I get that the airship was already on its way out by the time airliners became viable for transatlantic travel, but considering that airships were more fuel efficient, and airplanes were very fast, was it just a mater of no one thinking of it, or was there a problem with this concept that made such a design inefficient
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Why would an airship have wings? How would one be more aerodynamic.
Lighter than air craft are limited by the insanely huge volume of gas they need to contain. The result is the need for a ginormous balloon to lift even a tiny cabin.
These balloons were shaped to be as aerodynamic as possible, but they still had to have big damn balloons.
> more aerodynamic
For any given weight you want to float, you need a set size balloon. You either have a gigantic egg shaped thingy or a kilometer-long, slightly thinner gigantic salami-shaped thingy. The whole concept of airships don’t vibe with being super aerodynamic.
> have bigger wings
The wings don’t contribute anything to lifting the thing, they are for steering only. In fact, they slow the airship down.
Airships didn’t really lose out because they were slow or anything. It was because
A. Enough went kablooey that it made the public nervous and
B.They’re not efficient weapons of war. WW2 rolled around and no one could be bothered to maintain the industry.
You need a certain amount of lift, which is directly generated by the volume to weight ratio. The ideal ratio there would be in a sphere, highest volume smallest surface area, but a sphere would take a lot of force to push, so they squished it a bit too make it easier and the elongation gives it a nice long line to hang a cabin off.
Airships are too slow. You can make improvements to speed them up, but even at a blistering 100mph, a flight from NYC to London would take over 34 hours. Planes are easily four or five times faster than that.
You can add wings to increase lift, which lets you get away with a smaller balloon. Bigger engines and bigger wings let you have an even smaller body and then… You’re back to an airplane.
They are kind of mutually exclusive. Airships “float” by displacing heavy air with something lighter. That takes up a lot of space. Big things create a lot of drag when you move them through the air. So an airship uses very little energy to create lift, but needs a lot of energy if it wants to move forward quickly through the airmass.
Airplanes use wings to create lift. To lift heavy things, you need big wings, and/or a lot of airspeed. Double the speed, quadruple the drag and the thrust needed to move.
I don’t think there is a way to really combine the two. An airship wouldn’t hold together at airplane speeds, would require a ton of power/fuel, and would need huge wings to have any real effect on it’ performance.
Think about trying to run fast holding 10 mylar balloons. They lift things well…but they take a ton of energy to make them go fast.
Coz if you did all those things, you’d turn your airship into an airplane. An airship floats rather than flies because it’s lighter than air the same way a boat is lighter than water.
A plane flies because it travels fast enough that the wings generate lift.
They’re two different ways of moving. Airships don’t need wings. Airplanes don’t need to be filled with light gas. Sorta like asking why a car doesn’t have legs.
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