The Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg

Written in the 1985 by Harold G. Dick and Douglas H. Robinson, this book is a real gem.

Harold Dick was an American engineer assigned as a technical liaison to the Zeppelin Company in Germany. Harold worked for the Goodyear-Zeppelin Company in Akron Ohio. His 5 years working in Germany during the turbulent 30s saw the rise of the greatest of all airships, the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. Despite the rising militarism and despotism of the NAZIs he had access to every aspect of the Zeppelin operation and flew on nearly every flight of the great airships. Keeping meticulous records of every aspect of their operation.

This book is a goldmine of information on how these vast machines were designed, maintained and actually operated.

Narrowly missing the fateful last flight of the Hindenburg, he describes the reaction to this tragedy technically as well as socially and politically. He also describes the changes made to the successor to the Hindenburg, the Graf Zeppelin II, which unfortunately was never flown commercially and was broken up to be turned into fighters during the war.

The book is illustrated with lots of photographs and diagrams, many taken by the author himself and never before published. There are also translations of original documents, maps and diagram aplenty.

While not really being Steampunk this book does give the reader a real taste for what might have been in the best tradition of our favourite "what ifs".

I've tagged this post "Flight Engineer" because it has lots of good information useful as reference for the design.

Title
The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships
Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg
Author
Harold G. Dick
Douglas H. Robinson
Publisher
Smithsonian Institute Press
Washington
Date
1985

ISBN:0-87474-364-8

Keep your sight glass full and your firebox trimmed.
KJ

A very interesting movie coming soon hopefully.
Set in a Steampunk/Dieselpunk 1920s this trailer gives a good feel for the film:

Trailer for the ultimate indie guerilla short film, "The Wars of Other Men". Written by Mike Zawacki & Nancy Nall Derringer and directed by Mike Zawacki.

From YouTube

Published on Dec 11, 2012

www.thewarsofothermen.com

Set in a 1920s-like world at war, "The Wars of Other Men" tells the story of a nameless Lieutenant fighting for an army on the verge of defeat. The enemy has begun to dominate the battlefield with their new chemical super weapon, known only as "the Fog." When his superiors learn the location of the facility that manufactures the Fog, the Lieutenant is ordered to lead a squad through the war torn city to capture the scientist responsible for its creation... at a terrible cost to soldier and civilian alike. With the lives of his men and the fate of the war hanging in the balance the Lieutenant must make a choice -- will he be a good soldier or will he be a good man?

Filmed in Detroit with next to no budget and a gifted, passionate, dedicated volunteer crew "The Wars of Other Men" takes indie guerilla film making to the bleeding edge of what's possible - an immersive alternate earth period war film set in a city torn apart by war. With lush diselpunk and steampunk inspired production design, jaw dropping locations, high grade visual effect elements, and (most importantly!) a solid story built around compelling characters, "The Wars of Other Men" exists far outside the normal limits of indie film making. The film runs at approximately 26 minutes.
Our endless thanks to all of the people who worked to make this film a reality!

Music: "Nevermore" copyright 2008 Kevin Wilt (kevinwilt.com)

imdb.com/title/tt1769372/

Keep you sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Now this is sweet!
An article from Gizmag discussing the progress of a new airship being built in California.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Aeroscraft dirigible airship prototype approaches completion

She is the first "rigid" type airship built in over 40 years.

The dirigible airship, the oddball aircraft of another era, is making a comeback. California-based Aeros Corporation has created a prototype of its new breed of variable buoyancy aircraft and expects the vehicle to be finished before the end of 2012. With its new cargo handling technology, minimum fuel consumption, vertical take-off and landing features and point to point delivery, the Aeroscraft platform promises to revolutionize airship technology.

The Aeroscraft ship uses a suite of new mechanical and aerospace technologies. It operates off a buoyancy management system which controls and adjusts the buoyancy of the vehicle, making it light or heavy for any stages of ground and flight operation. Automatic flight control systems give it equilibrium in all flight modes and allow it to adjust helium pressurized envelopes depending on the buoyancy requirements. It just needs one pilot and has an internal ballast control system, which allows it to offload cargo, without using ballast. Built with a rigid structure, the Aeroscraft can control lift at all stages with its Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) capabilities and carry maximum payload while in hover. What makes it different from other vehicles is that it does not need a runway or ground infrastructure.

Oh the wonder of real airships!
This video is a compilation of clips from the flights of the Graf Zeppelin, including some from her circumnavigation in 1929. She carried thousands of passengers in almost 300 flights without any issues at all.



"What ifs" abound here.
What would the world be like if this had been the preferred mode of civilian transport?

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Engines Tanks and Bulkheads Oh My!

Having described last time  how we are able to generate the steam needed to both lift and power our globe circling airship, it is time to attempt a layout of the system so that we can see how it would fit into the hull. Since in my position as Flight Engineer I will be spending most of my role play time here I admit that it is a subject close to my heart

What would such an airship look like if it must include such a novel power and lift source?
I would like to say she would look like this...

Thunderer by *Voitv

But alas the "practical" bit gets in the way, sigh.

