What airships need to do is become like cruise ships. Put an amusement park and a casino up there, I’m sure nothing bad will happen.
Comment on Anon wants to ride a zeppelin
jqubed@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This was nowhere near the only deadly airship disaster, nor was it the last, but that’s not really what ended airship travel. With the advances in airplanes by the end of World War II, lighter-than-air ships just couldn’t compete. Even postwar piston aircraft were cruising at more than 3 times the speed of most airships with range to make nonstop transatlantic crossings, and once the jet age really started to take hold in the ’50s it was all over. I mean, by the ’60s multiple countries had started supersonic passenger aircraft programs. Not a lot of success there, but still there were nowhere near enough customers to support commercial service on airships when faster, cheaper options existed.
Zehzin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
echodot@feddit.uk 6 months ago
The problem is weight. The heavier the load the bigger the gas bike needs to be to carry that load. The whole thing very quickly gets out of proportion and considering they were using hydrogen the heavier the load the riskier it was.
Modern airships are helium-based, but helium is way too expensive to ever be commercially viable on a large scale.
Cybermonk_Taiji@r.nf 6 months ago
We also have a limited helium supply and need it for MRIs and such, no one needs a helium balloon.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Just go back to using hydrogen. It’ll be a blast!
freebee@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Some solar panels on top of the balloon, nowadays you can even create your H on the go from the H2O in the air!
lud@lemm.ee 6 months ago
As far as I know they were somewhat like cruise ships in their luxury.
The (enormous) problem is weight. Everything needs to be as light as possible, it’s a balloon after all.
Cybermonk_Taiji@r.nf 6 months ago
As long as no smoking is allowed on this flying bomb!
danc4498@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You’d think they would have cruise line zeppelins.
jqubed@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hindenburg only carried 70 passengers at its largest configuration, and it could only carry that many because they were forced to use hydrogen as the lifting gas instead of helium because of American export restrictions. Hydrogen carries more but is significantly more dangerous, and likely would not be used in any modern aircraft because of safety reasons. Perhaps modern advances in lighter materials and other weight saving methods could help, but even 100 paying passengers doesn’t seem commercially viable.
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Yup, no one is going to hop an airship when they can get somewhere in a fraction of the time. The only difference might be cost, but spinning up a zeppelin industry likely couldn’t compete in terms of ticket price compared to jets.
Garbanzo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If they have a future it’ll be moving stuff, not people. If it’s faster than a container ship and can carry more than a plane then it could have a valuable niche.
bstix@feddit.dk 6 months ago
They also have a potential advantage in moving large things.
For instance wind turbine blades, which are quite difficult to move by trucks. Airships don’t require infrastructure for the transport or delivery and could rope it down to sites with difficult terrain.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I would think a large team of purpose-built remote controlled quadcopters would be cheaper, faster, and more maneuverable than a zeppelin for that kind of application. Assuming we don’t have to go huge distances (say, from an inland port or a railway to final destination).
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 6 months ago
That’s actually a fantastic idea, I hadn’t thought of that
elmicha@feddit.de 6 months ago
There are a handful of Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airships flying around nowadays. If you want to see a landing and start, I recorded this a few years ago.