The Hindenburg class zeppelin could carry 50 passengers and included a dining room, public lounge, smoking lounge, and restaurant. The Graf Zeppelin even had individual passenger cabins with restrooms and two beds. With a cruising speed of about 75 mph a flight from New York to Los Angeles would take about 36 hours; much slower than a plane but much faster than Amtrak. The Hindenburg class could fly 118 hours at cruising speed without refueling which is NY to LA and back.
I have no clue how much out blimp/dirigibles/zeppelin/whatever making technology has advanced in the past 75 years or so, but would travel by passenger dirigible be a feasible option? 50 passengers isn’t much, but with better engines and lighter materials you could carry more today. Would the cost be cheaper than driving, flying or taking a train? If you are on vacation and aren’t worried about the time, I think it would be a relaxing alternative with your own bed, room to move around, and a heck of a view.
The main one I see is the number of employees needed per passenger served between flight crew, ground crew at each end, and the like. With a fleet basically doing the same run you could maybe turn a profit but starting out the ticket price would be like the Concord - not worth the service provided.
You’d have to sell it like a cruise, not as a means to get to the vacation. The airship would need to offer luxuries that airliners just can’t have, like bedrooms and a real dining facility. Airships could offer spectacles like a trip up the Rockies to Alaska. Or they could replicate the same routes and format that current cruise liners use, but with the ability to cross overland. Imagine a caribbean cruise where the ship drops you off right at inland destinations like Chichen Itza.
The only real issue is the bad reputation that rigid ships got from the disasters of the 1920s and 1930s – which may not be totally justifiable, but would definitely affect ability to attract clients.
I’ll second the it would probably need to be an expensive cruise ship experience sort of thing. But, unless it was just ungodly expensive, I think it would be pretty cool as a once in lifetime experience.
One of the biggest problems is the weather. Its not a good idea to fly them in anything but pretty nice weather. So, as just a mode of transportation they would be pretty impractical.
They are entirely feasible, as can be shown by the existence in the past of the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg among others. It’s not a question of feasibility, it’s a question of practicality. Dirigibles (and other varieties of lighter than air craft) can only be flown safely in limited conditions. It’s very costly (and that cost is steadily increasing based on the price of helium, and hyrdogen craft would never get certified anymore). When not in flight, the craft would have to be housed in enormous hangers to avoid destruction by wind.
There haven’t been great improvements in technology to help either. The rigid structure could be somewhat lighter, but nothing that makes the idea any more practical than before. Engines are not that much lighter either. A jet engine would not be efficient in such a slow moving craft.
In case the hydrogen vs. helium issue comes up about the size of the craft, helium provides only slightly less lift than hydrogen. Even though helium atoms are about twice the weight of hydrogen atoms, hydrogen atoms mainly combine as H2 molecules which weigh around the same as the individual helium atoms. The big difference is the cost, and an inflammability of helium. Some amount of hydrogen (somewhere around 20%) could be used with helium to reduce costs, without danger of ignition.
I was delighted to discover last year that zeppelins are still in use in southern Germany, carrying tourists on short sightseeing flights across Lake Constance (Bodensee) between Switzerland and Germany. The cost of a short flight is hundreds of euro per person.
The zeppelins are white and look oddly like an aerial whale, especially when turning or manoeuvring.
Not true. We have more experience with composites now, which would reduce the weight (replacing much aluminum) and keep high strength (Jules Verne’s airship The Albatross in Robur the Conqueror was built of composites, as I’ve pointed out before, precisely because it combined great sttrength with light weight. Nobody built a real aircraft out of composites, AFAIK, until the late 20th century.)
In addition, we have both more automated devices for both practical devices (both to run the systems on the ship such as timing lights and washing dishes, not to mention active feedback for aircraft control) and for passenger comfort (not to mention a more “self service” culture than there used to be). A modern zeppelin could probably have a smaller crew, and would save on the incidental weight associated with each crew member.
The biggest issue is gas. I know that there have been strenuous efforts to rehabilitate hydrogen, which would be infinitely cheaper than helium. One guy on the internet was claiming that hydrogen got a bum rap for destroying the Hindenburg that really ought to go to the aluminized rubber coating on the ship. I think recent experiments (like on mythbusters) took some of the wind out of his sails, so to speak. But we certainly have better and lighter (and less flammable) skin material than aluminum-impregnated rubber. Perhaps a hydrogen-helium mixture would inhibit burning, too.
in any event, it’s not clear to me that a renewed airship is a foregone conclusion. Although I admit that I’d rather fly in one filled with helium alone.
