Airships - Verity and her balloon
Verity, the finest airship in all the known world, is a Condor Class triple-hulled monster of a ship, with a detachable double gondola. By triple hulled, we refer to the balloon which is essentially three balloons pushed together to make one huge one. This isn’t entirely my imagination, but the idea came from a contemporary design for the Air Lander 10, affectionately called the flying bum. As it flies, the shape of the balloon helps generate lift, just as a wing does. I think it helped that one image of the Airlander involved flying over an icy landscape, a place that befitted Magda’s lands of ice and floe.
The fantastical part comes with the gondolas. Now we can go wild with fantasy. For me, that means the main gondola should be at least as fantastic as some great ship. A galleon, or other similar tall ship. At the same time I tried to be at least moderately mindful of physics - and when that became inconvenient, I put that irritating reality to the side, and carried on with it, anyway.
There are ways to deal with some of the issues, though, and Verity’s design tries to make the most of it. Structural supports, metal braces, struts, and so on are vital for the ship’s strength. The stronger they are, the heavier the ship becomes, and that reduces cargo effectiveness. To counter this, many of the ships’ features are designed to reduce weight without loss of function. The simplest way to reduce the weight would be to use less metal and make the struts into latticeworks. There are several articles about such matters. In biology, bird bones are hollow and latticed to make them stronger, whilst being lighter than normal mammalian bones. In manufacturing, making items stronger and lighter is also useful.
For Verity, every support has been made in such a way that the design of the fretwork defines the location. A member of the ship’s crew would know where they were on the ship, and whether fore, midship, or aft, depending on the pattern of the holes in the metalwork.
In A Touch of Truth, Captain Allentoft, Magda, sneaks into the balloon in search of one of the bad guys. Now can you imagine her making her way along the gantries inside this balloon setup? In the poor light, she finds her way using the uniqueness of local braces and supports to tell her when she gets close to her destination.
And yes. I made a map of the lattices and fretwork across the ship, especially in and near the balloon. It’s just in my notes somewhere…
References
www.hybridairvehicles.com/our-aircraft/airlander-10
www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/natures-home-magazine/birds-and-wildlife-articles/how-do-birds-survive/adapted-for-flight/how-birds-bodies-help-them-fly
Journal articles:
“SAVING WEIGHT WITH METALLIC LATTICE STRUCTURES: DESIGN CHALLENGES WITH A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE”
S. N. R. Kantareddy1 et al. Freeform Fabrication 2016: Proceedings of the 27th Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium – An Additive Manufacturing Conference.