Unlike a vessel that floats on water, an airship is way more delicate in her balance and weight restrictions. The system I described last time is relatively heavy! My back of envelope calculations suggest that it would be the equivalent of all the engines, fuel and ballast water that the Hindenburg carried and then some. This weight is concentrated into a small area which has implications for where it is positioned in the hull.

The main propulsion engine in the stern with its large counter rotating props, powered by Tesla's wireless electrical system, is also fairly weighty for its power output. One other design idea I had was to use a larger number of smaller engines spread around the hull to avoid this concentration of weight, but it doesn't look quite so cool. (The "Splendid" requirement remember.) In this system these two weights, the power plant and main propulsion system, are at least small in area which simplifies the gross layout somewhat. By placing the power plant appropriately in the design we can balance the ship. The crew accommodations, cargo holds, and bridge are relatively light by comparison.

One other significant weight that needs to be accounted for is the steam condenser. This condenser is needed to recover the water from the high pressure steam used for power, plus the steam vented from the lift system when trimming the ship and any excess steam generated when the core is operating. Remember that our power core is either on or off, and when on must be cooled by steam generation constantly.

When I was originally doodling around with my design I had thought to give our airship a hull that was a shell of a light metal, like duraluminum, rather than the truss and fabric type structure the traditional rigid airships used. The condenser in that design was simply the upper surface of the hull itself. Alas, a quick calculation showed that a hull the size of the Hindenburg would be way too heavy built that way. In fact even using a light metal such as duraluminum the condenser becomes a significant weight in its own right, the third largest weight after the power core and main propulsion engine in fact.

Interestingly, if our airship was buoyed aloft by hydrogen, instead of steam, such a hull would work, and wouldn't need the weight of a condenser. This has some implications for a modern airship design using composite materials like modern graphite fibres etc.

Since we want our airship to be mostly appropriate to Victorian times, and use steam as its lifting gas, our airship will have a more or less conventional hull structure of duraluminum trusses with a fabric cover for the majority of the hull. The three primary weight blocks of power, propulsion, and condenser are laid out in such a way that the airship is in balance. The simplest way to visualize her is something like the Hindenburg with a pair of counter rotating props at the stern aft of the fins, a pair of funnels just forward of amidships, and what looks like a shell of metal on her upper hull just aft of the funnels.

I think that is pretty "splendid" really so our Captain should be happy.

Now let's get into the engine room and get our hands greasy, what would it look like?  How do you arrange all the bits that are the core systems that support our airship in flight?  As mentioned above the power core and its water tank are the heaviest parts and so must be the lowest in the hull. Water is a good shield for radiation so the rest of the engine room can be close to the core without problems. From an aerodynamic standpoint we don't want to disrupt the hulls smooth contour more than necessary so as much as possible we should keep everything inside the hull along the keel structure.

Here is my proposed gross layout. I would draw a picture but "Dammit Jim, I'm a Flight Engineer not an artist!"

At the lowest point, close to amidships, is the core and its tank. There is really no pressure in the tank so it doesn't have to be cylindrical like a railway engine boiler. However, a cylinder does minimize the weight of the tank relative to its volume. A sphere would be the best of course, but would be harder to fit into the hull. Above the tank is the main low pressure distribution header. This header leads low pressure steam direct from the core to the lift bags inside the hull. Valves in the header control this distribution. A low pressure channel also connects the header with the condenser on the upper surface of the hull. This channel is controlled by a valve and is the primary means to regulate the flow of low pressure steam between the lift bags and/or dumping the excess to the condenser.

Alongside the main distribution header is the main condensate header. This header's main purpose is to connect to the condenser on the hull and direct the condensed steam back to the main tank. This header also collects steam condensed from within the lift bags, as well as from the condensation collected from the inside of the hull itself that results from lift bag leakage.

Forward of the main tank is the engine room proper. Integrated into the forward bulkhead of the main tank is the high pressure boiler. Inside is the steel coil, filled with high pressure mineral oil, that leads directly into the heart of the power core. (Note: I've changed this slightly see the next article for the reasons why) Water from the main tank is pumped into this boiler where it is flashed into steam. The production of steam is regulated by the pump rate, if the pumps stop so does the steam production. This is similar to the way a water tube steam boiler worked on the more advanced steam cars of the period.

The heart of the engine room is the main turbine that takes the high pressure steam from the boiler and converts the energy to electrical power, by the use of an attached Tesla high voltage AC generator. This turbine is a special light weight version of that employed in high speed torpedo boats. Exhaust steam from the turbine is directed to an exhaust header. This header is connected to the main condenser.

A valve also connects the exhaust header directly to the funnels. When activated all the exhaust steam goes directly to the atmosphere, via the funnels instead of the condenser. This is used for two purposes, in case of a problem with the condenser that produces an unacceptable back pressure on the exhaust, and for when the Captain orders "flank" or emergency speeds and the flow of steam from the turbine would overwhelm the ability of the condenser to handle it. Doing so would rapidly deplete the water in the main tank of course, as none of it would be recovered by the condenser. We are a military ship, as well as an exploratory one, so such speeds may sometimes be necessary. Of course we could only run the ship flat out like this for a limited amount of time before we would be forced to shutdown the core. (Hmmm... I foresee some interesting role play possibilities with that, "Sorry Captain I canna push her much longer or she's goin ta blow!")

