Questions tagged [airships]
For questions involving large flying objects that are lighter than air.
96
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General characteristics of an “aircraft” for gas-planet atmospheres?
In the future gas giants, ice giants, mini neptunes and gas dwarfs have been colonised. The colonisers use either hot hydrogen or vacuum in rigid ballons to keep their cloud cities up in the endless ...
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6answers
226 views
How could an Earth-like planet support all-metal airships?
When I say all-metal airships, I'm referring to something like the above from Jakub Rozalski's artwork - the design is more akin to a naval destroyer or battleship and less like a zeppelin. We've seen ...
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5answers
122 views
How to Justify Less Developed Air Power Despite Modern Tech?
I am writing a story where the technology of the time could be roughly characterized as akin to ours back in the 90's, if not quite the history that led to it being that way. So you'd see things like ...
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votes
3answers
99 views
What materials and what shapes should be used for struts inside a vacuum airship's envelope?
What materials and what shapes should be used for struts inside a vacuum airship's envelope?
The vacuum airship is a theoretical dirigible design were you replace the hydrogen/ other lifting gas with ...
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votes
5answers
274 views
What are some ways an airship could be landed without people on the ground?
In my novel, an experimental airship needs to land in a field but it's in a foreign country where there was no coordination ahead of time to have people on the ground help tether it. Is is still ...
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2answers
609 views
Post-apocalyptic aircraft
I have a post-apocalyptic scenario, set in the ruins of an American metropolis with flooded streets. Boats are used most of the time, but aircrafts have advantages, for battle or if you have to get on ...
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18answers
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Quick destruction of a helium filled airship?
I am writing a steampunk novel and am working on a scene where an enemy quickly overwhelms and destroys a US airship. The enemy has flying gyro sleds and a large airship of their own that is armed ...
3
votes
2answers
183 views
How high can a Victorian-era kite sail be flown?
A big problem with Steampunk airships is how to propel them. Steam engines tend to be too heavy to be useful. And sails cannot be used, because unlike sea-going ships, airships are in contact with ...
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8answers
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Medieval flying castle propulsion
One day, on the faraway world of not-medieval-Europe, someone discovered that a type of stone could be made to float. A decade or two later, there are flying castles, built out of and/or on a ...
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1answer
172 views
How to attach and distribute suspended weight to multiple envelopes?
In my conworld I've got heavily armoured airships majestically floating through the skies with help of a science-defying lighter-than-anything material.
While I don't mind introducing a pinch of ...
1
vote
1answer
125 views
A society built an airship. What else? [closed]
A steampunk society managed to develop functioning airships filled with helium, powered by a steam engine. They mine this helium from an underground reservoir along with other natural gas.
What else ...
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vote
3answers
667 views
Biggest possible Steampunk Airship? [duplicate]
I have noticed that one thing that is very common among steampunk airship art is that the size of the decks beneath the gas chamber is outrageously larger than that of the real world.
Example:
...
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votes
10answers
367 views
How would a fixed altitude magical Airship be propelled?
Background
In my world, there are vehicles that can spatially "lock" themselves to a single altitude. The locking mechanism is a magical core, combined with runic metal bands extending around the ...
3
votes
2answers
147 views
Flywheels for high altitude airship control
Airships in RL are not very great in combat for various reasons. However in my setting there is Unobtanium that is repelled by gravity, instead of being attracted. A lump of Unobtanium can be used ...
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votes
3answers
256 views
need help building a convincing Airship steam engine room [closed]
Building a world with airships that are powered by steam engines. Big boiler, water tank, lots of coal. Enormous engine room. Propellers, masts with huge sails. There are steam-powered automatons in ...
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votes
2answers
214 views
General airship question: advantages and disadvantages of size?
Airships are cool, and one of the only vehicles that benefits of the square cube law as it can carry more weight if it has more volume of lifting gas. This got me thinking about what other advantages ...
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4answers
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General airship questions: largest possible size?
