Chicks Dig Giant Airships
Apr. 5th, 2025 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_sky_callsI dig giant airships. You dig giant airships. Chicks dig giant airships. And because the General Secretary digs giant airships, the project to build giant airships gets funding and giant airships get built.
There was, of course, a period of time when giant airships were not being built because using easily manufactureable and inexpensive hydrogen as a lifting gas was a bit too explody. However, Institute 22 of the Russkiy Academy of Sciences has had some success in researching the various anomalous discoveries (specifically the floating rocks found on the Mun) and have come up with a solution.
Buoyancy. Airships are able to float because their large size and low density. If the area enveloped by a balloon plus the weight of the balloon itself is less than the weight of an equal volume of air, the balloon will float. Air has a density of 1.205 kg/m³. Helium has a density of 0.1664 kg/m³. Floats well. Hydrogen has a density of 0.0899 kg/m³. Floats even better. An average kerbal weighs a touch over 50 kg. To have a balloon lift that kerbal, it would need to have 45 m³ of hydrogen (plus some more to account for the weight of the balloon itself.
The scientists at Institute 22 produced their first balloon capable of lifting a kerbal. It was only half the conventional size and, even at that size, would have been capable of lifting a second kerbal as well.
How was such a thing possible?
That information is labeled Osoboy vazhnosti; of particular importance. The colloquial translation of which is “we will send you to the gulag just for asking.”
How then, to build and use giant airships, something that would be absolutely impossible to conceal, while keeping the secret secret. The solution is to use the basic designs used during the thrilling days of yesteryear while not utilizing them to their theoretical limits. If one of these new airships could carry 100 tons of cargo, perhaps only load it up with 25 tons of cargo. If the buoyancy could provide an operational ceiling of 20,000 meters, never fly above 6,000 meters. If engines could drive the machine easily over 360 km/hr, run them at reduced throttle to move at a majestic yet still impressive 100 km/hr.
All while being not explody.
And so, engineers rolled out the Airship Kerbina. 35.6 meters in length and 14 meters abeam. Five thousand cubic meters of hydrogen would have been able to lift 4 tons and the craft weighed. . . . 12 tons? It was a third of the size that conventional physics said it would be! And it would be capable of carrying nearly ten times that in addition!
How would anyone keep such a thing secret without just dismantling it altogether and pretending it never happened?
There was absolute chaos in the halls of the Kremlin. People running up and down halls. Slamming doors. Jammed shredders. Shoes pounding on desks.
Too late, it was decided. Outside the science, engineering, and construction crews that had worked on it, hundreds of cosmonautics workers at Scientific Research Test Range No. 5 had already seen it as well. The proletariat of nearby Tyuratam had seen it. Surely some Amerikanski spy had seen it. A number of scientists declared that if there was no way to actually use these discoveries, what good were they in the first place. Even the GRU concluded that the Amerikanskis would surely have already discerned their own knowledge from the anomalies already discovered withing their own sphere of influence. There would be no going back.
But, moving forward, aside from the secret of the negative buoyancy gas and its origins, everything else would be treated as absolutely common and normal.
And, as would be absolutely common and normal, the Airship Kerbina set of on a short test flight around the Cosmodrome. It first made a circuit of the cosmodrome itself, then proceeded north and climbing above a spur of the surrounding Kolyma Mountains.
It was then east to the summit of Mt. Elbrus (7th highest mountain on Kerbin at 6,119m), south past the Medvezh’ya Gora Scientific Measurement Station, over Mt. Dykh-Tau (10th highest on Kerbin at 6,008m), to finally return to the cosmodrome. It was a short flight as the Airship Kerbina only carried about a half an hour’s worth of fuel for it’s top speed of about 45 m/s (though that “top” speed was at only 30% of engine power). There were to be additional flights but these were only in preparation of the construction of a much larger airship with significant capabilities. Long distance exploration. Sustained operations. Heavy cargo lifting. Ultimately, it would likely be airships rather than naval vessels supporting operations in Kerbin’s southern hemisphere.
