Airship - Safety

Safety

The most commonly used lift gas, helium, is inert so acts as a fire extinguisher. Modern airships have a natural buoyancy and special design that offers a virtually zero catastrophic failure mode. While on long-haul flights weather patterns would be flown to avoid bad weather, the hull's mass largely damps the effect of turbulence, just as a large tanker rides through rough seas. An airship is usually a poor lightning target, as it is constructed mainly from composite materials. If it is struck, built-in protection devices minimize the risk to the vehicle and its cargo.

A series of structural vulnerability tests were done by the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency DERA on a Skyship 600, an earlier airship built by the Munk team to a similar pressure-stabilized design. Several hundred high-velocity bullets were fired through the hull, and even two hours later the vehicle would have been able to return to base. The airship is virtually impervious to automatic rifle and mortar fire: ordnance passes through the envelope without causing critical helium loss. In all instances of light armament fire evaluated under both test and live conditions, the vehicle was able to complete its mission and return to base. The internal hull pressure is maintained at only 1–2% above surrounding air pressure, the vehicle is highly tolerant to physical damage or to attack by small-arms fire or missiles.