Hybrid Airships

Alberto Santos-Dumont was the most accomplished aviator around the world who initiated the step to make a hybrid airship in 1905. His first airship was named as “number 14” but it proved unfeasible after the experiment on it to check its effectiveness. The reason of its failure was the design of its envelope. Realizing this problem, he developed this airship again with the name of “14 bis” (means number 14 again). This time Alberto Santos-Dumont succeeded to make this airship, which was the first public heavier flight in the world.

In 1986, another effort was made using 4 helicopters with the airship in order to use it for heavy work. This airship was named as Piasecki PA-97 Helistat. Later on, another airship was developed with the name of “Aereon 26.” It was basically a small scale prototype which was lighter than air craft. The development of Aereon 26 is mentioned in the book of "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed" written by John McPhee. The advance technology of hybrid airships were introduced in 2000 with the name of “sky Kitten” (also referred as sky cat)

Hybrid airships are intended for heavy lifting of machinery or other material from one place to other. If you observe traditional airships, you will come to know that they have low operating cost but they are limited in different ways for example they have low speed low payload/volume ratios. Moreover, they are very difficult to handle while grounding them. Whereas hybrid airships are easy to control and one can easily trained for controlling a hybrid airship. More ever, they consume less energy for lifting heavy things from one place to other.

Along with the benefits of hybrid airships, they have some disadvantages as well. One major disadvantage is that it needs a runway in order to take off and for landing. In addition, it is difficult to manage them due to their poor air dynamic performance. Hybrid airships are highly criticized by people and they are referred to as "worst of both worlds.” But still we can’t ignore their benefits for its utilization in shifting heavy things with less fuel consumption.

Mostly hybrid airships use blending of vectored thrust and buoyancy. Zeppelin NT is one of the airships that uses vectored thrust and buoyancy for its flight. In 2005, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) initiated a program for the exploration of this technology named as “WALRUS” which was terminated in 2007 but their research can be utilized in further enhancing the performance to hybrid airships.

A lot of corporations are involved in making different hybrid airships with more efficiency. The Hybrid Aircraft Corporation is actively involved in the research for hybrid technology airships. World Sky Cat Ltd and Millennium Airship Corporation are also active for making hybrid airships. Recently, Worldwide Aeros Corporation designed an airship with the name of “Aeroscraft” which can be utilized for body shapes, vector thrust, and buoyancy control. Experts believe that hybrid airships can be improved using fewer resources in order to make them more effective.