Skytrains

This would make a great pulp visual: a line of airships hooked together as a train. [Link]

Back in 1997, Mike deGyurky, a program manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), had a design for a giant blimp, perhaps a mile in length. With a cargo capacity of 50,000 tons or more.

Mike and others at JPL had the skytrain concept, which were a bunch of blimp "box cars" connected together for less drag and more fuel efficiency. The largest of the box car designs was about 45,000 tons of cargo. Updated designs would be even better now because they were depending on thin film material for the skin and for thin film solar cells for power. Both of those have seen a lot of improvement and more improvement is anticipated.

JPL was and is not in the business of building airships, but was directly connected to an institution that was; The California Institute of Technology (CalTech). CalTech had been involved in Zeppelin research during the early 1930's. Theodore von Karman, a professor of aerodynamics at CalTech and a person who had participated in airship research in Germany (including the construction of the Zeppelin "Los Angeles" as part of wartime reparations to the US.) had proposed high speed dirigibles in his autobiography . This connection was first noted by deGyurky.

There were a number of design questions that arose and a number of which remained unanswered at the time. Among them, how would the system be powered? Elements of the SkyTrain could be covered with new ultra light weight solar cells to the point of being completely solar powered. A conventionally fueled backup would be necessary for staging operations. The 1994 analysis showed that this would reduce the pure solar SkyTrain cruising speed to around 43 mph. [a proposed Skycat airship design should have a speed of 97mph. The old Zeppelin's had a maximum speed of about 65 mph, There is an Aeroscraft, hybrid airship, that has a top speed of 174 miles per hour.]