Ranged along the walls of the engine room are the auxiliary systems needed to support the primary one. I imagine this to look pretty similar to the engine room of a high speed destroyer of the period. Lots of brass gauges, pipes, pumps, and sparking, glowing, electrical devices of a mysterious and dangerous look.
I'll try to describe these systems in more detail in my next article.

Forward of the engine room is the domestic cargo hold, which carries the baggage and supplies for the crew. Aft of the main tank is a larger general purpose cargo hold.

So that will be my domain on this ship. How large a crew would be needed to man the engine room?  Not many really. If we used a three watch system similar to that used by commercial surface ships and the great rigid airships, a crew of 6, 3 in each watch, including myself would be sufficient for normal operation.

Please join me next time as I continue to flesh out the mechanical side of this airship.
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the crew's comforts, that's coming soon as well.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Click here for the next article in this series.

You can follow the full design thread by clicking on the tag "Flight Engineer".

In 2012!


Here is an image from Google Maps of the airport at Friedrichshafen airport.

This is the headquarters of Zeppelin NT, the only current commercial manufacturer of airships.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

To Fly Amongst the Clouds

Heavenly Nautilus by *voitv

In the previous articles in this series I talked about some of the ways that airship flight was controlled and the constraints that those ways imposed on flight duration. With the fantastically powerful energy source at the heart of our airship, I have concluded that using steam as the lifting gas essentially eliminates those constraints.

Besides, what better steampunk airship could we have than one that flies and is propelled using steam!

Later in this series I will attempt some calculations, to do a kind of "reality check", for the overall design. However to make sure that I wasn't too far off base, I did some quick calculations using the specs of the Hindenburg to see if steam lifting gas would result in useful lift. For an airship the size and dead weight of the Hindenburg, steam does indeed allow a small payload. You may recall that my buddy Grant's calculations had shown that in order to fly it would have to be 25% larger. But she was saddled with passenger accommodations and infrastructure to handle 40 or more people and their baggage, and since our airship is a military/exploratory one, not a commercial passenger ship, we have a lot of weight that can be re-allocated to our power and propulsion systems.

In a conventional gas filled airship the static lift system is independent of the propulsion. In the case of the great rigid airships like the Graf Zeppelin or Hindenburg, the lift was provided by hydrogen and the propulsion by diesel engines. In our case, courtesy of our power source, we can unify these systems with the attendant benefits I discussed last time.

So how would this work in practice?

First I'll talk a bit about one way to make use of our power source to handle both lift and propulsion. Then I'll discuss a way to bring the power out to the propellers so we can begin our grand voyage. In my next post in this series I'll talk about how all this can be laid out in the hull and perhaps what form that hull will take.

Power Core

At the heart of our airship is the core, a dense block of "something" generating very large amounts of heat. (Personally I prefer to treat this core as a fission type nuclear reactor.) Since for our purposes it is our one major fantastical element, we don't have to deal with the pesky details of how it actually generates so much heat. We do however, need to deal with the practicalities of using it.

To keep things simple the core is either an "on or off", "feast or famine", deal. Once running this core continues to generate heat, whether we need it or not, therefore cooling of the core is a priority. The core is mounted in the center of a large tank of water. Thermosyphoning of the tank water around the core, where it is turned into low pressure steam, carries away this heat. This steam is used as our lift gas. In flight, we only need to generate steam to balance that which is condensed and collected from the gas bags inside the hull. This will not be enough to prevent overheating of the core, so a large radiator ,or condenser, is mounted on the top of the hull to condense any excess steam. This radiator is a primary structural component making up a significant portion of area of the hull itself. The radiator is air cooled, sending excess heat to the atmosphere.

In the event that the hull condenser cannot handle the excess steam, or in case of an emergency, steam will be sent directly to the atmosphere through a couple of elegant funnels on the upper hull. (Just cause it looks so damn cool.)

In practice the Chief Engineer (me) and his staff would constantly monitor the heat balance of the main tank, along with the balance of lift steam and condensate reboil, directing excess steam to the condenser as required to keep things stable.   

The main tank also serves to shield our crew from any adverse effects of the core itself. Water is a good shield for ionizing radiation. Two meters of water is sufficient to handle the gamma ray flux of a typical spent fuel rod from a modern reactor for example.

Power Generation

My proposal is for our airship to use a Tesla type electrical power system to drive its main propulsion engine. This power is generated in the engine room by the use of a similar system to that found in a modern nuclear reactor.

Given the very large amount of heat being produced continuously, the interior of the core itself is much hotter than its surface.  A coil of steel pipes built into the structure of the core when it is made, carries a dense mineral oil into the heart of the core. Here the oil picks up the intense heat, and being under very high pressure, does not boil but remains liquid itself. This high pressure, very hot, oil is directed to a more or less conventional boiler outside the main tank. Here it is used to boil water, supplied from the main tank, to make steam. This steam is used to run a high speed turbine in the engine room. Exhaust steam from the turbine is directed to the hull condenser and thence back to the main tank.

