Towards the most efficient freight vehicle.

[AngelLestat]

by efficient, I mean what vehicle has the highest average virtues like:

energy consumption by ton of freight

speed (includes the time for load and unload)

payload capacity

operation cost

locations able to operate and range

vehicle cost

infrastructure needed

co2 emissions

All vehicles have their perfect task and circustance where they shine over the rest, but lets focus in general.

In my opinion the vehicle which has the most chance to become the ultimate transport choice and solve its current drawbacks is the aeroscraft (which is still in prototype stage).

To those who still never saw it:

https://youtu.be/GceGS-g8hbI

https://youtu.be/T4f89uJEhOE?t=1m7s

Pros of this design:

1/3 fuel consumption than any cargo plane for the same payload.

1/10 co2 emmisions than any ................

it can land and load/unload without infrastructure or assistance on ground or water, its landing cushiond can act as suction or overcraft.

the aerodynamic shape acts as a lifting body which increase the altitud --> decrease drag --> increase the speed (120 knots)

250 tons version cost similar to a 747 (100 tons of cargo), it can transport bulky cargo.

In airships the good stuff grows faster with volume than the bad stuffs. So a 2.5 times longer vehicle than the 250 tons version would carry 10000 tons, drag increase mostly due surface which does not increase so fast as volume.

drawbacks:

It uses helium which it cost 10 times more than hydrogen and it can not be used as an energy source and managment, also due the lower lift and altitud the fuel consumption rise.

it need big hangars to be covered from storms when is not in service which increase the infrastructure needed.

How to transform this in the ultimate transport vehicle:

hydrogen + solar panels + fuel cell which it gives unlimited range, extra speed, zero emmissions, zero fuel consumption.

To accomplish this it needs a not flamable envelope, plus to avoid hangars, it needs a system to fly over storms or dodge them and a good anchoring system to be able to resist medium storms without the need of take off. You can make few tents hangar to apply manintainance on those who needed.

Edited April 1, 2015 by AngelLestat

[DaveofDefeat]

Oil tanker. I win.

[cpast]

There is no "best in general." Some cargo is time-sensitive. Some cargo actually has to go to a destination in the middle of cities. Last mile delivery is best served by small vehicles with lots of flexibility (i.e. trucks), unless there's a *lot* of cargo going to one place, in which case a better facility makes sense. Most cargo is not time-sensitive, so you can have huge advantages by making most of the trip happen over highly efficient bulk modes (trains, ships) using intermodal containers. Any attempt to make a "balanced" one will be worse at just about every task compared to a more specialized thing. The aeroscraft is utterly awful at last-mile delivery, because you need to land it somewhere (and good luck doing fast loading/unloading without infrastructure; it's simply not possible with any mode of transportation). With a 250t load, it's not *for* that, it's for use in the middle of the transportation pipeline. It might be great at heavy cargo delivery with less infrastructure than other means.

Large aircraft are a decent balance of speed (way over 120 kts) and capacity, but need an airport plus freight handling capabilities (and aren't suitable for direct delivery of goods). Smaller aircraft can handle small quantities of goods extremely quickly, but can't do capacity. Ships reign supreme for capacity per dollar. Freight rail (which can handle *thousands* of tons per train) is great for getting lots of not-time-sensitive cargo to a place near its destination, or (with heavy infrastructure, but lighter than an airport) to its destination. Trucks are flexible and suitable for last-mile, but have low capacity (need one driver per container). Aeroscraft would at best find a niche of its own.

[Nibb31]

DaveofDefeat is right. Ships beat everything over long distances. Speed isn't very important for freight, regularity is.

Over land, rail transport is hard to beat.

Your blimp sounds like a no-go from the start with the helium problem and low capacity compared to a freight train or a cargo ship.

[sgt_flyer]

I've checked the 'ad' about your aeroscraft - well, let's say that while it could be useful in freight cargo (in some cases - but you'll still need a big flat spot to land it)

The problem is trying to sell that to military

I mean, the thing's rigid's shell has to be extremely thin if you want to be able to have any heavy payload - which means it would be extremely fragile - and a huuge slow moving target. (Even if you have active missile countermeasures like the phalanx - it's not going to stop 23mm anti-air fire) so the army would have to send a lot of stuff in advance to secure the flightpath and the landing zone for miles - which negates a bit the usefullness of the thing - because you'll need to also use and maintain other means of transportation at the same time you are operating it - because you need to deploy forward troops before sending in this airship.

Current Military cargo planes have all something in common : they can climb to high altitudes very fast - and have much higher speeds and manoeuverability than the blimp, so their flares & chaff countermeasures are generally enough (and low cost compared to a CIWS) to protect them against incoming fire.

Also, using hydrogen as the lifting gas poses a lot of problems - the first being that it's inflammable when mixed with air - and the molecule is so small that it can slowly leak through any known material - and even can cause damages to the material's molecular structure (check hydrogen embrittlement)

[prophet_01]

Container ship (and basically any other big transport ship including oil tankers) since we are talking about a vehicle. It's by far the cheapest way of getting almost anything around the globe. We're talking about cents per ton. You can't beat that.

Yep, a significant amount of infrastructure is needed, but since most countries already have that, it's very hard for another transport system to get into the market or justify the costs of similar infrastructure, despite the harsh competition. I can't even think of a real competitor for mass transport on a global scale.

aeroscraft might* contest with cargo planes in certain areas, but that kund if vehicle is likely ti ru into similar problems as airships did. Wind and bad weather conditions impose threats since you have quite a big structure with lots of surface area. That is a big isdue when starting or landing. Those reasons lead to the retirement of airships. Planes aren't as dependent on weather conditions.

Even if aeroscrafts somehow develop into a mature technology (that's still some loong way down the road) I highly doubt that they will have the same all-terrain capabilities that helicopters already have. Chinooks are probably the kings in that area due to theire reliability and insane fright capacity of up to 12,7 tons (that's a lot for vertical take off + landing).

[magnemoe]

DaveofDefeat is right. Ships beat everything over long distances. Speed isn't very important for freight, regularity is.

Over land, rail transport is hard to beat.

Your blimp sounds like a no-go from the start with the helium problem and low capacity compared to a freight train or a cargo ship.

It has two major benefit, it has no issues with oversize goods like the windmill parts, you can even lift major oversize stuff who is very hard to transport on roads like houses. For many uses it would be beneficial to transport larger modules rather than build it, test it and then disassemble for moving and then put together.

