[pbmonster]

> The cargo capacity of the airship shown appears to be four 20-foot containers, or 4 TEU.

Either that's a smaller airship than his articles describe, or it's just artist's discretion. They always talk about 500 ton cargo ships - as in "delivering 500 tons of cargo", not "500 ton total mass". And 500 tons of cargo are at minimum 25 TEU.

If they are competing with 747 freighters, those containers will almost always be "cubed out" (the container volume is full long before reaching its maximum legal weight), meaning the airship would load several times as many containers.

This is another advantage they have against air freight. Those 747s are frequently cubed out themselves, flying lighter than they would like. And you can't easily build much more volume into jet aircraft (well, you can, that's what the Airbus Beluga XL is, and apparently several air freight companies are pestering Airbus to re-open a production line for those). Airships, on the other hand, will be practicably impossible to cube out.

[Animats]

> Either that's a smaller airship than his articles describe, or it's just artist's discretion. They always talk about 500 ton cargo ships - as in "delivering 500 tons of cargo".

From their images, the airship is about 30 containers long. That's only 600 feet, shorter than the Macon or the Hindenburg. Useful lift of the Hindenburg was 232,000 kg.

[anticensor]

15 FEU is indeed very small.