Why not have water in the coil and simply flash it into steam directly? 

To keep things simple. If the coil and boiler are arranged and sized correctly, no mechanical pumps are required to maintain the fluid flow through the core, and therefore the heat flow to the boiler. The density effects of temperature will cause the oil to flow in the loop. We want to minimize the amount of things that can fail INSIDE, or close to, the dangerous confines of the main tank near the core. Also it is likely that the fluid used in the loop will become dangerous (radioactive?) as a result of its close exposure to the core. With no mechanical pumps in the loop, there is no need to open the piping for repair or maintenance with the risk of exposure to any contaminated fluid.

The turbine is connected to one of Tesla's high powered AC generators. This power is used to run the main propulsion systems.

Propulsion

Tesla's wireless power transmission system, a kind of tuned resonance, is used to transfer this power to the main engine without wires. The engine drives large counter rotating props at the stern of the airship. These props, by counter rotating, do not induce any rotational torque on the hull. A similar system is used to drive water torpedoes.

Auxiliary engines and propellers are mounted on the hull for use in maneuvering at low speeds during takeoff and landing. These engines also receive their power via Tesla's wireless system.

A side benefit to using Tesla's power system is that lighting and auxiliary power can be taken from the same system without the use of wires, thus helping to minimize weight.

The core gives us both lift and power for propulsion. There are no mechanical pumps necessary to control the primary system, minimizing the points of failure when we are far from our base. With such power at our command we can truly fly amongst the clouds, traveling the world in the search of adventure and in service of Her Majesty, HUZZAH!

Join me next time for some more details of how all this fits together within the airship's hull. An engineer's eye view if you will.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your heat balance stable!
KJ

Click here for the next article in the series.

You can follow the full design thread by clicking on the tag "Flight Engineer".

The Case for Steam

In the previous part of this series I talked about some of the details concerning how an airship flies.  In this part I will discuss the pros and cons of using steam as the lifting gas for our airship.

You can get some of the technical details of why steam makes a good lifting gas at this website:
The Flying Kettle. They are actually working on a free balloon that uses steam and have dealt with a lot of the practical details, a fascinating site definitely worth a perusal.

There are lots of different gases that can be used for generating static lift for an airship. In the real world the best one is hydrogen, followed by helium then pure methane. Of these three, hydrogen and methane are explosive when mixed with air and helium, while being non-flammable, is expensive and relatively rare. Ordinary steam is a surprisingly good lift gas being between helium and methane in lift capacity, plus steam is easy to make, cheap, and non-flammable.

This table from Flying Kettle has the properties of various lift gasses.

GAS	M.W.	Temp. (‹C)	Density (kg/m3)	Lift (N/m3) in ISA	Safety	Cost	Ease of provision	Buoyancy control
H2	2	15‹	0.084	1.140 11.19	bad	fair	fair	no
He	4	15‹	0.169	1.056  10.36	good	very high	very bad	no
CH4	16	15‹	0.676	0.549  5.39	bad	low	fair	no
NH3	17	15‹	0.718	0.507  4.97	fair	low	fair	no
hot air	29 (avg)	110‹ (avg)	0.921 (avg)	2.980.327  2.2.98 (avg)	good	very low	good	yes
steam (H2O)	18	100‹	0.587	0.638  6.26	good	very low	good	yes

From the chart you can see that pure steam at sea level and 100C only has the ability to lift 6.26 N/m3 which is better than pure methane but only about 60% of the lift available from helium. My buddy Grant, who is an engineer in real life and also a member of our crew, has calculated that, given steam's lifting capability compared to hydrogen, an airship with the weight of the Hindenburg would need to be about 25% larger in volume to fly!  That is a significant difference and could easily kill the use of steam for any "practical" design on that basis alone.

Another big disadvantage of steam as a lifting gas is that it condenses when the temperature goes below that necessary to keep it as vapour. That temperature is just over 100C at sea level of course, but lower at higher altitudes. As time goes on during a flight the steam will condense back into liquid water, primarily due to heat loss through the envelope, which will reduce the volume available to generate lift. Essentially the airship will constantly be "leaking" lift gas by this condensation.

To maintain flight this condensate must be re-boiled and returned to steam constantly, plus any leakage through the envelope that contains the steam must be balanced somehow, just like a normal gas filled airship must balance against the leakage or venting of lift gas by the dropping of ballast. In a conventional airship the energy that would be necessary to re-boil the condensate must be supplied by fuel and boilers that take up payload capacity.

So why am I proposing the use of steam given these disadvantages?

What really tips the issue in favour of steam for our airship is the power source we are using. In part one I mentioned that the main fantastical element of our airship was this power source, the exotic core of Verne's Nautilus. I prefer to think of this source as being like a fission type reactor core and will treat it as such for this design. Part 4 and 5 of this series will deal with the design decisions that such a power system requires. For the purposes of this discussion here, the key elements we are concerned with are that such a reactor uses up no fuel with time, and it generates prodigous quantities of heat continuously with a very high power to weight ratio.