Second benefit is that it don't need roads while having larger capacity than helicopters, also longer range, this is why the military is interested, it can move heavy stuff like tanks over road less areas put down and go back for more. Again with construction this is often an major benefit. even if its a road it might not be able to handle the large and heavy loads.

[Iskierka]

Train is the most efficient method of transport in terms of distance and mass per fuel. Ships work out cheaper due to fewer restrictions in paths, timing, infrastructure maintenance, and similar problems trains run into. Airliners are not as inefficient as often made out to be, and are very attractive because they are effective for time-sensitive cargo, being able to make deliveries to almost anywhere on the globe in under 24 hours in many cases, 36 covering the vast majority of more difficult locales. Trucks and vans are attractive because of flexibility of paths and ability to get all the way to their destination.

This thing ... doesn't win in terms of efficiency, is slow, can only deliver to limited locations. About the only thing this is useful for is delivering relatively light, but possibly bulky payloads to remote locations where there is insufficient road development to allow a truck to get there. I recall a suggestion that this kind of thing would be useful for allowing wind farms to be built in better locations, with heavier winds and further from inhabited locations, as no road infrastructure needs to be built to the location - technicians can come in offroad cars and trucks while this delivers the huge components, and it seems quite likely that this may be useful for that - but it's going to be little use for anything else.

[AngelLestat]

Why all our names are green?

Container ships sounds great, but if you start to compare all the virtues and drawbacks with different way of transportation, then you realize that they can be beaten in many scenarios.

For example:

Ships only travel by water so they depend on different transport methods, you need to add the cost transfer the cargo to trucks or trains plus the cost of these. In some cases you dont even have the chance to reach some places because there is not sea connection (or you have a continent in the middle).

You not only need to pay for the fuel consumption, you need to pay also to maintain all that infrastructure (roads, rails, ports, or to make new ones).

All that it will be added to the total transportation cost, of course in most cases the aeroscraft would not transport each container to its place, for that trucks are better in case they had roads.

The aeroscraft is utterly awful at last-mile delivery, because you need to land it somewhere (and good luck doing fast loading/unloading without infrastructure; it's simply not possible with any mode of transportation). With a 250t load, it's not *for* that, it's for use in the middle of the transportation pipeline. It might be great at heavy cargo delivery with less infrastructure than other means.

I guess I share your opinion but why you think is so awfull to load or unload cargo without infrastructure?

Some models of aeroscrafts are designed to have their own bridge crane system to select and grab containers and place them on the ground without the need to land, some others had a similar system but with a ramp to load/unload.

You may be able to load or unload container directly to trucks without external infrastructure.

I've checked the 'ad' about your aeroscraft - well, let's say that while it could be useful in freight cargo (in some cases - but you'll still need a big flat spot to land it)

They can unload cargo without land, but lets be seriously, how many places does not have at almost flat place to land close enoght? It does not need to be so flat. It can land also in lakes.

The problem is trying to sell that to military

The military are the ones more interested, they with nasa provide the money to the prototype.

Military wants a dirigible transport able to land and take off without ballast or infrastructure since "always.."

They even did a test with an average helium blimp, they fire all they got (missiles, high caliber bullets, etc) to the blimp, the blimp complete the mission and 2 hours later return to the base.

A bigger rigid dirigible is even more strong than this, the only way is to shot the cabin, but without heat signiture or anything to guide a missile to the cabin is not easy task. They may be silent too so on night you have more chances to not be seeing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Safety

Current Military cargo planes have all something in common : they can climb to high altitudes very fast - and have much higher speeds and manoeuverability than the blimp, so their flares & chaff countermeasures are generally enough (and low cost compared to a CIWS) to protect them against incoming fire.

They need a runway to land.. and the speed is useless against the moderns missiles, they hit anything, even aircraft fighters had almost not chance to dodge them.

Also, using hydrogen as the lifting gas poses a lot of problems - the first being that it's inflammable when mixed with air - and the molecule is so small that it can slowly leak through any known material - and even can cause damages to the material's molecular structure (check hydrogen embrittlement)

The only you need is a not flamable envelope and hydrogen sensors.

Even with ignition and holes, the fire would not extend, and the same fire would prevent any high mixture in close enviroments.

Was already discover than paint surfaces with 100nm of reduce graphene oxyde (very easy to make) removes in a 100% any leak. The same compound can be used to make hydrogen sensors able to measure even 0.1% in the air mixture. Also helium leaks more easy than hydrogen becouse hydrogen is a diatomic molecule.

The cargo structure and cabin can be made as a lifting body with some control surfaces, then it can be detached from the envelope in case something happens and plain to the surface, this will allow transport people with enoght safety, even more than airplanes.

Also dont believe they are so fragile, take a look in all the iron than zeppiling had in that time, you can make even harded structures with carbon composites as the same aeroscraft is made.

Wind and bad weather conditions impose threats since you have quite a big structure with lots of surface area. That is a big isdue when starting or landing. Those reasons lead to the retirement of airships.

I am agree that container ships are difficult to beat in their own niche, but in more general cases they can be beaten.

About weather, we can not compare the old airships from 1930 to now (and they had a good safety margin even then).

Now airships will had their own weather radars on board, they had international weather info in real time.

Now they can reach higher altitudes and fly over the storms (maybe not a Cumulonimbus) but they are easy to dodge.

Train is the most efficient method of transport in terms of distance and mass per fuel.

Take a look in this list:

- Air cargo - .8063 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Truck - 0.1693 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Train - 0.1048 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Sea freight - 0.0403 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Zeppelin - 0.0887 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

This takes into account zeppelin from 1930, a hydrogen-fuel cell-PV airship would had zero co2 or fuel consumption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transport

This thing ... doesn't win in terms of efficiency, is slow, can only deliver to limited locations.

?????

Edited April 1, 2015 by AngelLestat

[shynung]

?????

Try finding any place in a big city with tall skyscrapers in which it is safe to dock a large zeppelin-type airship without it bumping into things. Or get punctured by lightning protector rods.

On land, I'd go with trains. Low resistance due to smooth, low-friction steel rails, and low frontal-area-to-mass ratio compared to other land transport. On the seas, the ship wins, due to higher payload-to-vehicle mass ratio than airships (easier to float on water than in the air using buoyancy alone).

