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Canadian company wants to bring giant ‘airships’ to work in the Arctic

Airship technology has been around for more than a century, though in modern times it's been limited to small craft such as the Goodyear blimp.

The promise of skies filled with giant airships went up in flames with the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and the crashes of other British and American dirigibles in the 1930s.

But a Canadian company is playing a part in the latest effort to revive large airships, not for carrying passengers but as industrial workhorses.

Discovery Air of Yellowknife, N.W.T., has partnered with Britain's Hybrid Air Vehicles to develop a massive airship that would be part blimp, part helicopter to work in the Arctic, the Yukon News reports.

Plans call for the first airships to be ready by 2014. Instead of the familiar cigar shape of historic airships, the hybrid looks a little like a bloated catamaran boat.

About the length of a football field, the hybrid airship would have movable thrust engines that would push it forward, allow it to hover and, when put in reverse, suck it to the ground when loading. Like all modern airships, the hybrid would use helium instead of flammable hydrogen for lift.

Once it receives certification, the hybrid could be put to work servicing mining operations in Canada's north, said Sheila Venman, Discovery Air's vice-president of communication.

The airships being designed for Discovery would be 120 metres long, capable of staying aloft for up to three weeks and carry a 50-tonne payload at speeds up to 185 kilometres an hour.

The airship's proponents point out the $40-million airship will be a fuel miser and needs very little infrastructure to operate. It can launch from rough airstrips and from water, snow or ice.

Discovery's British partner apparently already has a deal with U.S. aerospace giant Northrop Grumman to bid jointly for a $500-million contract to build a military surveillance airship to be used over Afghanistan.

Discovery Air is touting the airships as an alternative to ice roads now used to service remote mines but which have been melting earlier in the year due to climate change.

(DiscoveryAir.com Photo)