General airship questions: largest possible size?
Airships are cool, and I would love to use them and see them used outside of steampunk a lot more. One key aspect of Airships is that they seem to have the square cube law reversed. For other things in the world they'll be able to carry less weight the bigger they are while Airships will have more gas volume and more lifting capacity because of it.
At first glance that might mean that Airships can be almost unlimited in size. But there are (potential) limiting factors. For example the Hindenburg needed to vent large quantities of its lifting gas as it crossed the atlantic to prevent gliding off too high as it burned fuel and became lighter during the trip. There's also the structural stength of the frame to consider, as forces from the engines, wind and steering will need to be supported by the Airships envelope or risk breaking apart.
The question I'm asking is: what is the (approximate) maximum size an airship could be?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/142416. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
0 comment threads