Editing Airship (section)

===Heavy lifting===
It has periodically been suggested that airships could be employed for [[cargo transport]], especially delivering extremely heavy loads to areas with poor infrastructure over great distances. This has also been called roadless trucking.<ref>[http://www.dynalifter.com/Dynaliftercom/RoadlessTrucking.htm "Roadless trucking"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090523073252/http://www.dynalifter.com/Dynaliftercom/RoadlessTrucking.htm |date=May 23, 2009 }}, Dynalifter.</ref> Also, airships could be used for heavy lifting over short distances (e.g. on construction sites); this is described as heavy-lift, short-haul.<ref>[http://www.deagel.com/news/Boeing-and-SkyHook-International-to-Build-JHL-40-Heavy-Lift-Rotorcraft_n000004518.aspx "Boeing and SkyHook International to Build JHL-40 Heavy-Lift Rotorcraft"], press release, 8 July 2008.</ref> In both cases, the airships are [[heavy hauler]]s. One recent enterprise of this sort was the ''[[Cargolifter]]'' project, in which a hybrid (thus not entirely Zeppelin-type) airship even larger than ''Hindenburg'' was projected. Around 2000, CargoLifter AG built the world's largest self-supporting hall, measuring {{convert|360|m|ft|abbr= on}} long, {{convert|210|m|ft|abbr= on}} wide and {{convert|107|m|ft|abbr=on}} high about {{convert|60|km|mi|abbr=on}} south of Berlin. In May 2002, the project was stopped for financial reasons; the company had to file [[bankruptcy]]. The enormous CargoLifter hangar was later converted to house the [[Tropical Islands Resort]].<ref name=Lasker2016/> Although no rigid airships are currently used for heavy lifting, [[hybrid airship]]s are being developed for such purposes. [[AEREON 26]], tested in 1971, was described in [[John McPhee]]'s ''The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed''.

An impediment to the large-scale development of airships as heavy haulers has been figuring out how they can be used in a cost-efficient way. In order to have a significant economic advantage over ocean transport, cargo airships must be able to deliver their payload faster than ocean carriers but more cheaply than airplanes. William Crowder, a fellow at the [[Logistics Management Institute]], has calculated that cargo airships are only economical when they can transport 500 to 1,000 tons, approximately the same as a super-jumbo aircraft.<ref name="Lasker2016">{{Cite news |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born |title=Helium Dreams |last=Laskas |first=Jeanne Marie |date=2016-02-29 |newspaper=The New Yorker |issn=0028-792X |access-date=2016-03-08 }}</ref> The large initial investment required to build such a large airship has been a hindrance to production, especially given the risk inherent in a new technology. The chief commercial officer of the company hoping to sell the [[LMH1|LMH-1]], a cargo airship currently being developed by [[Lockheed Martin]], believes that airships can be economical in hard-to-reach locations such as mining operations in northern Canada that currently require [[ice road]]s.<ref name="Lasker2016" />