Make way for the cargo blimp.

I'm not sure what they were doing in Worcester, but every once in a while, during my childhood, a blimp would drift serenely through our skies, and we would stand in our back yard watching it drift serenely by. (In March 2014, I blogged about my fond blimpian memories.) 

Something there is about a blimp (or dirigible or zeppelin or airship - I recognize that there are technical distinctions, but for my purpose, a blimp is a blimp is a blimp) that just brings a smile to my face. (Unless, of course, it's the Hindenburg.)

So I was delighted to come across an article - even if it's nearly a year old (the news was apparently moving at a serene blimpian drift) - about a French company, Flying Whales, which intends to make airships to transport cargo to remote outposts: towns, logging operations... Cheaper and more environmentally friendly than wiping out forests to build roads. And the airships themselves are cheaper and more environmentally friendly to build and operate. They can also be used to bring goods to the site of natural disasters if the roads aren't acccessible. 

Flying Whales has said its vehicle would be the largest aircraft in the world — at 200 meters long and 50 meters high. The rigid balloon ships would be able to lift 60 tons.(Source: CBC)

60 tons may not sound like, well, a ton. But:

That's about three times the maximum carrying capacity of a Hercules plane, a cargo plane used by the Canadian military.

These planes are used by Canadian governments to fly goods into their remote locations, like the brilliantly named Yukon fly-in community of Old Crow.  

Because there are a number of out-of-the-way places with strange sounding names in Canada, at least one provincial government (Quebec) made an investment in Flying Whales. Among other elements, the deal required all Flying Whale airships that will be used in the Americas to be built in the Quebec.  At any rate, Quebec tried to get a deal going. 

Alas, the Canadian federal government overruled the Quebec deal, citing concerns about Chinese involvement. That matter has apparently been cleared out - the company bought out the Chinese investors - so it looks like things may be able to proceed. Eventually.

Flying Whales has yet to build a working prototype - things are still in the design phase - and the company doesn't anticipate that it would begin any production in Canada until 2025, with the goal of having some airships in use by 2026.

Canada is a patient country. 

They've been talking about deploying cargo airships for nearly a decade. And Quebec has been poking around the airship industry for nearly as long.

This isn’t the first time a company has tried to build airships in the province. In 2015, LTA Aerostructures, a Montreal-based company with American and Canadian backers, announced plans to build a $60 million production facility in Mirabel to build airships capable of transporting up to 70 million tonnes of cargo. However, the plant was never built and the company’s website is no longer active. (Source: Skies Magazine)

Other cargo airship initiatives have similarly failed to get off the ground. It's apparently easier to build a do-nothing dirigible like the Goodyear Blimp that's used for advertising over football games, than it is to develop  a get-to-work cargo airship.  

Yet I remain hopeful that at some point, there'll be a cargo blimp lugging things up to Old Crow in the Yukon. And we'll get the news from the North that it's delivering the goods.

Until then, I'll have to be content with an occasional local sighting. Which, guaranteed, will never cease to stir my heart and put a smile on my face.