>Third, more speculatively, lightweight thin-film solar panels could be mounted on the top of the hull to extend the range of the vehicle if it were electric. We haven’t done the trade at exactly what price and performance of panels would be needed to make this work, but if solar continues to improve it could be an option.
They spent a surprisingly little amount of time on this... you can probably offset your fuel by a substantial margin by considering how much solar energy you can generate with that much surface area on the airship.
A 400M x 50M airship could accommodate ~20,000 sqm of film solar panels on the top-most section. Something like Maxeon's Air panels are 6kg/sqm and at 20% efficiency, so with 7hrs of median peak sunlight per day, you could generate 28mWh per day with about 120,000KG of added solar panel weight.
That is sufficient to power the ship at cruise speed for 8 hours per day, reducing fuel requirements by 33%. Forgoing fuel altogether, if the ship only moved when it had power to do so, but at 90km/h, it could still cover the same distance as an ocean liner in a day while using no fuel.
Still a far reach from the tonnage of a standard cargo ship (by a factor of 200 or so, 800,000 tons vs 165,000,000 tons) but given the reduced running costs it could be a cheaper method of transportation than ocean liners. Plus picking up and delivering to somewhere other than a major ocean port has some substantial advantages for cost savings and dock-to-dock turnaround times.
I'd be a bit concerned about performance in bad weather - it's not uncommon to have a storm at sea with >90km/h winds, and you can't exactly run from that.
They spent a surprisingly little amount of time on this... you can probably offset your fuel by a substantial margin by considering how much solar energy you can generate with that much surface area on the airship.
A 400M x 50M airship could accommodate ~20,000 sqm of film solar panels on the top-most section. Something like Maxeon's Air panels are 6kg/sqm and at 20% efficiency, so with 7hrs of median peak sunlight per day, you could generate 28mWh per day with about 120,000KG of added solar panel weight.
That is sufficient to power the ship at cruise speed for 8 hours per day, reducing fuel requirements by 33%. Forgoing fuel altogether, if the ship only moved when it had power to do so, but at 90km/h, it could still cover the same distance as an ocean liner in a day while using no fuel.
Still a far reach from the tonnage of a standard cargo ship (by a factor of 200 or so, 800,000 tons vs 165,000,000 tons) but given the reduced running costs it could be a cheaper method of transportation than ocean liners. Plus picking up and delivering to somewhere other than a major ocean port has some substantial advantages for cost savings and dock-to-dock turnaround times.
I'd be a bit concerned about performance in bad weather - it's not uncommon to have a storm at sea with >90km/h winds, and you can't exactly run from that.