For time-sensitive cargo, airplanes. Not fast enough? ICBM.

[Dkmdlb]

Why all our names are green?

April Fools.

A few years ago some rail company made a big deal that they could move a ton of freight more than 400 miles on 1 gallon of fuel. And it turns out it's true.

[Red Iron Crown]

Zeppelins are way too sensitive to weather and have too small a cargo capacity to form the backbone of a transport system, they will be niche at best.

Electrified rail on land (powered by some green energy source) and ships by sea (also with comparably clean energy sources) will beat the zeppelins senseless in almost every metric.

[Rakaydos]

For "last mile delivery" I know Amazon is looking into Quadcopter Drones to deliver right to your door. (or even you personally)

[cpast]

Why all our names are green?

Container ships sounds great, but if you start to compare all the virtues and drawbacks with different way of transportation, then you realize that they can be beaten in many scenarios.

For example:

Ships only travel by water so they depend on different transport methods, you need to add the cost transfer the cargo to trucks or trains plus the cost of these. In some cases you dont even have the chance to reach some places because there is not sea connection (or you have a continent in the middle).

You not only need to pay for the fuel consumption, you need to pay also to maintain all that infrastructure (roads, rails, ports, or to make new ones).

All that it will be added to the total transportation cost, of course in most cases the aeroscraft would not transport each container to its place, for that trucks are better in case they had roads.

Indeed, ships can be beaten in many cases. That's because, as I mentioned, the idea of the "ultimate" freight carrier is meaningless -- there's nothing that's best in all cases. Ships dominate for cheap high-capacity travel where the need to go on water doesn't impose too high a detour on the path (even if you could go via land, a ship can still be better for very large cargo; that's how NASA ships its largest rocket parts). Ports are not cheap, but they serve enormous cargo loads, and you don't really need that many of them (since you aren't delivering directly to the destination, the ship is only one step in the pathway).

As for transferring cargo: In most cases an aeroscraft would also have to transfer cargo to land transport (as you mentioned). However, transferring cargo is one of the things that ships and trucks and trains *excel* at: if you don't support intermodal containers and aren't carrying a single kind of bulk cargo (like oil carriers or car carriers), your transport method isn't even worth talking about for cheap mass freight. The challenge for aircraft (including this) is that intermodal containers don't tend to play nicely with them. 40-foot intermodal containers tend to way between 20 and 30 tons (max weight is 30.5t), which means you can't take very many of them on your craft (and note that a 40-foot container weighs 4 tons empty, so if you load them lightly then the weight of the containers is a significant fraction of cargo weight). Compare to a train, which can handle 1 or 2 40-foot containers per car, or a ship.

I guess I share your opinion but why you think is so awfull to load or unload cargo without infrastructure?

Some models of aeroscrafts are designed to have their own bridge crane system to select and grab containers and place them on the ground without the need to land, some others had a similar system but with a ramp to load/unload.

You may be able to load or unload container directly to trucks without external infrastructure.

The reason is that cargo is heavy, and you need to deal with it after unloading or before loading. It's a cost for all systems; it's not special to this one. As for container handling: You wouldn't be loading/unloading stuff to trucks without ground infrastructure; you need stability when putting a container on a truck. Container cranes are not light; you lose a lot of cargo capacity if you only had 250t to begin with.

They can unload cargo without land, but lets be seriously, how many places does not have at almost flat place to land close enoght? It does not need to be so flat. It can land also in lakes.

You can't unload most cargo in lakes

As for what places don't have flat areas: Most places that want lots of cargo, as a matter of fact. It's a bit moot, though, as since it's not built for last-mile you'd be going to a specially built spot anyway.

The military are the ones more interested, they with nasa provide the money to the prototype.

Military wants a dirigible transport able to land and take off without ballast or infrastructure since "always.."

They even did a test with an average helium blimp, they fire all they got (missiles, high caliber bullets, etc) to the blimp, the blimp complete the mission and 2 hours later return to the base.

A bigger rigid dirigible is even more strong than this, the only way is to shot the cabin, but without heat signiture or anything to guide a missile to the cabin is not easy task. They may be silent too so on night you have more chances to not be seeing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Safety

Yeah, lighter-than-air stuff is actually *really* good against hostile fire. It's not pressurized as a rule, and it's big, so it loses lifting gas very slowly.

I am agree that container ships are difficult to beat in their own niche, but in more general cases they can be beaten.

About weather, we can not compare the old airships from 1930 to now (and they had a good safety margin even then).

Now airships will had their own weather radars on board, they had international weather info in real time.

Now they can reach higher altitudes and fly over the storms (maybe not a Cumulonimbus) but they are easy to dodge.

But this *also* has a niche. Container ships' niche is massive cargo transportation from one place to another more distant place where using water isn't a big detour. This can't fill that. Trucks' niche is last-mile transport. This can't fill that. Trains do what container ships do, but over land and with more flexibility (because railyards are easier than ports). This can't do that; again, it simply doesn't have the capacity. The niche for this is medium quantities of freight, as well as oversized freight, at low speeds. It fills a niche kind of like barges, but over land and faster (less fuel-efficient, though).

Take a look in this list:

- Air cargo - .8063 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Truck - 0.1693 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Train - 0.1048 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Sea freight - 0.0403 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

- Zeppelin - 0.0887 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

This takes into account zeppelin from 1930, a hydrogen-fuel cell-PV airship would had zero co2 or fuel consumption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transport

Other numbers I've seen put rail at more like 40 g equivalent CO2 per ton-mile, and ships at like 11 g (e.g. NRDC). The source Wikipedia cites is per ton-kilometer and gives *ranges*, and I'm not sure how faithful the Wikipedia numbers are for that.

If you bring up hydrogen fuel cells, I think I can bring up electric trains. They're more powerful than diesel anyway (the reason they aren't universal in the US is that electrification requires maintenance, and lots of US rail lines are through the middle of nowhere), and have zero emissions just like hydrogen fuel cells. Like hydrogen fuel cells, everything depends on how the (electricity/hydrogen) is produced. (note: a fuel cell is a poor choice if you're going to fuel it via onboard electrolysis; actual batteries are *much* more efficient for this. Fuel cells are only good when you fuel them with hydrogen from elsewhere, because fuelling with hydrogen is faster than charging a battery). However, you won't run reasonable speeds on PV cells; the actual Aeroscraft will use diesel, because PV doesn't actually give that much power (and at the size of an Aeroscraft, you have a *lot* of drag).