This power source neatly deals with the disadvantage of condensation as it can easily re-boil any condensate and return it to the envelope.  Liquid water can be boiled to make up any leakage through the envelope to the atmosphere as well.

I am a big fan of simple systems, especially mission critical ones. Since we have an almost unlimited supply of heat available with our power core, we do not need much complxity to generate large volumes of low pressure steam. Thermo syphoning through the core may be all that is required for lift gas production. I will look at some proposed details of how the core and steam production can be controlled in following articles.

Let us now look at the three constraints to airship flight duration I discussed in the last article.

The three constraints are: lifting gas supply, ballast supply, and fuel supply. These are constraints because as a flight continues, the need to balance the buoyancy by releasing ballast and venting gas to account for changing conditions, place a limit on flight duration. Venting gas to lower buoyancy must be balanced eventually by dropping ballast to increase it again. As fuel is consumed the airship gets lighter and gas must be vented to adjust for that as well. In the case of a conventional gas filled airship both of these actions, venting gas and dropping ballast, were irreversible. Once the ballast supply was used up no further adjustments were possible. Ditto once the volume of gas vented reduced the airships buoyancy below that necessary to maintain lift. At that point the voyage was over!

So how does steam as a lifting gas, with our power core, handle these constraints?

The Case for Steam (almost)

In part one of this series I talked a bit about why I'm working on a "practical" design for an Airship.  I also mentioned that one of the main fantastical elements was the super powerful energy source that will power the ship.  So in this article I will start to make the case that given this very good energy source the best lifting gas system to use is simple steam.

I thought I would be able to get right to making that case, but first we need to talk a bit about how a conventional gas filled airship flies.

Graf Zeppelin 1933

An Airship is not simply a balloon with an engine and propeller attached. Anybody who has ever tried to throw a kids balloon knows that a balloon has no directional stability at all. Airships tend to have shapes akin to those of the underwater profiles of ships, or the hulls of submarines. This enables some longitudinal stability when moving through the air.


Unlike a surface or underwater vessel however, the airship is moving through a medium that is more than 700 times less dense than water. A ship floats by displacing water equivalent to the weight of the vessel. Since water is so much denser than air a ship hull can be quite small and still be able to support a significant weight.  Plus there is a definite interface between the water and the air so a ship can act like a platform resting on this surface and have all it's "interesting stuff" exposed on top of the hull, in the air. A surface ship usually has a significant amount of reserve or excess buoyancy, which is why a ship floats on the surface and can carry useful amounts of cargo and armaments.

An airship also floats by displacing a volume of air equivalent to it's weight but, since air is so much less dense the volume required is correspondingly higher. There is essentially no "surface" to the air so an airship is more like a submarine than a surface ship. The airship is suspended INSIDE the air it moves through so it needs to be as close to neutrally buoyant as possible. That is, the buoyancy should be sufficient to allow the airship to be stable in altitude but not tend to rise or fall. If the airship is positively buoyant by too large an amount it will rise uncontrollably unless lift gas is vented or buoyancy is otherwise reduced. If it's buoyancy is too negative it will not fly at all or fall to the ground unless weight is reduced by dropping ballast.

In practice airships are usually slightly heavy relative to this neutral point, I'll explain why in a moment.

Since there is no surface against which an airship's hull can push, like a surface ship pushes against the water's surface, there is no "right-side up" except that determined by the distribution of weights in the hull. This distribution is critical, relatively heavy portions of the craft will tend to twist the hull until they are at the lowest point. Thus even though it is popular to show some  Steampunk Airships looking like airborne surface ships it would take a lot of external force, with complex engines and propellers , to keep them that way. Our airship will have the traditional weight distribution where the lowest part is filled with the heavy stuff, engines, power source, crew, cargo, cabins, and most weapons. The large volume needed to make the vessel float in the air will be above this.

The other thing that powered airships use in flight is what I call dynamic or form buoyancy. That is, the movement of the ship through the air generates some of the needed lift. This is in addition to the static lift supplied by the large volume of lifting gas, much like the passage of air over the wing of a heavier than air craft. In the case of the original Zeppelins, and current non-rigid airships, most altitude control in flight was by judicious use of the control planes to change the hulls angle to the airflow. They use the effect of the ships forward motion through the air to control altitude. That is the reason to keep the airship slightly heavy. By having the airship tending to sink in the absence of forward movement the pilots can play the opposing forces against each other which makes control easier.

Airship flight is a constant balancing act between the forces supplied by the vessels buoyancy and propulsion, and the external forces caused by air movement across the surface of the vessel, and any larger atmospheric conditions like winds, frontal systems, storms etc. In a traditional gas filled airship there were three constraints that determined the length of time an airship could operate. The three were fuel supply, ballast supply and lifting gas supply.    

