Airlander 10, the largest airship, is preparing for flight tests.

The project of one of the largest hybrid type airships and aircraft in general, the Airlander 10, is well on its way to completion . Within a few days, the first test flight of an aircraft of the British company Hybrid Air Vehicles will take place. One of the main enthusiasts and investors of the project is the soloist of the Iron Maiden group Bruce Dickinson.

The construction of the Airlander 10 airship was launched in 2009 by order of the US military. The British company won a half-million contract to build a hybrid aircraft for the purpose of conducting observations from the air. After the military ran out of money, Hybrid Air Vehicles bought the prototype, and in the spring of 2015 it overtook it back to England .
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In the same year, the project successfully received government funding of £ 2.5 million. In sum, the construction of the test sample cost £ 60 million ($ 100 million).

The airship has a length of 92 meters (which is approximately equal to the length of a football field), is capable of carrying payload weighing up to 10 tons and fly without landing for up to 5 days in a row with the crew on board. The manufacturer claims that in unmanned mode, the device can stay in the air for up to three weeks.

Airlander 10 can land even in unprepared places for this, up to landing on the water. The airship is filled with helium, its maximum speed is 150 km / h.



Airlander 10 uses a hybrid system for flying - it rises into the air due to the lifting force arising from its particular shape. This type of airship spends a little more fuel per unit of travel than a classic one, but it has a greater speed of movement, retaining the advantages of lighter than air devices — in particular, the ability to land on any fairly flat place. As a representative of the company describes her unit, this is “a mixture of an airplane, a dirigible balloon and a little bit of a helicopter”.

Initially, Airlander 10 will be used as entertainment for tourists, and for the delivery of oversized and heavy loads to hard-to-reach places. The company plans to build an even larger airship capable of carrying up to 50 tons of payload.

Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson serves as a co-investor and active participant in the project. Despite fighting a terrible disease , he was involved in the revival of Airlander 10 and the search for additional investors for the project. Bruce is very fond of the sky, and in combination is also a pilot of civil aviation.



This is not the only project of a pterygoid airship in the world, but in general, airships are not in great demand.

It is quite surprising and disappointing that in our country, the largest in area, where hard-to-reach places that need to be developed and mastered, is orders of magnitude larger than in the UK, the development of the dirigible design hardly moves. At least we get very little news about this. And the history of this type of transport in the USSR was quite rich.

Your humble one is even more sad about this, that he is not only a secret admirer of this romantic mode of transport, but also grew up in the Moscow region city of Dolgoprudny, formed around the Soviet enterprise Dirizhablestroy .

Unfortunately, for some reason, in Russia since the disappearance of the USSR, only 13 airships were built. I think that many readers will be interested to know the details of current and planned projects in this area, in connection with which we invite persons associated with dirigible building not to conceal interesting information, but to share it with us.