Expensive bananas

[Nobody]

Glorious France would rather buy the design then from the OR, as France has the type 5 dock already available.

Hmm... what does France offer for the toughest, most robust and imperishable (as well as biggest) ship ever designed? :D

[P3D]

Nobody, I believe it was either the Shenandoah or the Los Angeles that the United States Navy successfully docked to a mast on a tender substantially smaller than it was, so clearly such dockings are, in fact, possible. I suspect that the procedure is to have both airship and tender match speed and course into the wind, so that events turn into something more like an aerial refueling docking. Likewise, I don't see why a segmented 'roof' shouldn't be possible, retracting like a garage door to either side.

Maddox, could you or one of your contemporaries expand on N2 (I'm guessing) airship operations and what was found so undesirable about them?

I determined airship performance numbers after a staring at my navel the specs for historical airships then putting a linear fit over the numbers (range vs. payload vs weight). One can build larger or more airships to increase capacity.
The problem was an anime-steampunk fun appearing, building a huge airship fleet in [a fictional country in the same location as] Alaska, and invading the Caribbean flying 1000s of ships across North America. Then Maddox as sole moderator did not have the data to fight her and call it lunacy. N2verse collapsed soon after.

The mechanical engineer in me says the hangar walls would flex a lot, and the hangar must be rigid cross-sectionally, i.e. rigid roof beams. Longitudinally the hangar cannot be rigid due to the enormous depth of the structure. If it is rigid, you end up with the numbers and topweight in nobody's ship.
So the best bet is to have the hangar segmented that each piece could flex towards/from each other, with nonrigid coverings (sliding steel plates and canvas/rubber) between.
That also means the hangar would be open at one or both end, with tower-mast on the side carrier-style.

[maddox]

Glorious France would rather buy the design then from the OR, as France has the type 5 dock already available.

Hmm... what does France offer for the toughest, most robust and imperishable (as well as biggest) ship ever designed? :D

Let us discus that over less obvious "diplomatical" means. PM's for example.

[Nobody]

Glorious France would rather buy the design then from the OR, as France has the type 5 dock already available.

Hmm... what does France offer for the toughest, most robust and imperishable (as well as biggest) ship ever designed? :D

Let us discus that over less obvious "diplomatical" means. PM's for example.

We will humbly await your messenger.
We might even be able to offer a smaller design with the same capabilities.