Cruise ships are big, so you’ve got plenty to do even if you never bother leaving the boat when it docks. Basically you’re giving your customers a train-like experience, except in the air instead of on the ground. Long-haul passenger trains don’t make money anymore, I don’t think your zeppelins would either, but they’d probably have a nice devoted following of fans.
They have one available for short touristy flights on the west coast of the US as well. I was lucky enough to see it on its delivery flight as it passed over Houston in 2008.
The new NT zeppelins are quite a bit smaller than the Hindenburg (246’ long vs. 804’) and apparently don’t have any internal decks like their forebears (given they only carry 14 passengers). In fact, I’m not even sure what the practical difference is between these and a typical blimp.
I think you’d do better hauling freight. I’m not sure most people have the patience (or the free vacation time) to add 30 hours each way to their cross country trips. And if you’re hauling freight, you can do away with all the frills that make the payload heavier – beds and cooking facilities and lounges and restrooms.
I’ve dreamed of being able to take an “airship cruise” ever since I was a child (my great aunt was a passenger on the Hindenburg and she only had one small complaint about that flight). That being said a modern day passenger airship would very much be a niche market similiar to luxury trains or rivercruises. It wouldn’t be a threat to any other form of transport. Supposedly there’s a company trying to develope a “hybrid airship” called an Aeroscraft for cargo and passenger service. Personally I think it’s some combination of hoax and pipe dream.
Cruise ships are the correct comparison, IMO, and the reason why this idea will never fly. You’d be paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of sitting in a chair in an oversized living room with dozens of other people for days at a time with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
The economics were similar to the Concorde. Business travelers who absolutely required speed and a selection of the wealthy could justify the pricing. It was hopelessly out of reach for ordinary people. Depending on who is estimating the conversion, a trans-Atlantic ticket was between $5000 and $10000 in today’s dollars.
One fact that most people don’t realize is that Zeppelin flew remarkably low. The standard cruising altitude was 650 feet. This works well for the short tourist flights mentioned, but I’m not sure would be possible, i.e. legally allowed, for a coast-to-coast flight today. Crossing the Rockies would be difficult. They avoided the alps in Europe, although they could go to several thousand feet when necessary. Storms were an even bigger problem, and they tended to hug the ground whenever possible. How much of this was intrinsic to Zeppelins and how easy it would be to overcome today isn’t clear to me. I know war Zeps could get high enough to cross the Rockies, but soldiers and wealthy dilettantes are two different passenger audiences.
Zeppelins were great compared to the alternative, just as a Morse code transmitter was great compared to signal flags. But Sparky the wireless man isn’t coming back because today’s alternatives make him obsolete. And Zeppelins are no more than theme park attractions, not transportation.
True enough. But the selling point has to be the experience and the view. Flying low and slow over somewhere pretty while you sit in a comfortable chair enjoying the view and having some decent drinks and food served to you would be an interesting and pleasant experience.
Days at a time where its the stuff INSIDE the ship thats supposed to entertain you? Yeah probably not.
Day trips or two days with a night would probably be what would fly demand/price wise. And at best it would probably be a very small niche market.
That sounds similar to the experience offered by luxuray trains. There used to be overnight luxury train tours in the US, but I believe the last one (GrandLuxe, formerly American Orient Express) went out of business a couple of years ago. If they couldn’t make ends meet using existing (albeit restored antique) railcars and existing train tracks, I don’t see how a newly developed airship could.
Airship Ventures offers sightseeing tours of 45-120 minutes for prices ranging from $375-$1500. They offer a couple of one-way or round trips to places, but it’s certainly not regularly scheduled.
I doubt if they’re losing money, so these are presumably realistic costs. I note that if I book within two weeks of my flight, a Boston to Washington DC trip of about 45 minutes costs me about $300, so the prices aren’t completely outrageous.
shared room was $720. Single occuopancy was $1220. The inflation calculator converts that to the equivalent of $11,027 and $18,685. (1936 to 2009 dollars). :eek:
Needless to say, out of reach to anyone but the very wealthy.
