I love watch footage of those big ol’ airships from the 30’s and 40’s and it makes me wonder if they could be used simular to an ocean liner. Of course the gondola would have to be much bigger then they were back then. I would hop on one for a month cruise around the world with stops in all over the world. On a ship, you’re only in water, on an airliner, you’re too high to see anything. Any chance of this ever happening?
There going to have to charge a lot of money to get that to work.
I suppose the dirigible would be for people who want the danger of flying mixed with the slow speed of ocean travel.
Despite all the plane crashes in the world and the number of people who have seen ‘Titanic’ and I think that the image of the ‘Hindenburg’ catching on fire will be tough for anyone to get past.
I did meet a woman once who saw the ‘Graf Zeppelin’ flying overehad in California. She made it sound like she saw an ocean liner floating in the sky.
The Zeppelin company is still around and has recently developed a modern airship, the Zeppelin NT. I don’t know if they’re in production yet because that page doesn’t seem to work with my browser. It’s a small airship though, about 10 passengers IIRC.
That’s not far from the truth. The Graf Zeppelin was 776 ft long and the Hindenburg was 804 ft. The titanic was 882 ft, only 13% longer than the Graf Zeppelin.
Don’t confuse the gondola of the present day Goodyear dirigibles with the accomodations of a true airship like the Hindenburg or the Graf Zeppelin:
What I meant by that is that if you’re gonna be cooped up on this thing for days or weeks at a time, you’ll need some space.
I’d also like to note that Pink Floyd, my personal favorite, toured in a dirigible on their tour in '94 (Echo’s, I think) and as luck would have it, I met the pilot at work one day a few years ago.
On a ‘Tomorrows World’ program on UK TV back in the 80’s they were talking about using airships for logging in rainforests.
I just searched out this quote from another source.
Not sure how far this idea has been taken though.
Airships are pretty hard to control, especially in storms and windy conditions. Contrary to what many people would assume, the Hindenburg was not the worst airship disaster ever. It was only the fifth worst. Helium may be safer than hydrogen, but some of the worst crashes were in helium-filled airships. See a list of the ten worst airship accidents here I think the Akron, the Roma, and the Shenandoah were all helium-filled.
For those interested in the Pink Floyd dirigible, see it here .
It could happen, but it takes some early adapters to set the trend.
BobT:
Nonononono! It’s for those who want the view from the air mixed with the comfort of a cruise ship.
Forget about crossing oceans or even continents. Focus on overland travel or island-hopping - slow (well, relatively) and low, there’s a view to enjoy, and the bar is well-stocked. This isn’t travel to go places - it’s recreation.
See the sun rise over Grand Canyon, watch the wildlife on the African savannah, look at Niagara Falls through the panorama windows, all the while splayed in a comfy chair and sipping a drink. If they could make a lounge with a baby piano in the thirties, think of what could be done with the materials of today.
Yes, it’ll be expensive. That’ll be part of the allure. Exclusivity, see ? Get a few Hollywood honeymooners on board and see the bored people with money line up. And whatever you do, don’t crash the first five years or so…
Obtaining Helium is a problem, as the element is so light it has evaporated from the earth’s surface- it can only be found trapped underground where it has formed as a byproduct of long slow radioactive deay.
Despite the fact that it is the second most common element in the universe, Helium is difficult to come by.
If dirigibles are going to become commonplace, designs would probably need to use hydrogen anyway, unless helium can be imported from Jupiter.
Who needs helium to lift? Use hard vacuum.
Iv’e heard about schemes to use vacuum ijn dirigibles- most are playing on the strength of the new fullerene materials, including schemes to make comparitively large vacuum filled microspheres of fullerene which could be contained within a relatively lightweight framework.
The problem is obviously that the structure containing the vacuum must be strong enough to resist atmospheric pressure, while the total weight of the craft should be less than the displaced air.
If the structure were strong and airtight enough the microspheres could be linked together and the whole dirigible might appear rigid, as if made of carbon foam…
however. these magical constructions are dreams ATM, rather than reality.
Part of the problem of trying to replicate a cruise ship environment on an airship would be the sheer weight of the infrastructure; on the QEII, for example, there are ten crew members for every ~17 passengers, tons of food are consumed daily, then there is all the machinery, stock and consumables related to laundry, sanitation, entertainment, shopping…
Hmmm, vacuum-filled spheres for lift (one of the very first science fiction stories used this).
Imagine what would happen in the event of a catastrophe; carbon microspheres would spill out and fly upwards to the top of the atmosphere, where they would spread out… all sorts of interesting things might happen if there were enough of them.
One of the cyberpunk authors (William Gibson, I think) mentioned such lighter-than-air pollution in one of his books. Nanotechnology may one day make lighter-than-air material not only possible but extremely cheap, making it useful for everything from packaging to insulation. At least that was the idea in the book.
By the way, Skyship Cruise in Switzerland runs airship tours using the Skyship 600 blimp. It’s one of the more advanced blimps with vectored thrust, but I believe the manufacturer (Airship Industries in the UK) is no longer around. Skyship Cruise also plan to operate a Zeppelin NT according to this page.
I believe the book in question was “Diamond Age” - it had dirigibles made of diamond-like material containing a vaccuum used for mass air travel. Excellant book.
lighter-than-air Packaging would indeed be interesting because it would decrease the weight of a parcel, but increase the mass (well, the spheres themselves, not the vacuum would add to the mass).
Handling such a pracel would be…interesting, well, it would if it were not the case that the buoyancy gained from (say) 50 litres of hard vacuum would be relatively insignificant compared to the weight of the contents of an average parcel.
Would a dirigible have a more advanced landing system than modern blimps do, i.e., more than just dropping altitude gradually until 100’ or so above the groud, dropping a whole bunch of cables and then having a lot of guys pull it over to a mast?
The following link discusses an attempt to get the US Postal service to accept a lighter-than-air package (they felt the postal service should be paying them for the privilege):
http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html
Incidentally, Helium weighs 14% the equivalent volume of air and hydrogen 7% (and a total vacuum 0% obviously). Moving to a vacuum instead of helium would increase the total payload slightly, but it is far easier to contain helium at standard atmospheric pressure (which can be done with a flexible sheet) than a hard vacuum (which requires a rigid shell).
I’m sorry, but you seem to be a wee bit confused about the terminology. Blimps are dirigibles, too.