TLDR:
> With modern engineering standards, there is no doubt that hydrogen could be made a safe lifting gas.
Disadvantages of hydrogen:
* burns (but only with sufficient oxygen, eg a mixture of air and 4% up to 75% hydrogen)
Advantages of hydrogen:
* lifts 8% more than helium (per volume). Not a huge difference, but not trivial for an airship
* costs 98.5% less than helium (!) (Airships have crashed because helium was too expensive to vent: safety valves on the USS Shenandoah were capped, 14 crew members lost their lives.)
> Airships are too slow for human travel
Too slow for transportation, maybe. But leisure travel? Imagine a one week air safari from Kilimandjaro and the Serengeti to Kruger Park. It could be awesome.
Edit to add:
(Leisure air travel/Safari is my own pipe dream. The article suggests cargo):
> If airships were to make a major comeback, it would be in cargo service.
> Cargo airships would need to be big—bigger than the Hindenburg. [...] ”’the lift-to-drag ratio, a critical parameter in aircraft performance, gets better as the airship gets bigger)
> Ginormous airships require a lot of lifting gas—perhaps a million cubic meters
> FAA has discouraged the return of the airship in the use case that makes the most sense
> With modern engineering standards, there is no doubt that hydrogen could be made a safe lifting gas.
Disadvantages of hydrogen:
* burns (but only with sufficient oxygen, eg a mixture of air and 4% up to 75% hydrogen)
Advantages of hydrogen:
* lifts 8% more than helium (per volume). Not a huge difference, but not trivial for an airship
* costs 98.5% less than helium (!) (Airships have crashed because helium was too expensive to vent: safety valves on the USS Shenandoah were capped, 14 crew members lost their lives.)
> Airships are too slow for human travel
Too slow for transportation, maybe. But leisure travel? Imagine a one week air safari from Kilimandjaro and the Serengeti to Kruger Park. It could be awesome.
Edit to add:
(Leisure air travel/Safari is my own pipe dream. The article suggests cargo):
> If airships were to make a major comeback, it would be in cargo service.
> Cargo airships would need to be big—bigger than the Hindenburg. [...] ”’the lift-to-drag ratio, a critical parameter in aircraft performance, gets better as the airship gets bigger)
> Ginormous airships require a lot of lifting gas—perhaps a million cubic meters
> FAA has discouraged the return of the airship in the use case that makes the most sense