For Airship Builders

[Timerover51]

I found this very interesting document while browsing through archives.org, from the NACA/NASA archives. The Title is:

THE EMPLOYMENT OF AIRSHIPS FOR THE TRANSPORT OF PASSENGERS
Indications on the Maximum Limits of Their Useful Load, Distance Covered, Altitude and Speed By Unberto Nobile, Director of Italian Aeronautical Construction. You might want to check out Nobile bio on Wikipedia.

https://archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_19930080851

First, this man actual did design and build airships, plus flew them. What he says is backed up by some very hard experience. The math for his designs is in the document, and it is not some abstract, "this looks good", design sequence. Plus, he gives some very good examples of what could be done as of then.

There will be non-stop flights having the following lengths:
London-Rome 1625 km.
Rome-Taranto 460 km.
Taranto-Cairo 1700 km.
Adopting airships of 120 km/h., we find that with a cubature (volume) of 50,000 cubic meters we can carry 80 passengers, and with a cubature of
100,000 we can carry 200 passengers, covering the entire distant in about 40 hours~ flight.

 

[atpollard]

Pretty cool find, Thanks for sharing.