Cargo airships could be big

replace jet fuel with electrofuels and advanced biofuels, but look at the hefty premiums that come with them:16 The same goes for cargo ships.17 The best conventional container ships can carry 200 times more cargo than either of the two electric ships now in operation, and they can run routes that are 400 times longer. Those are major advantages fo

Cargo. Carrying goods in aircraft underbellies is a billion-dollar revenue source for large airlines, especially on major trade routes across the Pacific. One knock-on effect of global trade is that airlines make so much money on things like premium seats and freight that economy seats are sold cheap to fill up the plane. It’s like when you drive h

Four years later, it got out of the shipping business altogether and spun off Sea-Land as an independent company. As R. J. Reynolds’s new management explained to investment analysts, “investors who might be interested in owning RJR stock were not the type who ordinarily would be interested in a capital-intensive, cyclical transportation company.”35

looked around at the prices for air freight and found that, on average, you can air mail 200kg of cargo for about the price it would take to send a person. This means people cost twice as much to ship as cargo. That makes sense—cargo doesn’t need seats, air pressure, bathrooms, or complimentary peanuts. For space travel, the cargo ships also wouldn

The expense of building and equipping these second-generation containerships staggered even the largest ship lines. Between 1967 and the end of 1972, a consultant would later calculate, the total cost of containerization around the world would come to nearly $10 billion—an amount close to $60 billion in 2015 dollars. Individual European ship lines

The resulting avoidance of grades and curvature spelled out once again the torah of his credo: a highly efficient, low-cost line that could, better than any competitor, carry long-distance cargoes of heavy tonnages.

It was easy enough to conclude that containers would change the business, but it was not obvious that they would revolutionize it. Containers, said Jerome L. Goldman, a leading naval architect, were “an expedient” that would do little to reduce costs. Many experts considered the container a niche technology, useful along the coast and on routes to