[AngelLestat]

Try finding any place in a big city with tall skyscrapers in which it is safe to dock a large zeppelin-type airship without it bumping into things. Or get punctured by lightning protector rods.

On land, I'd go with trains. Low resistance due to smooth, low-friction steel rails, and low frontal-area-to-mass ratio compared to other land transport. On the seas, the ship wins, due to higher payload-to-vehicle mass ratio than airships (easier to float on water than in the air using buoyancy alone).

For time-sensitive cargo, airplanes. Not fast enough? ICBM.

Ah, last mile means that? Yeah of course you would not deliver that pendrive than someone in the 44 floor buy.

But you can use airports or any open space outside the city. You can do 10 more scales to deliver more goods in some key places.

It has more sense in the point to point cargo delivery. For example manage the transport of 2 or 4 big companies which deliver goods to one or more countries (no matter how far from your original source) it will be very efficient, you load the cargo directly from each of these companies, then are directly send the cargo to 3 or 5 destinations.

You have not range issues, if there is a storm in the place, you dont need to change destination or make a risky landing, you can wait until the storm pass and then land.

This method would delivery goods at similar speed than airplanes, because in the case of airplanes (or any other transport method), you need to first load a truck, then send to the airport, unload, load in the airplane, fly..., unload in the airport, load in the truck and reach destination (with all the paper bureaucracy that you need in each step to avoid frauds)

April Fools.

A few years ago some rail company made a big deal that they could move a ton of freight more than 400 miles on 1 gallon of fuel. And it turns out it's true.

Trains are efficient, more if they use regenerative brakes in those electrify rails. But you can only travel at few locations and that efficiency is for freight trains which travel at 40km/h average.

Rails infrastructure also means waste time for cars and trucks due cut roads, these means more infrastructure needed for bridges or tunnels over all the rail route.

And even with all that efficiency they would not beat a hydrogen-fuel cell-PV airship, because the only energy consumed would be in its construction. Then they fly for free, the only you need to pay is for the 2 pilots and some maintenance.

And if you increase the volume it becomes more and more efficient in cost, I read that if they overseed the 500 to 1000 tons, they already can compete with ships+other methods in transport cost.

Zeppelins are way too sensitive to weather and have too small a cargo capacity to form the backbone of a transport system, they will be niche at best.

Electrified rail on land (powered by some green energy source) and ships by sea (also with comparably clean energy sources) will beat the zeppelins senseless in almost every metric.

They are not very sensitive to weather, that is a misconception.

The zeppeling in 1930 fly faster than the airplanes of that time, and the accidents due weather was mostly due over pilot confidence on how good they were.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Airships (read misconceptions)

"Modern airships are actually quite safe, and compare favorably to helicopters. It's hard to make generalizations, though, because airships are just like airplanes when it comes to safety: an ultralight plane is less safe in inclement weather and crash situations than a 747. In the same way, some hot airships are blown backwards in a light breeze, but on the other hand, in the 1950s an American naval blimp program manned an Arctic airborne early warning station continuously for 10 days in the winter. The weather was the area's worst in years, grounding all other military and commercial airplanes with combinations and variations of ice, snow, rain, fog, and 65 mph winds. The airships went on sorties that lasted for days, in extremely heavy icing conditions, and succeeded in their mission with no crashes- effectively crushing the misconception that airships are inherently more vulnerable to weather than other aircraft. In fact, their natural buoyancy, lengthy endurance and ability to maneuver at low speeds makes them very well suited to ride out storms."

As I said before, at big scales, the good thing of airships grow much faster than the bad things.

For "last mile delivery" I know Amazon is looking into Quadcopter Drones to deliver right to your door. (or even you personally)

Yeah that is a good idea, you reach one place, unload all the payload then most of that payload can be delivery by a swarm of quadcopters.

------------------------------------------------------------------

This is how to achieve zero emmisions and zero fuel consumption (only sun), and is the only vehicle which can be like this at such low cost.

That image I made it for a blimp case, but it can be applied to any dirigible.

You dont need much tanks, because you use the same dirigible as a hydrogen tank, and instead full inflate the ballonets with external air you can compress the inside gas.

Container ships can use kites to gain something of propulsion but it will be not more than the 30% of the total energy.

Cpast: I will answer you later.

Edited April 1, 2015 by AngelLestat

[cpast]

Ah, last mile means that? Yeah of course you would not deliver that pendrive than someone in the 44 floor buy.

But you can use airports or any open space outside the city. You can do 10 more scales to deliver more goods in some key places.

It has more sense in the point to point cargo delivery. For example manage the transport of 2 or 4 big companies which deliver goods to one or more countries (no matter how far from your original source) it will be very efficient, you load the cargo directly from each of these companies, then are directly send the cargo to 3 or 5 destinations.

You have not range issues, if there is a storm in the place, you dont need to change destination or make a risky landing, you can wait until the storm pass and then land.

This method would delivery goods at similar speed than airplanes, because in the case of airplanes (or any other transport method), you need to first load a truck, then send to the airport, unload, load in the airplane, fly..., unload in the airport, load in the truck and reach destination (with all the paper bureaucracy that you need in each step to avoid frauds)

No, it wouldn't. You cannot use this without truck support in general, because it doesn't support last-mile delivery. You have, in three paragraphs, first conceded that you aren't making the final delivery, and then forgotten that you aren't making the final delivery (and so you need to transfer to whatever is making the final delivery). If you're outside the city, you still need to transfer to/from trucks; nothing that can't do last-mile delivery can avoid the need to move cargo from one mode to another. You can't just use any open space, because you have to comply with zoning and air traffic regulations (that are somewhat particular on where you can land stuff). And Aeroscraft only claims 120 kts at 8,000 ft. Aircraft hit >400 kts at 35,000 ft (where winds are also higher). This will be slower than aircraft unless you have dedicated on-site landing facilities for it.

Trains are efficient, more if they use regenerative brakes in those electrify rails. But you can only travel at few locations and that efficiency is for freight trains which travel at 40km/h average.

But freight rail can handle much more cargo than this can. If you have a regular stream of cargo, you don't care how fast a single thing gets to its destination; you need throughput, not latency. Freight rail in the US is very widespread; many large shippers have rail branches ending on their property (there's rail service on-site). Trains don't, incidentally, use regenerative braking to generate power. They have dynamic braking, but dissipate that power in resistor grids. Why? Because you aren't braking all that much, when you are you're mostly using air brakes, and you already have a good power source (generators, or external electricity).

