[GDC7]

> Put a few hundred well off people in luxury and slow air ship them to locations hard to reach by ships

The problem is that the infrastructure required for a blimp to land and takeoff might be significantly less expensive than a port but it's still many times larger than what an helicopter would need.

VIP services are banking on the new AW609 Leonardo[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW609

[chiph]

Put a flat section on top of the airship, and land helicopters (or tilt-rotors) on it. Take the passengers (and fuel + supplies) to the airship, don't take the airship to the passengers.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Unimaginative. Make the airship really big. Put an airstrip on top. Turn it into the wind. Have commuter planes doing STOL on top of it :-)

[rich_sasha]

Is much known about the safety of this aircraft? As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds.

[nradov]

The V-22 Osprey can make a dead stick landing in an emergency just like a regular airplane. This will destroy the rotors.

https://verticalmag.com/features/20112-flying-the-v-22-html/

[outworlder]

> As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds.

"The V-22 is a tiltrotor and does not rely on autorotation for a survivable power-out landing. The wide separation of the engines and the ability to drive both rotors with one engine make a power-out landing extremely unlikely. However, if required, the V-22 can glide for a predictable run-on landing in airplane mode, much like a turboprop"

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22491/can-the-v...

[throwaway0a5e]

>As I understand it, V-22 Osprey can neither auto-rotate, nor land in emergency like an airplane (because the rotors would hit the ground). Seems a bit like worst of both worlds.

Tradeoffs.

It's worth it to them to plop a bunch of marines down with helicopter speed faster/farther than you normally can with a helicopter.

The military generally doesn't uncritically accept "but muh safety and liability" arguments like private industry does because the cost of doing things less efficiently (trying to refuel helicopters in hostile airspace, airborne operations, etc) comes with a statistical body count as well and they have some degree of sovereign immunity.

In a non-military context the pros and cons would weigh differently.

[rich_sasha]

Yeah, I see that the calculus is very different for the military. I was specifically curious about civilian case. I’m already conscious of how fragile helicopters can be, hence my curiosity re this.

But from other responses it seems that these aircraft can in fact auto rotate and glide in an emergency.

[ihattendorf]

Seems like it's able to perform relatively safe autorotation landings: https://newatlas.com/agustawestland-aw609-autorotation-trial...