Very good morning to everyone.

In the answer to the question

Christophe mentioned that ships are affordable but slow

and the aircraft is fast but unaffordable.

Therefore

all over the world we are looking at cargo airships as one of the promising

applications of the technology of lighter than air systems.

So at IIT Bombay where I teach aerospace engineering and I specialize in aircraft design

there

is a student of mine who could attend the previous conference I think but today he could

not come here who is trying to look at the design of rigid cargo airships.

So I am making the presentation on behalf of Shastra Trivedi

the young student.

So this is what we are looking at and because of low fuel consumption and emissions compared

to the aircraft and because of relatively lower ground infrastructure required for

takeoff and landing

airships do offer a promise with limitations.

And we all know that among the various types of structural configurations

the rigid airships

have proven historically to be very efficient for large size and large cargo transportation

primarily because they are much more durable

they are able to scale up much better with

higher payload capacity and they also consume lower resources.

So for cargoes which go beyond 20 tons

30 tons

etc.

although many companies are talking

about blimps or blimp variants

multi-load

etc.

we strongly feel that the way to go

is to go for rigid airships.

Now this is how rigid airships structurally were in the past.

We are all aware about it.

And here we try to just put down the advantages of rigid airships for cargo transportation.

Many of the problems that occur in the operational scenario of airships

the rigid airships are

well-versed to handle those inherently because of their structural capabilities.

Now all this is fine and this is where we come to the gap which airships can fill.

The problem is that the information regarding the old rigid airships

as you all know

is

very limited.

And there was a huge period during which the LTA systems went into a slumber.

And when they were revived in mid-80s, it was by a blimp-type airship.

And subsequently many people are making blimps for various applications.

We had a lovely session yesterday on blimp drones and most of them were non-rigid.

I must have built about 15-20 airships and a few aerostats

all non-rigid.

Why?