Rails infrastructure also means waste time for cars and trucks due cut roads, these means more infrastructure needed for bridges or tunnels over all the rail route.

And even with all that efficiency they would not beat a hydrogen-fuel cell-PV airship, because the only energy consumed would be in its construction. Then they fly for free, the only you need to pay is for the 2 pilots and some maintenance.

A PV airship will not use fuel cells. That is a *terrible* efficiency idea. Fuel cells are bad as batteries. Electrolysis-fuel cell has really low efficiency, much lower than battery charge-discharge. So let's assume this is a sensible idea, which uses batteries. You don't have a PV-battery ship, you have a PV-powered ship. This isn't going to be fast, and it will be *very* expensive. There's a reason this hasn't been proposed by Aeroscraft.

[Iskierka]

Fuel cells would likely work out more efficient for this vehicle than batteries due to weight, but they would not work out more efficient than simply directly using the power. Which then results in being limited to maybe 1/4 of a hp per m^2 surface, at the best times of the year - then meaning you'd need huge PV layers to get any useful thrust, when there's plenty of lightweight turboprop engines that will happily get you lots of power, efficiently, for less weight than that much panelling.

I'd also note that 40 km/h somewhat under-exaggerates the speed of freight trains running in the open. Yes, they may go quite slow near inhabited areas, and some awkward locations put 30 mph or so limits on them to survive the slope and turns, but often they'll idle around highway speed once they can, especially if going long-distance. Beyond that, 400 tonne-mpg is the practical average actually being achieved - when put to the test of what's possible, quite a few modern trains will happily pull at over 1000 tonne-mpg, so if rail was used more and ideal loading was therefore easier to achieve, they could do even better. Trains are actually a really good transport system - it's just that it would be really expensive to have enough rail routes to make them as universally useful as road and air, so they remain "good" rather than "fantastic" in terms of efficiency.

[Fel]

Err... the first few posts really do say it all; and, on some level, you seem to understand... underlying costs do matter.

Your (eww) wiki-quote against "Train is the most efficient method of transport in terms of distance and mass per fuel." is deceptive. First, using that same argument, we could pose that liquid-rockets are a superior method of travel as "fuel" is something that creates CO2.

While infrastructure may be "expensive" what matters is what the maintenance costs and avenues for expansion are. There is still SOME rail from the 1800's that is still in use; the reason being that straight rail generally requires very little maintenance once laid.

So, trying to get back to the point; "costs" are not isolated to CO2 output, but general costs as a whole. ROAD breaks up like crazy, but the costs of everyone using flying cars (i.e. helicopters, or heck, hot air balloons) is far more than the costs of repairing the road.

*And, I don't feel like spending a few hours doing cost benefit analysis... just note that people get paid quite a bit to get to every detail; EVERY detail.

Another note: Don't underplay just how insanely complicated our distribution network really is... and how much benefit it receives because of that. When moving packages from one place to another, companies look to "tag along" rather than setup their own network. This means you can use computer software to optimize a delivery system in terms of time, cost, weather (if you're transferring something heat sensitive). Something like this would NEVER replace the network, only become integrated in it.

[magnemoe]

Why all our names are green?

I guess I share your opinion but why you think is so awfull to load or unload cargo without infrastructure?

Some models of aeroscrafts are designed to have their own bridge crane system to select and grab containers and place them on the ground without the need to land, some others had a similar system but with a ramp to load/unload.

You may be able to load or unload container directly to trucks without external infrastructure.

They can unload cargo without land, but lets be seriously, how many places does not have at almost flat place to land close enoght? It does not need to be so flat. It can land also in lakes.

Unload directly on trucks will be hard because its sensitive to wind, might be posibe if you used multiple tie downs and winches, this would be pointless for containers but nice if you have to place an huge module correctly. The main benefit of this is that it can place oversize cargo pretty much everywhere.

Wind represent some issues, one use who would be nice but would probably be too hard because of wind would be to pick up an module on a ship and move it somewhere.

If the ship is in a bay it should work, this saves too.

The military are the ones more interested, they with nasa provide the money to the prototype.

Military wants a dirigible transport able to land and take off without ballast or infrastructure since "always.."

They even did a test with an average helium blimp, they fire all they got (missiles, high caliber bullets, etc) to the blimp, the blimp complete the mission and 2 hours later return to the base.

A bigger rigid dirigible is even more strong than this, the only way is to shot the cabin, but without heat signiture or anything to guide a missile to the cabin is not easy task. They may be silent too so on night you have more chances to not be seeing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Safety

They need a runway to land.. and the speed is useless against the moderns missiles, they hit anything, even aircraft fighters had almost not chance to dodge them.

True, military has long had interest in this, they frequently have to carry heavy cargo to places with no roads, This would be very nice in Afghanistan.

its not sensetive to gunfire, the US used lots of aerostats in Iraq, an balloon with cameras and perhaps radar tethered to the ground 3-700 meter up in the air.

Whey drew a lot of gunfire, not only hostile, then Iraqi celebrates they often shoot in the air, this balloon give them something to aim at.

This was not an major issue except that they had to take it down once every week to patch is, its very little over-pressure in this so gas leaks slowly.

Both helicopters and cargo planes are more sensitive to gunfire, one bonus with an airship is that even if you manage to take out engines it will not fall down.

They might be more sensitive too shoulder fired rockets than large cargo planes. This is because the rockets tend to go after the rear of the engines and this is an part who can take lots of damage as its exposed to the fire of the engine all the time, the exhaust also protect the engine. They probably compare well with helicopters here but probably has larger chance of survive as it might be able to keep in the air on the remaining cells if it drops the cargo, an helicopter can auto rotate on engines out but not if pilot or rotor system is down.

You will neither use airships nor cargo planes in an area where the enemy has heavy anti air missiles. Here helicopters has an benefit as they can hug the terrain well.

However the only stuff you will do here would be to deploy special commands or extract people.

In the future we will probably get laser defences against missiles this will tip balance against heavy platforms who can carry the laser.

In short airships might be an military thing, civilians can rent them as they can rent military cargo planes

The only you need is a not flamable envelope and hydrogen sensors.

