Russian scientists develop a shield from Global Warming

[Archaic`]

Can't help but feel that, being allergic to sulphur compounds (to the point where I can't even eat sultanas that have had a sulphur compound used in tiny quantities as a preservative), this wouldn't be the best solution for me. ^^;; Though, if it's that much less than what industry is already pumping out, I suppose it'd be so dilute by the time it falls back to earth to be negligible.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I give this the thumbs up, but you'll need to use hydrogen. There's not enough helium left to produce a fleet of such massive airships without huge costs first at least before physical supply issues.

The nice thing is that it leaves fast transcontinental travel at least somewhat possible by the time we've recovered in the 2080s and 2090s--while domestic land travel will still be accomplished by train, as being far cheaper--with average speeds up to three times faster than those of the average liner, nuclear airships may be able to offer premium two-night (40 hours, say) service between New York and London, while very large nuclear-powered liners offer budget service on the traditional transatlantic schedules.

The reason why domestic travel wouldn't be provided by airships is because even though extremely fast long-distance railroads would be scarce in the USA, with speeds of up to 110mph, and 90mph in most other places, average speeds of airships at 110 - 120mph would not be fast enough over those of long-distance trains to justify their employment, except maybe on some very limited extremely high density routes which had enough people traveling to justify such a service, which is rather unlikely considering the general reduction in living standards. Even the rich will likely travel by train; they'll just have private cars added on to the end of the consist.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There was a design proposal for a nuclear airship called Goliath in the '50s that would've been easily larger than the R101 or Hindenburg and could carry 400 passengers and just under 100 crew at around 180 KPH or so cruise. Today, you could add the thin metal skin to the rigid skeleton made of carbon-fibre or alloy. The reactor could be a high-temperature pebble-bed design, which is compact and far more efficient than any first or second-gen. reactor too. Modern fly-by-wire/light avionics and thruster pods, along with a vacuum based system for landing rather than a docking tower could all be used too. Even with hydrogen, the risk of a leak and fire would be negligible and you get 7% extra lift or so with that gas rather than helium as well. As it's nuclear, you just got more lift capacity for passengers or cargo too since your fuel load out is tiny.

Only issue is where to land such things and whether these heavy lift ships could reach such high stratospheric heights to avoid weather patterns and seed the skies with sulphur.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Only issue is where to land such things and whether these heavy lift ships could reach such high stratospheric heights to avoid weather patterns and seed the skies with sulphur.

Simple pressurized balloons (manned) have reached more than 34km, and unmanned, 58km. It should be possible to actually design a nuclear airship capable of doing the same thing, since its engines wouldn't be dependent on the atmosphere to operate.

This has the added benefit of being able to do cheap satellite launches. We could take a modified form of the Skybolt ABM, for example, up to 58km on an airship, and then dump it over the side. It actives at a safe distance below the airship, rolls to right itself, and proceeds into LEO.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I was wondering if an airship of that mass could pull it off at such height, rather than whether balloons can reach those heights. You'd need it to be pressurised for a start anyway, but then you can take advantage of the slipstreams up there for faster speeds, likely surpassing 300 KPH.

[Walsh]

Wasn't this first proposed in the seventies?

[Stuart]

I heard the latter years of WWII and immediate postwar years were marked by significantly colder winters than normal. You may have been joking, but history proves it's no joke.

That's quite right, the winters of 1946/47 and 1948/49 were pretty dreadful. There's mention of that in "Anvil of Necessity" (dead tree edition being published this week by the way), the description of the terrible winters being taken from fact. I've got a number of Giles cartoon books from those years and the winter editions are full of comment on the cold and snows. Another problem was infrastructure, Europe's transport infrastructure was shot to pieces so even where there was coal for heating, it couldn't be moved to the towns that were freezing. Ive got a picture somewhere of a coal train sitting in a siding, buried in snow.

There's a lot of explanations as to why the winters were that cold; one is that it was all the smoke from burning German cities, another that it was dust from the great tank battles. Another is that it was just a natural fluctuation and the fact it happened after WW2 was just a coincidence. The last of the really bad winters I can remember was 61/62. Then, the snow fell in November and and stayed until March.