Adjustment for external conditions, like altitude, temperature, humidity etc, required the release of ballast, usually water, to increase buoyancy, or venting of gas to decrease it. As fuel was consumed during a flight the vessel would get lighter with time so gas would have to be vented to maintain static altitude. Obviously there is a limit to how much ballast could be carried, simply to be dropped, and how much gas could be vented before the ability to control the buoyancy would get problematic.

Any emergency conditions, like being caught in a sudden updraft or downdraft near a weather front, could necessitate the dropping of a lot of ballast at once or the venting of a large amount of gas. A single such incident could result in the vessel being unable to continue its voyage, if she survived at all.

Here, finally, we can begin to discuss the case for steam as the lifting gas, because the use of steam essentially removes two of these three constraints! In our case our amazing power source also removes the third, completing the trifecta.

In my next post in this series I'll get to the heart of the Steam as Lifting Gas case.

Until next time here is another image from the Steampunk Art of *Voitv to inspire our airship dreams...

Postal Dragon

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Click here for the next part of this series.

You can follow the full design thread by clicking on the tag "Flight Engineer".

Contents and Prospectus

My fellow crew members suggested that I try to organize this series of posts so they would be able to identify the various sections they were interested in and would, hopefully, like to comment on.
Each entry below will be linked to the actual post (once I write and post them).  There is a lot of interesting stuff to cover and of course many of them overlap so the actual posts may not be quite so specific, but this is my plan so far:

• Part 1 Making the Fantastical Practical A brief introduction as to why I'm doing this and the introduction of the major fantastical element of this design, that being the mysterious ultra-powerful energy source used in the airship.
• Part 2 Contents and Prospectus  This post!
• Part 3a The Case for Steam (almost) A brief discussion of how a conventional airship flies.
• Part 3b The Case for Steam A discussion of the rationale, pros and cons, for the use of steam as the lifting gas for the airship. Much of the subsequent design discussions revolve around and depend on this design decision, as what allows an airship to fly is probably one of the most important elements to discuss.
• Part 4 To Fly Amongst the Clouds A proposal for the way our fantastical power core generates both lift gas and propulsion power.
• Part 5 Engines Tanks and Bulkheads Oh My! A discussion of one proposed layout for the "engine room" and the primary systems  including steam generators and propulsion systems.
• Part 5a More Engines Tanks and Bulkheads Oh My! After further reflection, here is a more detailed discussion of the high pressure steam system used to drive our main power plant.
• Part 5b Full Steam Ahead A summary of the design of our airship, and a description of the layout of the engine room.
• Part 5c A Self Mobile Cloud  A discussion of some of the lift control issues using steam as our lift gas.
  
• Part 6 Domestic Tranquility Systems Of course a globe trotting airship like ours is more than just an engine hanging from a balloon! The officers, crew and passengers need to be able to live aboard for extended periods of time. What's more some of the crew members are Ladies so we must include many creature comforts for them.
• Part 6a More Domestic Tranquility Systems. A document I prepared for our Role Play group summarizing the interior layout of our airship
• Part 7 Splendid She Must Be In conclusion, our Captain has ordered that she must, in addition to being one of the most technologically advanced airships of the age, be one of the most "Splendid"(tm) and this post will attempt to grant his wishes to the best of this poor flight engineer's ability.  

Additional posts as needed to discuss other aspects of the design like communications, weapons, control systems, role playing etc.

• Our Airship Presenting the HMAS Velvet Brush
• Airship Technology Speech  My character, as Engineering Officer , was ordered to give a presentation about the technical wonders of our fine ship. I decided to actually give the speech.
• An Analysis of a Real System "Steam Power Plants in Aircraft"  by  E.E. Wilson at the Bureau of Aeronautics, 1926

I hope you will follow along with me as we hash out these knotty issues and design our fantastical, yet practical, airship. To give you a taste for the kind of craft we are dealing with check out the fantastic Steampunk Art of *Voitv on Deviant Art.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

By clicking on the tag "Flight Engineer". you can find lots more Airship information.

Click here for Part 3a of the Practical Airship Design series

Making the Fantastical Practical

Well, "Practical" may not be the right word.

I am a member of a Steampunk group that models itself as an Airship Crew.  Nothing really new about that, there are lots of Airship crews out there. What I particularly like about this group though, is that there are some members who are of a strong engineering bent. As part of the online Role Play we do, between going out to pubs in our uniform finery, there have been several intense discussions about the nature of our airship. Things like how big is it, how fast can it fly, what kind of lift system does it use, what is its power source, crew and cargo capacity etc.  To be honest, most of our shipmates are not really worried about the technical side, as long as it is consistent enough to make whatever role playing we do entertaining.  However, there is a lot of interesting and technically cool issues to grapple with, every bit as intriguing to me as what form the uniform will take and where we will be flying off to.

The Graf Zeppelin over the Great Pyramids

Now since the idea is to have an airship capable of doing an around the world voyage, like the Graf Zeppelin did, and to carry a reasonable crew and cargo, but at the same time be fantastical enough to be interesting, the design walks a fine line between technically feasible and outright fantasy.

