Hovercraft can travel over land, water and ice. The technology behind the Hybrid Airship, the cargo-hauling ship of the skies, allows this hybrid craft to travel virtually anywhere.What is a hovercraft? It’s part boat, part airplane and part helicopter. While it may look a bit odd, how it works is quite simple. It’s an amphibious vehicle that travels on a cushion of air created by a downward blast. Hovercraft use air to balance their weight, allowing the craft to operate efficiently. Hovercraft can also operate across nearly any terrain, including land, water and ice.
It’s this characteristic that makes hovercraft technology the ideal match for the Hybrid Airship, the cargo-hauling ship of the skies, enabling the airship to access remote locations around the world.
From carrying heavy equipment to isolated regions of Alaska, to serving as a flying clinic for disaster-relief efforts, there is almost no cargo mission this ship can’t perform. This is due to the fact that the airship can land nearly anywhere. What gives the Hybrid Airship this capability? The air cushion landing system (ACLS).
The ACLS looks like giant inflatable doughnuts on the bottom of a large blimp, and it makes the challenge of accessing remote regions around the globe a thing of the past. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® developed an ACLS that blends hovercraft technology with our airship design.
“One of the biggest challenges to traditional cargo airship operations is how and where you park the airship,” said hybrid design program manager, Dr. Bob Boyd. “It’s very expensive and time consuming to develop infrastructure in remote areas around the world. The ACLS allows the Hybrid Airship to access these isolated regions without needing to build any runway or roads.”
The ACLS system consists of three underbody hoverpads. These hoverpads create a cushion of air that allows the airship to float along the ground nearly friction free. The system gives the Hybrid Airship a unique capability to hover over water – a capability unmatched by any other cargo-hauling air vehicle.
If the Hybrid Airship needs to park on land, that’s not a problem either. As the airship taxis, the hoverpads ‘grip’ to the ground with light suction pressure to keep the airship from moving in variable winds.
‘Fingers’ hang below the pads to create a seal with the ground. These fingers allow the airship to taxi over obstacles, such as tree stumps or rocks, so extensive site preparation is not needed for a high volume cargo operation. These ‘fingers’ also make the hovercraft a sustainable solution because there is no long-term impact to the ground site.
With this innovative system, the Hybrid Airship is able to travel virtually anywhere and affordably stay there.
Source: Press Release
Airships had been around for 200 years, and I have yet to seen a picture of an airship operate out of anything by a airport or a large clear field. These things are so unwieldy with all that turbulence near ground, it is practically useless. Goodyear blimps are usually accompanied by a fleet of support semis to any place they land, so if you wanna land anywhere you better have roads going there with a trained crew….. An if the truck can get there, so can those supplies, Which kind of defeat the purpose of an airship….