Re: Armored Airships Challenge

"Charles Talleyrand" <kitplane01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Let us suppose that some very advanced society wants to make an armored
>lighter than air airship... What's the largest caliber gun you can protect against?

Been there, done that -- or at least Konstantin Tsiolkovsky(ii) was
and did, or at least on paper. Along with the foundations and first
floor of rocket science, excellent work on theoretical and applied
aerodynamics, and what would have been the kinetic theory of gases if
Maxwell et al hadn't gotten there first (unknown to T.)...

He spent a good deal of time 1888-1900 on the possibility of
thin-metal-skinned dirigibles, devoting great ingenuity to
arrangements that would combine a good seal with moveable plates for
volume and shape adjustments, etc. Very early on, he noted that while
his designs would be more durable than gasbags, there was *no*
realistic hope of their resisting the rifle or machine-gun fire of the
day.

The only tech development I can think of that *might* do that remains
unobtainium, but not by much: a carbon-nanotube-based fabric even
lighter and even stronger cthan woven Kevlar or Spectra. Still no good
against, say, a French 88.

-Monte "to live in fame & go down in flames" Davis
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Just thinking crazy I guess :)
    ... would make the tube slightly "lighter" and in turn may be ... able to make tiny machines made lighter so less ... "The Airship" by Christopher Sprigg, ... "Ballooning" by Anthony Smith and Mark Wagner, ...
    (sci.nanotech)
  • Re: Just thinking crazy I guess :)
    ... would make the tube slightly "lighter" and in turn may be ... "The Airship" by Christopher Sprigg, ... "Ballooning" by Anthony Smith and Mark Wagner, ... but it does seems and the vacuum airship back then would ...
    (sci.nanotech)