I'm of a fairly technical bent myself and as such I am more interested in such a ship having as much of a real technical basis as possible.  To me, a Steampunk device is much more interesting if the fantastical (i.e. imaginary) elements are just sufficient to make it work. For example, in Kenneth Oppel's books they have a lift gas that has many times the lifting capacity of hydrogen. Nearly everything else is still normal. With only one big change to "Physics As We Know It"(tm), the reader doesn't have to decide if hanging onto a rope, while dangling off the tail fins of an airship, is risky, it certainly is since gravity still applies and crewmen don't sprout wings simply when needed.

For me therefore the design of our airship needs to keep the fantastical elements to a minimum, while still tipping our collective hats to the "What Ifs" of Steampunk. The kinds of things I talked about in last weekend's speech.

The role playing we are doing, to pass the time more than anything, consists of text messages back and forth, in character, concerning the various doings associated with being in an airship crew. It isn't really a game per se, it is more an unfolding storyline. One of the interesting things about this kind of evolving narrative is that statements made previously stick around, and become part of the story. It is considered a big Faux Pas to arbitrarily change the story without discussing it first.

And that, dear reader, is my opportunity to do some "Practical Airship Design"

One of the earliest design constraints made, almost by accident, was that we would have an energy source of unimaginable power, like the one in Disney's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, the "Power of the Universe" as Captain Nemo described it.  I have chosen to keep that as the main fantastical element and try to design a practical airship around it. That doesn't mean I will only include real Victorian technology. I am a big fan of "What Ifs" so Tesla's creations will figure prominently as will Babbage's computing capabilities.

Any design process is always a compromise, and since we have to include our fellow crewmembers as passengers on whatever our airship design ends up looking like, they have to ultimately agree to live within any technical constraints we give her.

In future posts I will be making my case for particular design elements. Consider them proposals really and they may not be adopted by the rest of the crew, but I will try to let you all know how it is going.

Thanks for reading.

Click here for Part 2 a table of contents for the whole design

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed, and your water iced.
KJ

P.S. I have collected a lot of interesting links about Airships and their design that are related.
You can see all of them by clicking on the tag "Flight Engineer".

This looks like a very interesting concept production.
Found an article about this film over at Steampunk Costume
Animator Tim Ollive and Terry Gilliam have joined forces to create a film combining puppetry, CGI, animation and old photos. The movie is basically a Steampunk Spy Story of a sort.
Here is the trailer for your viewing pleasure:



This trailer is as much a proof of concept as anything else, but it still looks very interesting indeed.
Here is a  short animation test piece for the film.

From the website of Peculiar Pictures :

A story of outstanding heroism in the face of deception, subterfuge and treachery. Conjuring up the belief that it was made forty years before film was even invented, 1884: Yesterdays Future tells of a future that might have been but never was. Directed by Tim Ollive, the film is a mix of animation, puppetry and two dimensional and three dimensional computer generated imagery (CGI) set against backgrounds created using stunning artwork, model sets and period photographs from the Hulton Picture Library division of Getty Images. Combine these idiosyncratic production techniques with a script of mind boggling ingenuity and you have a hilarious comedy film the like of which you will not have seen before. So, put your tongue firmly in your cheek, stiffen your upper lip and prepare to be shaken and stirred by 1884: Yesterdays Future.

Here is a still from the film, I would love to take a stroll down the streets of that version of  London.

Definitely going to keep an eye out for this one!
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Found this lovely collage of images in my ramblings this snowy morning.
It is a book trailer for  "Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention"



From Youtube:
A trailer for the book "Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention"
Before Jules Verne's flying machines and H. G. Wells's spaceships, there was Frank Reade, globe-trotting inventor and original steampunk hero. Frank Reade magazines were the world's first science fiction periodicals, enthralling millions of readers with tales of fantastic inventions and adventures. Now many of the spectacular images from the vintage dime novel series are being reprinted for the first time in more than a century, along with excerpts from the action-packed stories. In Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, this lost legacy of Americana is interwoven with a biography of the "real" Reade family—inventors and explorers who traveled the world with their helicopter airships, submarines, and robots, and who encountered figures like Geronimo and Houdini. This epic saga is brought to life in the multimedia style of the authors' previous volume, the critically acclaimed Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel. Frank Reade is part science fiction, part history, and entirely exciting!

This trailer was created by Paul Guinan on his Mac using iMovie. Paul's images are all from the Frank Reade book that he co-authored with wife Anina Bennett. The book is published by Abrams Image and was released in February 2012.
------
I just wish the video spent a tad more time on each image, the pause button is your friend.
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Check out these videos of  fantastic Steampunk sculptures in action.






Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Check out this fantastic looking trailer


Now that is something I'm looking forward to seeing!
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

A great book, compiling most of the information on Airship development as of 1917.
There is also an index of every airship used in the Great War, their technical specifications and career/fate.
From the preface:

An International Register of Airships with a Compendium of Airship's Elementary Mechanics

The present volume is the result of a methodical investigation extending over a period of four years in the course of which many hundreds of English, French, Italian, German and Spanish publications and periodicals dealing with the present status as well as with the early history of airships have carefully been consulted and digested. It has thus become possible to gather under the cover of a handy reference-book a large amount of hitherto widely scattered information which, having mostly been published in, foreign languages, was not immediately available to the English speaking public.

