hello

How many compartments are you planning to fit in that thing? Remember, the more compartements, the more weight, as each compartent has to have a wall, which would probably be heavier than if helium was occupying that space. Being 2km long, with tens of thousands of compartments, and armor, don't make this thing too heavy, as it has to be able to carry over 500 tons of payload 12000nm in less than 7 days.

What surprises me is how they'll power this thing. Having jet or propeller engines powerful enough to propel this thing will need A LOT of fuel, and that can really cut down on payload. Also, the area where all this fuel is to be kept must be heavily armored, or else it may be targetted as a weak spot. That armor further decreases payload, and increases weight. It could also carry the amount of fuel of about 4 times of a C-5 and keep it in a concealed, interior area, like above the gondola and inside the blimp, and somehow be made compatible with aerial refueling. However, since this thing will be travelling at speeds between 71 and 100 knots, any tanker will have to go really slow to refuel this thing, and it probably won't use jet engines either at that speed.

Also, the engines themselves may also be targetted, so more than 2 will be needed. 6 to 8 are possibilities, with 2 in front, 2 in the back, 2 near the tail fins and 2 somewhere else on the huge blimp.

Zaphael

Man! They've yet to build it and you guys are already trying to figure ways to blow it up!

Vadim

Imagine the amount of Helium to lift the 500 ton cargo PLUS the weight of the airship itself. Enough AK47's can take that thing, you don't need a 767 to crash into it, a Sesna would do if you are into that.

leib10

One way you could down it is by dropping a bomb on it, I'm sure. Planes have been downed with bombs before.

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Anon

Of course it's vulnerable, it's a CARGO ship dammit.

How 'SAFE' do you think flying in a C-5B Galaxy in a warzone is?

Not very.

And let's be honest, this is the kind of thing that would be landed in france and the tanks offloaded and driven to germany kind of thing. No one in their right mind would bring one of these big babies wihtin 100 miles of the fighting, and probably not even that close.

But in getting things from America to some other SECURE overseas destination, these things would KICK ASSS.

nutter

Helium = inert.

Jet fuel needs oxygen to burn.

Jet fuel + helium will not burn...

This is NOT likely to be like the hindenberg... that used hydrogen, which is highly flammable (though it is a lighter gas with better lifting capacity). There's no way to get helium to burn or support combustion, as it's a "noble" gas which does not take part in chemical reactions :D

2DREZQ

Litterally, word-for-word, my first response to the first couple paragraphs!

In retrospect, yes, I can think of ways to make that thing extremely difficult to kill quickly, and a quick kill is the only one that counts. (It doesn't matter if the bear dies of indigestion after it eats you.) Proper preparation could turn any attempt at an attack into a suicide mission. Yes, that wouldn't stop everybody, but it would stop a lot, especially if they realize that the attack is likely to be futile.

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ArmchairGeneral

Interesting thing about the Hindenburg-I read an article some time saying that the Hindenburg disaster may have been more due to the flammable construction materials than the hydrogen. Evidently the laquer that was used to coat the outside is extremely flammable. After a little googling, I found this: http://www.clean-air.org/hindenberg.htm

"Regardless of much speculation, translation of a letter handwritten in German on June 28, 1937, by Hindenburg investigator and electrical engineer Otto Beyersdorff states "The actual cause of the fire was the extreme easy flammability of the covering material brought about by discharges of an electrostatic nature ..." Recently, NASA investigator Dr. Addison Bain has verified this finding by scientific experiments that duplicated the vigorous ignition by static discharge to the aluminum powder filled covering material. Spectacular colors of this type of combustion were produced from the burning skin of the giant airship. Dr. Bain concluded that the Hindenburg would have burned and crashed even if helium would have been used as the lifting gas. Dr. Bain noted that the particular type of aluminum powder particles, which are flake like in shape, are particularly sensitive to electrical discharge."

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BluMonk

well i agree with sniper it would have immense use for friendly territory deployment move things fast and in large numbers
but the rest of the way would still be as in the old days crawl along the ground into enemt territory

hello

If any other country develops a stealth fighter of F-22 level, this thing is gone. All they have to do is reach firing range undetected, and then fire away. However, currently no other country but the US has stealth fighters, so it would take a massive attack of over 96 planes operating on the edge of their combat radius or beyond that, which would mean it's kind of like a kamikaze-style suicidal attack, if only 12 Raptors were escorting the Walrus, and the Walrus is within 1000nm of the base where the attackers are operating from. I wouldn't bring this thing within 1000nm of any enemy base.

Here's a WALRUS link.

Another huge-airship concept is SkyCat 1000, which carries double the payload of WALRUS, along with it's smaller variant, SkyCat 200. They both seem a little closer to reality than WALRUS.

Infact, SkyCat 1000 has the possibility to be loaded with CALCMs or future cruise missiles and slowly circle at super-standoff ranges after it has delivered it's cargo, shooting the missiles B-52 style. The only differance is that the SkyCat will do it for a much longer amount of time and with more missiles than the BUFF.

ArmchairGeneral

1000 miles? That's a pretty long way, dude. Seems like it kind of negates the positive attributes of getting a large amount of equipment to the battlefront very fast. And as Sniper says, all cargo planes are easy targets, but that doesn't mean they're worthless. We flew C-5's into Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Of course, they knew better than to shoot at us, but I'm thinking more on the lines of maybe keeping 'em 100 mi away.`

hello

Keeping a blimp of that size 100 miles away from an enemy airbase is dangerous, IMO. They'll obviously detect it with great ease and can make attempts to attack it. Also, even the shortest ranged of modern fighters have a combat radius of about 300nm minimum, so they'll have plenty of fuel to come at the huge balloon. I think you mean 100 miles from the front line.

Gun Grape

The problem is that the maker of Skycat, CargoLifter ATG went out of buisness in 2002. Right after the Boeing signed a multimillion dollar contract to develope the Skycat 2000 and the CL -160.

There are a lot of problems with using LTA for heavy lift. Especially when it comes to bouyancy. Drive a 50 ton tank off the thing and now it has 50 tons worth of lift that has to be accounted for. Start driving tanks off and that thing is going to shoot straight up.

Now you can load ballast but that means that you must have an equil weight of ballast prestaged at the destination with the equipment to move it.

You can bleed off lift gasses, but that means that unless you prestaged replacment gas, the thing has no bring back capability.

At some time, with powerful engines , you could use them to hover, but what would the updraft be like?

Leave LTA to Goodyear.

edit: and when they were around, neither Skycat or Cargolifter ever flew a full scale LTA craft.

Gun Grape

I should have googled earlier.

DARPA terminated the project in March and cancelled funding in the 07 Budget.

hello

Can you provide a link and some information on the status of the SkyCat 2000 with Boeing?

"that thing is going to shoot straight up..."

Unless you add ballast. Of course it would be prestaged, this thing won't fit anywhere other than a VERY open space. Just look at it's size.

It dwarfs a football field, and is the size of a pyramid instead, and that's only the 1000. Now think of the 2000.

" You can bleed off lift gasses, but that means that unless you prestaged replacment gas, the thing has no bring back capability."

Well, helium is so rare that they probably won't just let it escape into the atmosphere. They'll probably pump out the lift gasses as the payload is offloaded, and then pump the same gasses back in when it's ready to fly again.