The Skunk works P-791 AIRSHIP PROJECT

[General Savage]

One Million Pounds of Cargo By Air

The revived interest in very large cargo airships can be directly linked to global commerce and the military's need to quickly move large quantities of everything from relief supplies to tanks into areas that often don’t have adequate — if any — infrastructure. The Skunk Works is developing a family of increasingly larger airships to fill a niche. By 2016, an airship nearly the length of three football fields and capable of carrying one million pounds of cargo (as shown here) could be airborne.



The hybrid airship demonstrator, known as P-791, is 123 feet long, fifty-three feet wide, and thirty feet high, was built in 2005. First flight came on 31 January 2006. All of the major components are attached on the outside of the envelope, which is woven Vectran, a lightweight, high-strength material similar to Kevlar. The engines and propellers are mounted on aluminum rings that allow vectoring up and down and left and right for climbing, descending, and steering. The engine, propeller, and engine mount combinations, called thrusters, give P-791 a top speed of about thirty knots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKAyJ3zKTus