xkcd #3298: Aerospace Flowchart
Title text:
Someday, we will find the problem that goes with this solution.
Transcript:
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Source: https://xkcd.com/3298/
Lifting stuff with an airship is surprisingly terrible.
Why?
Our old arch nemesis, physics....
The problem is not that you can't build an airship that can lift say ten tons of cargo.
The problem is what you do when you remove the cargo from the airship.
Without the cargo, the airship will be ten tons light, you would need to make sure you could hold it down against a lifting power of ten tons.
Ok, so let's just fill it with water on the return journey, easy!
How would you do that in sync with removing cargo, the cargo which probably is a cargo container, and is just disconnected, you can't just suddenly move ten tonnes of water onboard the airship, it takes time to fill up.
Ok so you get another container with a dummy load to enable a simple connect disconnect at the loading dock, fine that would work, apart from what you would do when the next load arrives, do you just manufacture dummy loads and take them back to the start, how do these get back to the other side where they are needed, and why don't we use the same method to move the initial cargo?