There was, of course, a period of time when giant airships were not being built because using easily manufactureable and inexpensive hydrogen as a lifting gas was a bit too explody. However, Institute 22 of the Russkiy Academy of Sciences has had some success in researching the various anomalous discoveries (specifically the floating rocks found on the Mun) and have come up with a solution.
Buoyancy. Airships are able to float because their large size and low density. If the area enveloped by a balloon plus the weight of the balloon itself is less than the weight of an equal volume of air, the balloon will float. Air has a density of 1.205 kg/m³. Helium has a density of 0.1664 kg/m³. Floats well. Hydrogen has a density of 0.0899 kg/m³. Floats even better. An average kerbal weighs a touch over 50 kg. To have a balloon lift that kerbal, it would need to have 45 m³ of hydrogen (plus some more to account for the weight of the balloon itself.
The scientists at Institute 22 produced their first balloon capable of lifting a kerbal. It was only half the conventional size and, even at that size, would have been capable of lifting a second kerbal as well.
How was such a thing possible?
That information is labeled Osoboy vazhnosti; of particular importance. The colloquial translation of which is “we will send you to the gulag just for asking.”
How then, to build and use giant airships, something that would be absolutely impossible to conceal, while keeping the secret secret. The solution is to use the basic designs used during the thrilling days of yesteryear while not utilizing them to their theoretical limits. If one of these new airships could carry 100 tons of cargo, perhaps only load it up with 25 tons of cargo. If the buoyancy could provide an operational ceiling of 20,000 meters, never fly above 6,000 meters. If engines could drive the machine easily over 360 km/hr, run them at reduced throttle to move at a majestic yet still impressive 100 km/hr.
All while being not explody.
And so, engineers rolled out the Airship Kerbina. 35.6 meters in length and 14 meters abeam. Five thousand cubic meters of hydrogen would have been able to lift 4 tons and the craft weighed. . . . 12 tons? It was a third of the size that conventional physics said it would be! And it would be capable of carrying nearly ten times that in addition!
How would anyone keep such a thing secret without just dismantling it altogether and pretending it never happened?
There was absolute chaos in the halls of the Kremlin. People running up and down halls. Slamming doors. Jammed shredders. Shoes pounding on desks.
Too late, it was decided. Outside the science, engineering, and construction crews that had worked on it, hundreds of cosmonautics workers at Scientific Research Test Range No. 5 had already seen it as well. The proletariat of nearby Tyuratam had seen it. Surely some Amerikanski spy had seen it. A number of scientists declared that if there was no way to actually use these discoveries, what good were they in the first place. Even the GRU concluded that the Amerikanskis would surely have already discerned their own knowledge from the anomalies already discovered withing their own sphere of influence. There would be no going back.
But, moving forward, aside from the secret of the negative buoyancy gas and its origins, everything else would be treated as absolutely common and normal.
And, as would be absolutely common and normal, the Airship Kerbina set of on a short test flight around the Cosmodrome. It first made a circuit of the cosmodrome itself, then proceeded north and climbing above a spur of the surrounding Kolyma Mountains.
It was then east to the summit of Mt. Elbrus (7th highest mountain on Kerbin at 6,119m), south past the Medvezh’ya Gora Scientific Measurement Station, over Mt. Dykh-Tau (10th highest on Kerbin at 6,008m), to finally return to the cosmodrome. It was a short flight as the Airship Kerbina only carried about a half an hour’s worth of fuel for it’s top speed of about 45 m/s (though that “top” speed was at only 30% of engine power). There were to be additional flights but these were only in preparation of the construction of a much larger airship with significant capabilities. Long distance exploration. Sustained operations. Heavy cargo lifting. Ultimately, it would likely be airships rather than naval vessels supporting operations in Kerbin’s southern hemisphere.