Airships are cool, and I would love to use them and see them used outside of steampunk a lot more. One key aspect of Airships is that they seem to have the square cube law reversed. For other things ...
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10answers
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What types of things could go wrong in an airship during a storm?
In the scene of one of my stories, an airship gets hit by a violent storm. Apart from exploding (which isn't helpful to the main character), what other things could go wrong that would be fixable?
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votes
2answers
221 views
Airship Propulsion System [closed]
The airships that I have imagined use anti-gravitational engines to allow them to hover above Earth's surface. I was thinking of having four of the engines around the vessel's hull. Could these ...
4
votes
1answer
86 views
Steam-powered dirigibles in the late 17th to early 18th century
I want steam powered dirigibles in my world around the year 1700. As this is an alternate world, a new gas with the same essential properties as Hydrogen, apart from the whole exploding aspect seems ...
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7answers
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Medieval airlocks, would they be possible?
In terms of context, this airlock would be used on airships which fly at a height in which oxygen levels are too low for humans to live. Within the hull of the airship, stored oxygen would be pumped ...
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votes
11answers
796 views
How to correct aim in aerial airship combat?
Report! Correct aim 2-20 fore, figure in enemy speed at negative 15 knots relative decelerating. Ready? Fire in Sequence on my mark... MARK!
LCDR Arnold Dering, Commander of the "X"-Turret, GKS-B-...
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votes
3answers
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Airships in a world with 1/3 gravity but 3 times the mass of atmosphere?
In the first question I posted here on Worldbuilding Stack Exchange, I asked if lifting gas would be more effective on a world with 1/3 of Earths gravity but with the same atmospheric composition as ...
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13answers
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Comfortable way of entering and exiting Airships anywhere at will
Imagine that the taboo around Airships and dirigibles is broken. Besides some cargo, passenger and tourism Airships there's one company that focuses on the super-rich by selling what are essentially ...
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5answers
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Smallest possible size for a manned airship
As far as I know airships, specifically rigid-airships, do not have an upper size limit other than what is required by practicality and how willing you are to build gigantic airship sheds. But one ...
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3answers
507 views
Lifting Gas in a world with 1/3 of earth's gravity
As many of us probably know airships were one of the great forms of transportation in the 20th century but a great hindrance to their development was weight. In a world I am currently constructing the ...
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3answers
155 views
Would Be Possible To Build A Small, Lightweight Boiler For Airships
I am wondering if it would be possible to make very lightweight and small steam engines for airships. Said airships engines are actually electric, but the boiler generates the electricity (via a ...
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vote
3answers
242 views
How could an airship made of magic wood propel itself through the sky without an engine?
Okay, so, here's the deal: one of the characters in my story is a sort of crazy hermit with the power to magically manipulate wood. Just by touching it, he can alter the physical properties of wood in ...
1
vote
1answer
111 views
How can I ride a balloon in a hurricane? [closed]
Like the famous Annie Edson Taylor who went off Niagara Falls in a barrel. I would like to be the first to ride out in a hurricane at least from the inside out in the air in an unpowered craft. Could ...
7
votes
11answers
496 views
Making airships\blimps\dirigibles the dominant form of air transport
While similar to other questions they mostly focused on what impacts required in the past to keep airships as a popular air transport method today, this question is about how to make airships the ...
6
votes
8answers
449 views
Is it possible to keep secret such a technological discovery?
Welcome to my fantasy, late-medieval world. For the sake of the question, we can divide it up in two major continents:
Continent A is considered the birthplace of my humans and features a solid ...
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votes
10answers
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Dirigibles: Feasibility as (Effective) Aircraft Carriers
The flying aircraft carrier has been in the imaginations of many a writer and engineer, but to date the only true flying aircraft carrier has been USS Akron (and to a lesser extent, her sister ship, ...
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4answers
372 views
With current or near-future technology, how plausible is an aircraft-based civilization?
A large group of billionaires, engineers, pilots, and volunteers come together to announce the creation of an aircraft-based civilization. Here, people spend most of their lives aboard an aircraft, ...