Even with ignition and holes, the fire would not extend, and the same fire would prevent any high mixture in close enviroments.

Was already discover than paint surfaces with 100nm of reduce graphene oxyde (very easy to make) removes in a 100% any leak. The same compound can be used to make hydrogen sensors able to measure even 0.1% in the air mixture. Also helium leaks more easy than hydrogen becouse hydrogen is a diatomic molecule.

The cargo structure and cabin can be made as a lifting body with some control surfaces, then it can be detached from the envelope in case something happens and plain to the surface, this will allow transport people with enoght safety, even more than airplanes.

Also dont believe they are so fragile, take a look in all the iron than zeppiling had in that time, you can make even harded structures with carbon composites as the same aeroscraft is made.

Agree with hydrogen, the danger is way overblown, cabin and engines are below the envelope, you might want to make sure its better separated than on the helium version.

Side note, all electric equipment on the production part of oil platforms has to be operate in an explosive air / gas mixture. I'm involved in an project where the technicians uses pads to get information and report status, and yes the pads has to be certified for this. Heavy duty electrical engines has been so a long time.

No need to separate, if in low attitude you land, high you bail out,

Bonus with hydrogen is range, you burn an mix of hydrogen and petrol to keep balance, yes the lifting gas is also cheap and much more effective.

I am agree that container ships are difficult to beat in their own niche, but in more general cases they can be beaten.

About weather, we can not compare the old airships from 1930 to now (and they had a good safety margin even then).

Now airships will had their own weather radars on board, they had international weather info in real time.

Now they can reach higher altitudes and fly over the storms (maybe not a Cumulonimbus) but they are easy to dodge.

However this will be an niche, you are not going to fight ships, trains or trucks on their turf. Military and heavy lift, off road lift is the main benefits.

One interesting idea is an airship cruise, lots of interesting locations are inland, yes its plenty of trips but you have to change hotel every night, better if your hotel move during the night. For the cabins weight is an issue not room so if you can keep the weight down you could have suites.

yes this would win on being conformable not on price

[AngelLestat]

As for transferring cargo: In most cases an aeroscraft would also have to transfer cargo to land transport (as you mentioned). However, transferring cargo is one of the things that ships and trucks and trains *excel* at: if you don't support intermodal containers and aren't carrying a single kind of bulk cargo (like oil carriers or car carriers), your transport method isn't even worth talking about for cheap mass freight. The challenge for aircraft (including this) is that intermodal containers don't tend to play nicely with them. 40-foot intermodal containers tend to way between 20 and 30 tons (max weight is 30.5t), which means you can't take very many of them on your craft (and note that a 40-foot container weighs 4 tons empty, so if you load them lightly then the weight of the containers is a significant fraction of cargo weight). Compare to a train, which can handle 1 or 2 40-foot containers per car, or a ship.

You are talking of TEU, 1 cargo container has 20 foot and some toes, weight 3400 kg empty and 24000kg max weight. The average weight will be 13000kg.

There is this image in the official page but I agree that there is not much sense to use this containers.

Also, you dont need them, these containers are designed to move the cargo between different transport methods.

Container cranes are not light; you lose a lot of cargo capacity if you only had 250t to begin with.

These kind of cranes had more sense:

You can't unload most cargo in lakes

Lol why not? The lake has shore.. And your ramp only needs to touch shore.

But this *also* has a niche. Container ships' niche is massive cargo transportation from one place to another more distant place where using water isn't a big detour. This can't fill that. Trucks' niche is last-mile transport. This can't fill that. Trains do what container ships do, but over land and with more flexibility (because railyards are easier than ports). This can't do that; again, it simply doesn't have the capacity. The niche for this is medium quantities of freight, as well as oversized freight, at low speeds. It fills a niche kind of like barges, but over land and faster (less fuel-efficient, though).

But these can be confusing because until now transportation was like this. Many cities had ports and they move cargo between them by ships.

But the true is that almost all goods are manufacture in the edges of the cities and the big ones in open fields far from the cities where the terrain is cheap enoght to make huge factories.

They need to cross all the city traffic to reach the port. These produce more traffic and waste time for a lot of citizens which translate in lower country production.

But instead gather 100000 tons in one place, you can move 250, 500, or 1000 tons from point to point. Of course these does not count for all kind of goods, only for goods between big companies, not to the final consumer. Is a niche I know. but is a big one.

They can be very efficient in transport food. Food needs to be transport fast, is bulky and producers does not need to add so many preservatives.

Other numbers I've seen put rail at more like 40 g equivalent CO2 per ton-mile, and ships at like 11 g (e.g. NRDC). The source Wikipedia cites is per ton-kilometer and gives *ranges*, and I'm not sure how faithful the Wikipedia numbers are for that.

I am not sure either, but I know that zepelling gain extra efficiency injecting (instead venting) hydrogen from the envelope into the diesel engines which increase a lot the diesel efficiency.

If you bring up hydrogen fuel cells, I think I can bring up electric trains. They're more powerful than diesel anyway (the reason they aren't universal in the US is that electrification requires maintenance, and lots of US rail lines are through the middle of nowhere), and have zero emissions just like hydrogen fuel cells. Like hydrogen fuel cells, everything depends on how the (electricity/hydrogen) is produced. (note: a fuel cell is a poor choice if you're going to fuel it via onboard electrolysis; actual batteries are *much* more efficient for this. Fuel cells are only good when you fuel them with hydrogen from elsewhere, because fuelling with hydrogen is faster than charging a battery). However, you won't run reasonable speeds on PV cells; the actual Aeroscraft will use diesel, because PV doesn't actually give that much power (and at the size of an Aeroscraft, you have a *lot* of drag).

Diesel trains had electric motors (they are like the prius), this is because fuel engines does not have the torque and smooth than a train needs.

But they can not use regenerative brake unless they use electrify rails because they cant storage that energy.

But my hypothetic PV-hydrogen-fuel cell aeroscraft produce its own energy without external sources more than sun.

I already had a discussion about hydrogen production efficiency and electrolysis + fuel cell in the hydrogen car vs battery car topic.

There are some misconceptions about how hard is to produce hydrogen.

No, it wouldn't. You cannot use this without truck support in general, because it doesn't support last-mile delivery. You have, in three paragraphs, first conceded that you aren't making the final delivery, and then forgotten that you aren't making the final delivery (and so you need to transfer to whatever is making the final delivery).

