Airship Industries
| Public company | |
| Industry | Aircraft manufacture (airships) |
| Predecessor | Airship Developments |
| Successor | Hybrid Air Vehicles |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Founder | Roger Munk, John Wood |
| Defunct | 1990 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Products | Skyship 500, Skyship 600 |
Airship Industries was a British manufacturers of modern non-rigid airships (blimps) active under that name from 1970 to 1990 and controlled for part of that time by Alan Bond. The first company, Aerospace Developments, was founded in 1970, and a successor,Hybrid Air Vehicles, remains active as of 2014[update]. Airship Industries itself was active between 1980 and 1990.
In addition to the manufacture of non-rigid airships, several of the companies were involved in abortive proposals for many other non-rigid and rigid types. The historic airship facilities at Cardington, Bedfordshire (formerly the Royal Airship Works and RAF Cardington), were used as a base for the firm's test flying and an assembly site for some of its airships.
Aerospace Developments (AD) was founded in 1970 by John Wood and Roger Munk. Its first major project was the design of a very large - 549 m (1,801 ft) long with 2,750,000 m3 (97,000,000 cu ft) of gas capacity - rigid airship for Shell International Gas.
The Shell project had been in progress since well before the formation of AD; Munk stated in 1975 that the idea had emerged "about seven years ago." Shell planned to use the airship to transport natural gas in gaseous form, eliminating the costly equipment associated with shipping liquefied natural gas by sea and, in particular, the need for large amounts of fixed plant in politically unstable countries. Barnes Wallis had been involved in the airship project in its early stages but withdrew due to problems with his design for a very large non-rigid.
The natural gas would have functioned as the primary lifting gas on the loaded voyage, with a small amount of helium, plus hot air from the airship's (gas-fuelled) engines, supporting it on the empty return leg. The ship's structure would have been "of a semi-monocoque type of stressed metal/skin honeycomb sandwich construction."
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Wikipedia