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6answers
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How viable is a creature that floats through the air like a living hot air balloon
My idea for a creature within my fantasy story is that of a creature which floats through the air like a living hot air balloon.
It would do this through the intake, storage and regulation of gases ...
16
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11answers
2k views
What sort of rules / limitations could govern and affect a crystal resource that is both anti-gravity and energy-producing?
I apologise if this is rather vague but I'm struggling with creating a concept that would allow a Victorian (steampunk) civilisation to have antigravity ships and floating islands through the use of a ...
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15answers
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Armament for airships filled with non-flammable gas
In my Fantasy/sci-fi universe there exists a lighter than air gas, that is non-flammable, while having density similar or even smaller than hydrogen (I will post some questions related to this gas in ...
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2answers
220 views
Could a blimp be powered using thunderstorms?
Could a untethered blimp be built strong enough to with stand a thunderstorm? Could wind generators be placed on it to transfer turbulence of shifting wind into wind power? Rain could be collected ...
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votes
3answers
416 views
How high in the sky are you safe?
I understand that there is wide range of bullet calibers. I am interested in the ones that is 50 caliber or less, and if you can be high enough in a blimp to be safe either by to far to see or to far ...
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9answers
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LED light or heating element?
To generate heat electrically inside a balloon for lift would a 20 watt LED light or a 20 watt heating element make more heat to lift a small closed hot air balloon droid and solar cell?
Having a ...
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11answers
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Airborne 18th century soldier: Feasible?
All right, in this fiction there are airships, they're not like blimps or zeppelins, they're much more like the fantasy-esque "age of sail ship that floats", cool and dandy. With their creation, some ...
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votes
5answers
385 views
What do airships look like in the 1800s?
Say in the later 1700s/early 1800s handwavium is discovered. It's a metal that when heated causes more way more upward lift than hot air or hydrogen/helium produces in similar volumes. Air travel (and ...
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votes
5answers
269 views
Living on a high altitude floating city in a fantasy world
In my fantasy world, much of the society takes place in floating cities or airships which rest at 30,000 feet in the air. As you may know, humans can have trouble breathing at such heights, so how ...
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votes
2answers
376 views
How to sail into the wind on an airship? [duplicate]
Traditional sailing vessels use their keel to counteract the force of the wind. This allows them to move in any direction except directly into the wind.
Imagine a world where there is a material that ...
7
votes
8answers
2k views
Siege defences for a floating city
Say there is a floating city that rests high in the air, it has the area of around New York City and has massive hydrogen tanks under it to keep it afloat, (I am aware the physics of this is ...
4
votes
8answers
292 views
Siege technology for floating city
Say there is a floating city that rests high in the air, it has the area of around New York City and has massive hydrogen tanks under it to keep it afloat, (I am aware the physics of this is ...
7
votes
6answers
805 views
What communication methods would be used on military steampunk aircraft?
In a steampunk world with airships and airplanes, but which lacks radio, how would different aircraft communicate, and how would they communicate with the ground? Would a form of semaphore, using ...
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6answers
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How could steampunk civilizations get lifting gas?
Steampunk airships typically use either helium or hydrogen as a source of lift (depending on the specific world). However, the source of the lifting gas is often not fully explained, or frequently ...
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9answers
787 views
Technology for a sci-fi airship
Sometimes old, discredited or impractical ideas come back to favor, because a new technology has evolved.
Let us imagine a future Earth-like world (not early 20th century or steampunk) that would ...
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vote
4answers
496 views
Saucer-shaped airship: Is it stronger lighter and better?
The classical rigid airship uses a heavy envelope which accounts for the large buoyancy balloon. This comes on account of aerodynamics. My first concept was a thin and long "cigar" where the cockpit, ...
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14answers
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Airship lifeboats, design alternatives
At sea lifeboats are a pretty straightforward affair, a small seaworthy boat that one uses to get away from a doomed vessel. In space the same basic principles apply although the requirements are far ...
