Peak Oil, Airships, and Helium (orig 01-jan-2008)

America is squandering what will, in the near future, be an important national asset.

Some Facts:

• The world is running out of oil. There is a lot of talk and hope for the future of alternative fuels. These alternatives will, with care and attention, lessen the blow, but they will never match the current energy wealth that we all enjoy today.



• Airships (or dirigibles or Zeppelins) have always enjoyed a fringe enthusiasm. Many companies over the last 60 years have tried to bring back (actually, the height of the 'Zeppelin age' wasn't all that high) airships as a viable alternative to fixed wing aircraft. Slashdot article or this Popular Mechanics article for a little light reading on the future and this Wikipedia article about it's past.



• The United States has the largest reserve of Helium in the world. An increase in demand for lighter than air vehicles means that this helium will become more important, even vital, to our future. And they are wasting it.



• When you read the article above, you will see that most helium comes from natural gas wells. And who is ramping up to be the world's largest producer of natural gas? Why, Russia of course. But I haven't seen any evidence that they are trying to collect this strategically vital resource.



• An American company recently developed a technology that I think will put airship usage over the top. Thin film flexible solar cells could provide an additional power reserve for airships (I do not think that you could fly SOLELY using solar energy, at least fast enough to be useful). But if you could save up to 30% of your fuel costs during daylight operation, that's a bargain!

Taken together, what does this all mean?

Airships ARE the future. They are fast, consume less oil than fixed wing aircraft, have massive lifting capabilities, are quiet, and require less real estate than fixed wing aircraft airports. Airships are not as fast as jets, but I think if the choice was between a 9 hour jet flight cramped up like a sardine, or a 2 day flight in relative comfort (think a long train journey with sleeping berths) it would be a close run thing. If the 2 day flight was 1/5th the cost of the jet? No contest. The jet would lose out for the same reason that the Concorde lost. If taking an extra day of travel time means saving 2 or 3 thousand dollars, I'll take the extra day.

I've only seen a little bit of this (see the HAA design in the Popular Science article in the fact section), but the design doesn't seem to take it far enough. Imagine if the total upper surface of a 120 meter airship was covered in thin film flexible solar cells. You could slap an electrical power assist on the airship's engines to increase your fuel savings. As a bonus, when not in flight you would have a large solar array plugged into your power grid whenever an airship came to town.

Hydrogen as a lifting gas is not a good idea, it is a big reason why the Hindenburg went up in flames. The designers KNEW this was a problem. The Hindenburg (and its sister ship the Graaf Zeppelin) were both designed to use Helium as a lifting gas. Unfortunately for the Germans, the only big reserve of helium in the world was owned by the United States, and they weren't sharing. When airships become important, even vital to world transportation, the USA was poised to be in control of the most vital component, the helium gas that makes it all possible. Unfortunately, they are letting it hiss away, (see facts section). So, whoever has access to the most natural gas wells, and acts NOW to start capturing 'new' helium will have a tremendous advantage in the near future. If you have the helium, you get to say who flies and who doesn't, isn't that nice?

Recommendations / Predictions

The United States should immediately redirect its efforts toward increasing its strategic reserve of Helium and should designate it as a strategic asset. That means you get selfish about what you have and greedy for what you can buy from others.

Russia, and other oil and gas producing nations, should start collecting and storing the helium that they are currently (probably) just letting escape into the atmosphere where it is very difficult to recover. The United States will:

1. charge obscene amounts of money for helium that they control


2. give preferential treatment to their own civilian and military uses, perhaps to the point of attempting to establish a monopoly on air travel


3. as the oil gets used up, our last chance to recover helium in usable quantities disappears with it

Airships will not catch on with the public for another 5 to 10 years. Steadily increasing oil prices (and consequently, the rising cost of airline travel) will make airships not only attractive financially, but also aesthetically. It will take one of the major aerospace companies taking an interest in passenger service airships before this moves forward. The smaller companies that spring up and quickly die do not have enough depth to deal with the myriad infrastructure issues that airships will need to have addressed.

Airships will bring back a more genteel mode of travel (slower, but more comfortable). Think about what this will mean culturally to the west. Fedex and UPS slow down, flying away for a long weekend becomes prohibitively expensive, airship-ports can be placed closer to population centers because of reduced noise/pollution/runway space, etc etc. There is a lot to consider.