BlimpsNew House caucus to promote blimps as cost effective means for cargo transport

To the general public, airships are familiar for their use as advertising blimps, but transportation engineers see airships as large, low-emissions transportation vessels which can carry large amounts of cargo into areas that lack infrastructure such as runways. “The unrealized potential is vast,” said Nigel Hills, a council member of the Airship Association, a nonprofit trade group formed in 1971 to promote the use of lighter-than-air vehicles. “Lack of funding is a big killer.”

The technology has failed to become part of the global transportation mix mainly because of poor funding from both the private and public sector, but Congressmen Brad Sherman (D-California) and Tom Rooney (R-Florida) are trying to change that with the creation of the House Cargo Airship Caucus. The caucus, announced last week, aims to increase financial support for the use of lighter-than-air vehicles for carrying military cargo and humanitarian aid. “I have followed this technology for about 10 years now,” Sherman said. “I hope this new caucus can help maintain the interest that many of my colleagues have shown in the potential for airships to improve cargo transport.”

Airships can provide the Pentagon the capacity to carry large cargos faster than by sea and without the risk of trucking cargo into combat zones. Since airships do not require long runways, they could be used in humanitarian scenarios where infrastructure is lacking, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

EENews reports that the new House caucus plans to work with U.S. companies developing airship technology, a spokesman for Sherman’s office said. Airships could have significant positive environmental impacts, Sherman said. According to researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the total emissions of an airship is 80 to 90 percent less than that of an ordinary aircraft.

“You can go places without roads or railroads,” Sherman said. “Airships offer a means of transport that produces less in carbon emissions than other means of moving cargo on a per-ton-carried basis, and could make it much easier to develop green energy projects.”

For example, airships could be used to transport wind turbines and massive pieces of technology to remote places, such as the top of ridges or away from roads and railways.

In the past, the U.S. government allocated funds toward the development of large airships. In a 2012 report, the Government Accountability Office identified fifteen aerostat and airship efforts worth almost $7 billion which were underway or had been initiated since 2007 by the Pentagon. The private sector has also invested in airship technology.

Later this year, designers and engineers will flight test the Airlander 10, the world’s biggest aircraft created by British design company Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) for military surveillance by the U.S. Army. After budgets cuts from the Pentagon, HAV took ownership of the airship and recently received a $5.1 million grant from the U.K. government.

Aeros has test-piloted a prototype of its Aeroscraft, which if built could fly four times faster than a cargo ship, carry twice as much as a C-5 cargo plane, and fly more than 5,000 miles without refueling. “Aeros applauds the Cargo Airship Caucus’ creation, the expanding Congressional support for harnessing the benefits of a new flexible and cost-efficient transport modality, and support for our emergent sector in the global logistics industry,” Aeros CEO Igor Pasternak, said in a press release. “Aeros looks forward to collaborating with other industry partners toward the quick and safe deployment of cargo airship solutions for enhanced capability in global air mobility, military logistics, disaster relief response and environmental stewardship.”