1) A vehicle that is lighter than air, so it floats off the ground, like a helium balloon.
2) A vehicle with a propulsion system, so that it can be steered and can fly upwind or downwind.
3) A ship that flies in the sky due to its being lighter than air, or because it has a combination of lifting gas and dynamic lift from forward motion.
We used to make airships and fly them on intercontinental flights. People used to ride in luxury through the sky, eating grand meals prep, listening to live music, drinking cocktails, sleeping in bedrooms with window views of the earth 700 feet below. What happened?
A big airship called the Hindenburg caught on fire as it was landing in New Jersey in front of a big crowd of spectators and (even worse) journalists rolling movie cameras, taking stills and broadcasting live radio reports.
Nuts.
It's one of the only cases where the capabilities of a particular class of vehicle are less than what they were 80 years ago. Giant airships don't exist anymore. But they ought to.
The amazing interior spaces of the Hindenburg are rarely mentioned by people talking about the Hindenburg. Everyone focuses on the disaster.
This is the dining room on the Hindenburg. You look out the window of a restaurant and it’s hundreds of feet down to the ground. It’s pretty quiet and very smooth. The drinks don’t spill or even slosh a little.
This is the passenger lounge below! It looks like a public library in Des Moines in 1972.
Imagine that same size lounge in a Tiki lounge style with blacklights, LED accent lighting and excellent Shag-style decor? I think the world is ready for the comeback of the airship! Who wants to sit in a cramped seat with a 400 lb. woman next to you again? (that is what happened to me on a @#$%^&# flight from Germany to LA once!). There is no technical reason not to make helium airships! Helium won’t explode!!!!!!!! We have huge helium reserves in the USA. We put Zeppelin out of business because we woudn’t sell helium to the Germans. Helium could be the next oil. At some point it may be the case that an airship turns out to be a much greener mode of air travel if you ride a prevailing wind in one of the legs on a roundtrip. Yeah, it takes longer, but it is much more fun. Leave jets for people in a hurry.
This is a passenger cabin from the Graf Zeppelin. You could sit there on the sofa and read a book and look out the window thousands of feet down. I love the non-Euclidean wall intersections! Just like an ocean ship.
This is the floor plan for the LZ127 Graff Zeppelin.
I like the funkraum up front. That would actually be the radio room, not the funky funk room. I want to fly to Paris from NYC in an airship before I die!! I am sure it would be expensive as hell, but what a lovely way to travel.
It would be cool to build a retro zeppelin just like the big Graf Zeppelins but with helium and do historical reenactments of what it was like in 1931. Amateur actors would play the roles of the crew and the passengers.
How about a way to climb up to a small deck on top? The airship is running with the wind, since the captain turned off the engines and is only running quiet thrusters once in awhile. There is no breeze felt at all on the roof deck. A party is in progress, a DJ spins chill lounge music and a group gathers around a little electric heater that looks like a flickering log fire. A girl has had a few drinks and is feeling amazing. She looks off the deck into the sky and sees a beautiful tropical island in Brazil go by 700 feet below. It is like a dream but it is really happening.
I am guessing you have to make an 800 foot long Graf Zeppelin clone. Materials are much lighter today for airframes. It would be interesting to see if that structural weight savings would offset loss of lift by using helium instead of hydrogen. Helium is expensive and not getting cheaper. All the helium we have was generated by radioactive alpha decay in the decay chain of certain elements like uranium. It takes a long time to accumulate a large amount of helium.
Other lifting gases include ammonia which is a renewable resource and non-flammable, and methane, which unfortunately is flammable, but is also renewable.
Then there is vacuum. An airship that could handle the air pressure forces could be evacuated. Not likely to happen anytime soon. I also think it would be very dangerous because of the huge potential energy stored in vacuum. An implosion would be quite intense.
So maybe ammonia will work. They fill weather balloons with it.
The hangar problem is a big big problem. Airships are fragile and need to be stored inside out of the wind. Airship hangars are huge and therefore expensive.
I bet Richard Branson has looked at this airship business and decided it just won’t work. But it would seem to complement his desire to get people into the air/into space just for the hell of it. He is into everything, check out his Wikipedia entry. Like a James Bond villain that you’d want to actually meet and hang out with, and that won't feed you to his pet sharks. He also used to be a balloonist so he MUST have looked at this. So maybe it just doesn’t pencil out as a profitable business. But what a pleasant dream!
On a final note, who would not like to be able to say that they fell in love while floating through the sky on an airship?
Photos are from www.airships.net, an excellent site!