Yeah I already explain this above, it has more sense if you transport between companies and not products which final destination is the consumer.

But there are always some exceptions were it may have a lot of sense even with the help of trucks.

But freight rail can handle much more cargo than this can. If you have a regular stream of cargo, you don't care how fast a single thing gets to its destination; you need throughput, not latency. Freight rail in the US is very widespread; many large shippers have rail branches ending on their property (there's rail service on-site). Trains don't, incidentally, use regenerative braking to generate power. They have dynamic braking, but dissipate that power in resistor grids. Why? Because you aren't braking all that much, when you are you're mostly using air brakes, and you already have a good power source (generators, or external electricity).

Maybe that is the case for USA, but in other countries the story is different. In my country Argentina, many rails were abandoned, resurrect them cost a lot of money and there is many destinations who never had rails.. All the transport to the country interior is by trucks, and many places were abandoned or not exploited due lack of roads.

Make a new infrastructure it does not justify either. This craft would be perfect for my country.

A PV airship will not use fuel cells. That is a *terrible* efficiency idea. Fuel cells are bad as batteries. Electrolysis-fuel cell has really low efficiency, much lower than battery charge-discharge. So let's assume this is a sensible idea, which uses batteries. You don't have a PV-battery ship, you have a PV-powered ship. This isn't going to be fast, and it will be *very* expensive. There's a reason this hasn't been proposed by Aeroscraft.

Electrolysis had a efficiency of 90 to 95%, fuel cell had a 60% of efficiency, but in this case you dont need to compress the hydrogen which it cost you 5% more to liquid, also the way than aeroscraft compress the lifting gas, it can recover that energy when it realese it (because it moves the same engine which compress it producing energy)

Hydrogen is a very efficient way to storage big amount of energy, and in this case you dont need a heavy tank, you use the same envelope.

Batteries weight a lot, their energy density is awfull in comparison with hydrogen.

In fact there is already an airship concept using this:

20000 meters of height, operation full time over its lifetime.

https://youtu.be/6alsthqayLo?t=2m54s

[Red Iron Crown]

Also, you dont need them, these containers are designed to move the cargo between different transport methods.

This phrase really stuck out to me. Containers are a tremendous innovation in transportation technology, when introduced they had the effect of "shrinking the world" by reducing time from origin to destination and eliminating the need for skilled stevedores to pack cargo piecemeal into ships and freight cars. Any method which suggests eliminating containers is bound to fail for economic reasons.

[AngelLestat]

Trains are actually a really good transport system - it's just that it would be really expensive to have enough rail routes to make them as universally useful as road and air, so they remain "good" rather than "fantastic" in terms of efficiency.

Yeah, new train infrastructure had sense if you will use it for sure on the next 25 years at least. Right now we can no be sure if in 20 years we would not have a better solution.

So, trying to get back to the point; "costs" are not isolated to CO2 output, but general costs as a whole. ROAD breaks up like crazy, but the costs of everyone using flying cars (i.e. helicopters, or heck, hot air balloons) is far more than the costs of repairing the road.

yeah of course, but it reach a point where the production cost and efficiency gained in some cases encourage to make the investment and save money for the future.

Unload directly on trucks will be hard because its sensitive to wind, might be posibe if you used multiple tie downs and winches, this would be pointless for containers but nice if you have to place an huge module correctly. The main benefit of this is that it can place oversize cargo pretty much everywhere.

Wind represent some issues, one use who would be nice but would probably be too hard because of wind would be to pick up an module on a ship and move it somewhere.

If the ship is in a bay it should work, this saves too.

Yeah there are all complicate manuvers and I will not bet to become in a standard producedure.

Big airships are less affected by turbulance, but the benefic does not worth the risk added.

I read this for airships:

"As a rule of thumb, wind exceeding the top speed of the ship in flight puts it in danger, and wind exceeding half its top speed makes landing dangerous."

In this case would be: avoid more than 120 knots in fly and 60 knots for landing.

In the future we will probably get laser defences against missiles this will tip balance against heavy platforms who can carry the laser.

In short airships might be an military thing, civilians can rent them as they can rent military cargo planes

What laser?

They might have other benefic, even without lifting gas due a huge hole explosion, they may try a soft landing using its lifting body shape if their control surfaces still work.

Agree with hydrogen, the danger is way overblown, cabin and engines are below the envelope, you might want to make sure its better separated than on the helium version.

Side note, all electric equipment on the production part of oil platforms has to be operate in an explosive air / gas mixture. I'm involved in an project where the technicians uses pads to get information and report status, and yes the pads has to be certified for this. Heavy duty electrical engines has been so a long time.

No need to separate, if in low attitude you land, high you bail out,

But it will be a hard to convince people than now hydrogen airships can be safe. Is not practical technology what keeps hydrogen airships out, is public fear. So if a vehicle like this is made one day, they will need to sacrifice one to show people how safe they might be.

What is absurd that they dont provide certificates (at least in USA) for even freight hydrogen airships no matter how many safety mechanism they had.

One interesting idea is an airship cruise, lots of interesting locations are inland, yes its plenty of trips but you have to change hotel every night, better if your hotel move during the night. For the cabins weight is an issue not room so if you can keep the weight down you could have suites.

yes this would win on being conformable not on price

I would love to fly on those, other possibility is a moving hospital.

It can have everything a hospital needs, like plenty of space for beds, Medical equipment, electricity day and night, the envelope can function to gather water from rain or dew, it can be purify with the fuel cell, the electrolysis also give you oxygen.

This phrase really stuck out to me. Containers are a tremendous innovation in transportation technology, when introduced they had the effect of "shrinking the world" by reducing time from origin to destination and eliminating the need for skilled stevedores to pack cargo piecemeal into ships and freight cars. Any method which suggests eliminating containers is bound to fail for economic reasons.

comic sans if for april fools?

Airplanes does not use containers to transport goods, neither trucks in most cases. Containers are needed when you use transport combination like ship, train and trucks.

[cpast]

Airplanes don't use containers. In related news, airplanes aren't used for heavy cargo transport -- the lack of containers means they're bad for moving lots of freight. Trucks don't use containers in some cases when they aren't being used for intermodal operations, but a trailer can actually also go by train (even without the container, you can stick a trailer on a flatbed). You should know that "go between plants of a firm, carrying medium quantities of cargo at medium speeds" is a fairly small niche -- rail is actually quite good for that in countries with rail networks, because while an individual thing might take a while to get from one plant to another, you care more about the overall flow of cargo between the two.