The information thus gathered is herewith presented in two parts; one being a compendium of the elementary principles underlying the construction and operation of airships, the other constituting an exhaustive, but tersely worded register of the world's airshipping which furnishes, whenever available, complete data for every airship of 500 cubic meters and over, that has been laid down since 1834. Smaller airships are listed only if they embody unusual features.

It has been attempted to furnish here the most up-to-date information regarding the gigantic fleet of airships built by Germany since the beginning of the Great War, a feature which may, in a certain measure, repay the reader for the utter lack of data on the Allies' recent airship constructions, which had to be withheld for military reasons. A revised and enlarged edition of D'Orcy's Airship Manual, in which all the airships built during the Great War will be listed and their features duly discussed, will be issued upon the termination of the war.

Ladislas d'Orcy, New York City (U. S. A.)

Available online here:
D'Orcy'S Airship Manual 1917
There is also a PDF file scanned from a copy of the book deposited at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY under the reference YC 68298.
Download the pdf version of the D'Orcy's Airship Manual.

Lots of detailed illustrations and period photos included.

Highly recommended if you are an airship buff (and who isn't).

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and water iced.
KJ

New info on the Hindenburg disaster at the Smithsonian.
Thanks to my buddy Grant Zelych for spotting this one!
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

The Lost Map of the Hindenburg

Found this interesting article on Airships past and future.
This is the first use of the term "steampunking" as a style that I've seen too.

What does that mean? It sounds like a fusion of time periods that are neoclassical, with romantic ideals and attitudes. Basically, it is. The term attempts to describe an integration of past eras and ideals that appear lush, abundant and cluttered.

Check it out.
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

The Incredible Past and Future of the Airship
From Environmental Graffiti
“Steampunking”. What does that mean? It sounds like a fusion of time periods that are neoclassical, with romantic ideals and attitudes. Basically, it is. The term attempts to describe an integration of past eras and ideals that appear lush, abundant and cluttered. Moving forward to the present, society has sought new ideals opposing these elevated tastes such as artistic, new technology (NT) inspired, ordered and continuous. These ideals describe the dirigible.
Photo: Mike Young
In the Beginning
Thomas Scott Baldwin's sketches and demonstration of a non-rigid dirigible or "airship" intrigued the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Army in 1907 - enough that they purchased one in 1908. Instead of an airplane, the non-rigid airship became the first powered aircraft requested by the Division.
New Technology or “NT” can be infinite. In the case of the dirigible, it is possible “NT” is even beyond infinity. The term dirigible means directional control, and without this control, drift would be the only thing these huge cylindrical masses could conquer. The original constructions, mainly balloons, molded into elliptical shapes, kept afloat by huge steam engines, and moving along with the help of rudders have been re-imagined, re-defined and re-designed. Still basically cigar-shaped, their future appearance is almost as important as their maneuverability, cost efficiency, landing requirements, and stability in bad weather.
Photo: Unknown
Yet, the history overlying these rigid dirigibles is long and visionary. So let’s adapt that history to steampunking:
The Grassroots: the 1700s to the 1800s
We will start with an elliptical balloon made of a two-layered sack about 260 ft (79 m) long with a volume of 60,000 cubic ft (1,700 cubic m), as projected by General Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier in 1784, probably the first non-rigid airship.
The base of the balloon is made from a reinforced material with triangulated cables extending from the material to hold a car designed to float if a water landing is necessary. Frenchman Pierre Jullien of Villejuif proposed this schema. A need for propulsion and a way to lift the airship off of the ground is required.
So we use a lifting gas, i.e. steam, from a heavy steam engine, that will help the balloon keep its elliptical shape by supplying an internal pressure. Rudders are added to help move the airship through the sky. Yet maneuverability is still a problem.
A French engineer and inventor, Henri Giffard, intrigued by Frenchman Pierre Jullien of Villejuif, built a full-size dirigible. The airship did have a little more maneuverability, but only in tranquil weather. With heavier winds, the dirigible only flew in circles, slowly. So now Giffard changed the shape of the balloon to a cigar-shaped mass.
Its frame remains non-rigid and the volume is 113,000 cubic feet (3,200 cubic m) and is 143 feet (44 m) long. Steam from a 3-horsepower (2.2-kilowatt)-steam engine is being used to drive the propeller, with a perpendicular positioned undeveloped rudder. The steam engine is still heavy, approximately 250 pounds (113 kg). A 100-pound (45.4 kg) boiler is also present along with the coke needed to fire it.
Photo: Unknown
Light breezes are still playing havoc with maneuverability and propulsion (speed in calm air is only 3 miles per hour). A lighter weight engine to conquer wind shear and prevent instability leading to deformation of the cylindrical balloon has not been invented yet. A solution may be in the works at the end of the 19th century.

Continued here...