Nuclear powered airships

Jemiba

Jemiba

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Today I had a look into "Luftshiffe die nie gebaut wurden" (Airships, which were never built),
published by the Zeppelinmuseum, Friedrichshafen. Most spectacular are the two designs from
Frank Tinsley, based on work done by Goodyear. A flying aircraft carrier from 1951 and the
better known "Atoms for peace" civil airship, which was intended as promoter for nuclear power.
For the "Atoms for peace" there's given an estimated length of about 330m, unfortunately no
data for the carrier airship. Would surely have been impressing view !
 

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Thanks Jemiba,

breathtaking designs!, could you please post a link to help me ordering a copy of that book?, do you know if an English edition exists?

Regards,

Antonio
 
its Frank Tinsley who drew this image for the 1957 book "Airships in the Atomic Age"!

more found here http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/03/airship-dreams.html?showComment=1206047280000
source of picture same link
 

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Superb finds, gentlemen! :)
Why Don’t We Build An Atoms-For-Peace Dirigible?

Here is a bold plan for displaying peacetime uses of the atom to the peoples of the world.

By Frank Tinsley (Mar, 1956)

EARLY last year, President Eisenhower asked the Congress for funds with which to build a fission-powered merchant ship for the global spread of peaceful atomic knowledge.

.............
Click to expand...
Source: MechanixIllustrated -Mar, 1956 - Why Don’t We Build An Atoms-For-Peace Dirigible (Mar, 1956)

Unfortunally we all missed the exibition ""Luftshiffe die nie gebaut wurden" at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen in Summer 2002 and at the art kite museum für Kunst und Flugobjekte near Detmold.
betonluftschiff.jpg
 
"could you please post a link to help me ordering a copy of that book?, do you know if an English edition exists?"

Seems to be difficult, Amazon and buecher.de both have listed the book, but say "not available" ... :(
 
Some info about the German project "Atom Luftschiff Veress (ALV 1)".
Sources:
  • (German) http://www.zeit.de/1969/20/Das-Projekt-ALV-1-Fettes-Maedchen-fuer-fast-alles
  • (English) http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1969/1969%20-%202525.html
  • (English) http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1969/1969%20-%202525.html
  • (PDF, in English): http://www.agaeroplast.com/new/engl/Nigel_e.pdf
 
the first time ı glanced at the military version , ı would say because of "lighting" that the airship was carrying 16 inch cannons ! Which would have been right at home , probably ...
 
"Which would have been right at home , probably ..." :D

Quite probably no guns, just aircraft, although I don't know, if there would have
been a hangar, or if the "carrier aircraft" in this case just would have hooked on.

The passenger version was intended to carry a helicopter, which should take off
from the upperside.

But my first thoughts, too, were about Perry Rhodan starships, not airships ! ;)
 
I'm surprised that there aren't more projects:
1) Hard crashes (and resulting contamination) are less likely for an airship
2) Airships need a lot of power to displace air (as a result of their huge cross-sections)
3) The size of the airship makes it easy to shield the crew using distance (and the reactor/generator could even be placed in an unmanned lighter-than-air trailer)

So, are there more projects? I've found a couple of studies - but, I'd have expected that a high-speed cargo proposal would have gotten more press at some point.
 
In the book "Luftschiffe, die nie gebaut wurden" (Airships, that were never built) I found three
other projects for nuclear powered airships. One from Francis Morse , drawn in 1962, and
the other from Erch von Veress, designed between 1955 and 1965. Both were designed as
passenger airships. During the sixties, Henry Irwin proposed a nuclear powered freight airship
and got into contact with the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH. Nevertheless, none of those projects
ever reached the stage of metal cutting, mainly due to problems with securing sufficient funds.
 

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Gimme a break please. How does that infernal machinery works ? Does the nuke provide hot air to inflate the balloon ?
 
In the Morse design, the power plant was driving contrarotating pusher props at the extreme tail.
The ALV-1, the Veress design should use a kind of jet engine, with air fed by an intake in the bow,
and ejecting it via tubes, which ended at about one ffth of the ships length. Perhaps it should be
added, that the propulsion system and other innovations, too, that should be integrated into this
design, were seen as totally unrealistic by most experts of the time.
 

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I don't have my copy of "blind mans bluff" laying around. How many kilowatts did the NR-1's reactor put out and how much did it weigh?
 
Jemiba said:
Most spectacular are the two designs from Frank Tinsley, based on work done by Goodyear. A flying aircraft carrier from 1951 and the better known "Atoms for peace" civil airship, which was intended as promoter for nuclear power.
Click to expand...

I have searched my Goodyear information and came across a projected nuclear-powered AEW airship from 1954, nothing before that. This is mentioned as the "GZ-11" design in some archives, but closer scrutiny indicates that GZ-11 was in fact allocated in 1951 to the ZP2N-1 (later ZPG-2) improved N-class blimps, which makes the duplication unlikely.
 
Archibald said:
Does the nuke provide hot air to inflate the balloon ?
Click to expand...

Sorry, forgot this part of your question. Yes, heating of the buoyant gas (helium, not air, of course)
was planned to vary lift.
 
Back about 1972, there was a proposal for a nuclear-powered dirigible with two turbofans and a very large turboprop (think of it a a wind farm turbine in reverse) in pusher configuration driven by heat exchanged from a closed-loop nuclear reactor, complete with on-board Harriers and helicopters. A couple or three years later, this concept appeared in a techno-thriller, Clash of Titans (not to be confused with the crap-tacular movies known as Clash of the Titans) going against a Soviet aircraft carrier to rescue the survivors of a crashed airliner, one of whom was a defector the Soviets wanted back very badly.
 
Jemiba said:
Archibald said:
Does the nuke provide hot air to inflate the balloon ?
Click to expand...

Sorry, forgot this part of your question. Yes, heating of the buoyant gas (helium, not air, of course)
was planned to vary lift.
Click to expand...
are you sure about the heating system, as heated helium does not give more "lift" wen heated but less
 

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