Now, I don't know about Argentina; it's extremely plausible that this could work out well in a place with poor rail and road networks. I'm speaking from a much more US-centric point of view. However, I will point out that building rail on the assumption it'll be useful for the next 25 years is a very safe bet. The US and European networks started being built in the 19th century. Technology doesn't change physics -- steel wheels on steel rails are low-friction, and the ocean lets you move huge amounts of stuff very cheaply and easily. In 25 years, rail and ship will be dominant modes of transit. In 100 years, they'll still likely be dominant.

[Nibb31]

Airplanes does not use containers to transport goods, neither trucks in most cases.

No, of course they don't:

Air freight uses lightweight especially shaped containers that can be fit inside a standard container or a truck for multi-mode transport.

To return to your OP, there is no single most efficient transport. Each vehicle is good for a specific portion of the journey, within a specific niche. Your blimp fills a specific niche, but it isn't useful for hauling thousands of tons of cargo economically from China to Argentina, for example. Nor is it useful for delivering a washing machine to an apartment block in a city. If it's capacity is 250 tons, then it wouldn't be efficient to use it transport 10 tons or 10000 tons.

It might replace trucks on some specific routes, in some specific countries, and for some specific types and volumes of cargo, but it doesn't go the last mile and its capacity is too small compared to the thousands of tons that an oil tanker or a freight train can carry and too big for transporting smaller volumes. Unless the job is to send a full cargo of 250 tons from one "blimp-base" to another (which is a limited scenario because most end-consumers won't live at a blimp-base, nor will most factories have their own blimp-base) then you still need a logistics hub at each end to triage and transfer the cargo from trucks to the blimp and from the blimp to trucks for the last mile trip. So basically, you need the exact same infrastructure that you would find at an airport or seaport.

[AngelLestat]

the lack of containers means they're bad for moving lots of freight.

Heh, I guess that kind of logic was not really needed to reach that conclusion

You should know that "go between plants of a firm, carrying medium quantities of cargo at medium speeds" is a fairly small niche

Is small than delivery goods to consumers.. yeah.. But this does not mean that is small.. Is huge!

mostly all manufacture companies only assembled components to make the final product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock-down_kit

There is also many others examples.

We can have a 250 or 500 tons version aeroscraft which does argentina-spain, so in each trip companies of those countries contract the service and they load and delivery cargo directly from those companies (no more than 4 scales for country).

The only drawback of country to country is that you need an customs officer in each of the 4 destination, also you may sent an extra incognit inspector once a while to control these officers.

Places like European Union can have free trade between their members.

I will point out that building rail on the assumption it'll be useful for the next 25 years is a very safe bet. The US and European networks started being built in the 19th century. Technology doesn't change physics -- steel wheels on steel rails are low-friction, and the ocean lets you move huge amounts of stuff very cheaply and easily. In 25 years, rail and ship will be dominant modes of transit. In 100 years, they'll still likely be dominant.

Yeah.. I would not be so sure. As I said rails had a huge drawback, the infrastrure cost is huge. You cut several roads which translates in time waste for their citizens, you need to pay all the land owners to place the rails.

Also all rails transportation in the world (maybe there are few cases were dont, not sure) are subsidized!

I am not saying that we should get rid of trains, they are awesome and green. What I am saying that in many cases, the benefit does not cover the disadvantages if you have something like this alternative.

Instead of all those subsidies and infrastructure and drawbacks to the citizen, you use that money in high production of aeroscrafts which will cut the cost to less than 1/4.

No, of course they don't:

http://www.idunair.com/images/airfreight2.jpg

Air freight uses lightweight especially shaped containers that can be fit inside a standard container or a truck for multi-mode transport.

We were talking of the 3.4 tons standard containers in ship, trucks and trains. And this containers usually does not leave the airport, and their size vary depending the plane.

But yes, something similar would help in the aeroscraft case.

To return to your OP, there is no single most efficient transport. Each vehicle is good for a specific portion of the journey, within a specific niche. Your blimp fills a specific niche, but it isn't useful for hauling thousands of tons of cargo economically from China to Argentina, for example. Nor is it useful for delivering a washing machine to an apartment block in a city. If it's capacity is 250 tons, then it wouldn't be efficient to use it transport 10 tons or 10000 tons.

Because you can not think beyond the initial year they come out..

They dont have a size limit as airplanes, in fact meanwhile bigger they are, better become.

for each 20% increase in their proportions you double the capacity.

long payload

233m 250tons

278m 500tons

332m 1000tons

400m 2000tons

480m 4000tons

576m 8000tons

691m 16000tons

830m 32000tons

996m 64000tons.

The surface does not increase much, so the wind affects less, you can reach greater speeds and higher altitude, the cost rise as the surface.

Is the same as ships, but these vehicles had the potential to be very cheap if they had a similar mass production, you dont need tons of steel. Althought they will be always expensive than ships, but lets take the 576m case 8000 tons.

No fuel consumption, 100% green, it can make 5 trips in the same time than a ship do 1, so 5x8000=40000 tons, is easier to load and unload cargo because you have a mechanical ramp. Even with its size, they dont need bigger space than an airplane does "runaway".

They are complex machines? Not really, just an envelope, a rigid structure and the pressure envelope bags to compress the lifting gas.

An airplane needs much more complex mechanism, a turbine for example cost like 20 times more than a electric prop.

It might replace trucks on some specific routes, in some specific countries, and for some specific types and volumes of cargo, but it doesn't go the last mile and its capacity is too small compared to the thousands of tons that an oil tanker or a freight train can carry and too big for transporting smaller volumes. Unless the job is to send a full cargo of 250 tons from one "blimp-base" to another (which is a limited scenario because most end-consumers won't live at a blimp-base, nor will most factories have their own blimp-base) then you still need a logistics hub at each end to triage and transfer the cargo from trucks to the blimp and from the blimp to trucks for the last mile trip. So basically, you need the exact same infrastructure that you would find at an airport or seaport.

Yeah, to remplace the ship you are right, and they will always rule the most heavy cargo, but airships are in the middle of all niches, that is why is niche can grow so big. They are average good in so many task, and meanwhile its cost reduce and their capacity grow, they can become compared in all its virtues in the best vehicle of transport (using general comparison)