Comparative airship economics

Abstract

As future LTA vehicles will be doomed right from the start if they do not fill a real need, some differences in transport philosophy between design engineers on the one hand and freight forwarders on the other are discussed. Watching rising costs of energy necessary to transport our cargo from A to B, and realizing that this price of energy is always included in the product's selling price at B, the apparent correlation between installed specific tractive force per unit of cargo weight and pure freighting cost are contemplated. Very speedy and progressive Airship designs are mistrusted, because the key to any low cost transport tool is to design it for its given task only, without any unnecessary sophistication.