on its maiden flight in July 1900, it was pulled out of its floating hangar floating on Lake Bodensee (Lake Constance) and took off from the water surface. Also, as mentioned above, the US navy airship fleets were refueled on the ocean by special patrol parent ship for airships, aircraft carriers, and destroyers. The US navy succeeded in the use of airships for anti-submarine patrolling and for convoy escort mainly in the Atlantic Ocean in the World War II, and they owned 168 airships by the end of the war. Their total patrolling sea area was 10 million km2, (2.916 million NM2) and the total convoy they escorted counted over 89,000 seaborne vessels.
In the present day, we can use the airship's endurance for long and low flight at slow speed for sea patrolling, detecting unidentified ships and small submarines, and also for coast guarding against smugglers. Since airships do not require a long runway, its base can be the ground, lakes, the seaside, and even the ocean. We can take advantage of Japanese geographic characteristic as it includes various lakes and seas, and we should research these possibilities to employ floating airship base.
Just until last year, I spent twelve years traveling as a crew member aboard a cruise ship and went on three world tours. Though the experience, I realized that there are particular requirements for the elderly and often affluent passengers. The average age of passengers on the voyage around the world was approximately 65 to 67, and quite a few of them said that they chose the cruise ship because it seemed physically too stressful to travel by air for more than ten hours to reach any destinations such as the United States, Europe, and Australia from Japan. Certainly, traveling with the cruise ship is full of pleasure such as great dinners, entertainment, and sightseeing at ports of call. However, that is not the only reason why they choose cruising over flights; even young generations are seeking for a more comfortable way to travel by air.
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| Grand piano of The Hindenburg |
Passenger Lounge (restoration) |
Dining room (restoration) |
If 'The Hindenburg' is restored with the latest materials and technologies of today, a trip around the world, which is generally a three-month trip by cruise ship, will need only three weeks or so. Just like the cruise ships, the airship will be able to offer the passengers delicious dinner in the dining hall, relaxing time in the lounge, private rooms where they can sleep well, beautiful panoramic views below, and sightseeing at ports of call. Actually, when I was on a voyage on the Atlantic last year, I gave a lecture about airship to passengers, and at the end of the lecture, I asked if they wanted to board 'The Hindenburg' if it was restored. It astonished me when I saw all three hundred passengers raised their hands seriously and enthusiastically to show that they indeed wanted to fly on the airship. Even though there are no statistical research data about the demands for airships, my twelve-year experience with tens of thousands of passengers convince me that there is a market for airship travel.
I have always felt that there is a tendency or atmosphere to appreciate only the newest technologies.
However, when we look more from the user's perspective, we can see how important it is to restore some achievements of the past such as the comfort of the airship, then re-introduce it with modern technologies and materials just like the Zeppelin NT, and consequently add an entirely new economic value to the airships. This idea goes not only with the use of the gas buoyancy for airships; the same applies to all the other natural energies such as the wind power, tidal power, geothermal energy, and solar energy. I believe that it is a duty of the 21st century businessperson/entrepreneur to have high esteems for technologies that make use of natural energies and I also believe that we shall strive to develop and attain these crucial technologies so that we can live in a civilization that ultimately harmonizes with the nature.
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| "We cannot command nature except by obeying her" ------ Sir Francis Bacon |
Copyright © 2009 by Hiroyuki Watanabe. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.
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