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Return of the Zeppelins
kfg writes: "While the world has focused its aeronautic attention on the Helios solar powered plane the Zeppelin NT has carried it's first paying passengers on a one hour "tourist" flight in Germany, the first Zeppelin to do so since the infamous Hindenburg disaster. This comes after its return from the Paris Airshow where it was an unqualified hit with attendees. I can't really tell you why but this news tickles me more than any other tech news in ages. Sometimes the oldest tech is the coolest. Oh yeah, tickets are $280 American." This is the baby brother of the Cargolifter model; CNN has a brief story.
And I'll happily point out that the Hindenburg was NOT a blimp.
Since I *do* remember the chapter on airship nomenclature I will help you out:
Airship Nomenclature
Types:
A = Rigid
B = Limp
Gee, I wonder where they got the nickname "blimp" from?
Rigid has a "rigid" structure over which the skin is placed. "limp" is a big bag of gas, which is what you are probably more familiar with anyway.
Jack
Comparing windows to Unix is more like comparing a 747 to a B52.
I swear to god, if I was one of these eccentric billionaires, I would put my fun money towards building an enormous rigid airship instead of these sissy aluminum foil looking fly-around-the-world-in-a-balloon projects. I mean, who gives a shit about recreating 18th century technology (but much more visually boring) to do some Society for Creative Anachronism mission the biggest achievement of which is using your corporate muscle to secure right-of-passage through hostile airspace because if you don't catch the autumn jetstream you're fucked? Fuck that shit. These so-called anomalistic Richard Branson types haven't got even the imagination of a marketing exec. Stop wasting your whimsical millions on boring non-telegenic bullshit. I'll show you how it's done: Biggest zeppelin ever, and not plastered with a bunch of stupid ads for stupid shit. Just a plain grey floating aerolith the size of three Nimitzes. It wouldn't appear at such predictable events such as the Super Bowl or the Great Hasidic Chinatown Traffic Jam of 2003 (which, inconvenient as it was at the time, wound up leading to major breakthroughs in game theory, chaos theory, metatheology, and Cargo-Van-Fu), but rather as a massively imposing spirit borne upon the winds of change. Once the shadow of the rigid airship was nothing more or less than an implacable signifier of Empire; soon -- very soon -- it shall transcend such primitive jingoistic motivations to become a constant reminder of how much better an inconceivably wealthy person I would be compared to all these Donald Trump dipshits we've got polluting our worthy meritocratic ideal today. Believe you me, the first ones up against the wall... no, scratch that. Don't put holes in a perfectly good wall. As a matter of fact, someone loaded that brass shell casing with skill and love and care -- it would be an insult to their craftsmanship to waste it on those shitheads. Let's just let the masses have at them with the homemade machetes that look so crude yet perform so effectively. You're next, Giuliani.
Then again, I guess if you take your safety tips from the movies, you probably already have an irrational fear of visiting Japan, DC, Los Angeles, New York, (insert Hollywood-destroyed city here) :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
When you do all the math and add up the per-seat installations, Zeppelin NT almost nears the cost of Windows NT.
How about an airship like the one in Live and Let Die? I think that was the movie, where Christopher Walken was the bad guy? Anyway, ya know, you could drop people out of it from great heights at the push of a button. Anyway, on a more serious note I remember the first time I saw one of these airship things. I was in the back yard, must have been about 6 and I heard a very loud drone. I looked up and this huge airship flew over, it couldn't have been that high up, maybe 200-300feet (there is an airport a mile or so away from my house). I was actually quite scared, it appeared huge and I ran in to get my dad but by the time he'd got up off his arse it was long gone.
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
Coverdale/Page Aerospace's "lighter than air ship."
Looks like a Zepplin, flies like a Zepplin, but man, it ain't a Zepplin!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Zeppelins have always made sense economically, and esthetically. But the fact that one is carrying passengers for the first time since FDR's first term shows the power of bad publicity. More people would have died in an airplane crash, but the powerful footage of a burning airship, together with the overwrought commentary of the on-the-scene journalist, has poisoned their rep for years.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Thank you.
--Patrick Bateman, Esq.
I attended the paris air show in June, and saw a flying demonstration of the zeppelin.
/. crowd at the idea of seeing a resurrected Zeppelin. I must say that I, and a big part of the rest of the crowd, got really disappointed when we actually saw it. It's a mini zeppelin, barely 80 meters long. The Hindenburg was 250M meters long, that makes the Zeppelin NT a 1/3 replica!
I had read stories and saw pictures of the original zeppelins, and I was almost as excited as the rest of the
In a nutshell, it was not really exciting. It looked very much like the average airships which are used for advertising purposes at big sport events.
!
^_^
That was a great book and considering the geek sheekness of the materiel covered in it I too am totally surprised that nobody mendioned the diamond age here.
This is awsome news. Please tell me they used Helium and not Hydrogen this time though!! :-)
Hmm I thought you have to inflate the Zepplux yourself before you can fly it ;-)
Actually it has vectorable rotors. One on each side plus one in rear. The side units can move through a pretty impressive arc giving the ability to maneuver and hover with some precision. Probably has some way of controlling CG as well. Don't know the exact specs -- I was on holiday at the Bodensee last week and did get to watch it going through it's paces. Gotta go back for a ride even at the price! Weas a hell of a choice for a name 'tho. More info at http://www.zeppelin-nt.com
Predicted transatlantic freight costs were:
$1 a kg Skycat 40 hrs
$3.50
60 cents/kg boat 10 - 25 days
They pump more air in it. I know blimps are split into a few section inside (went to see one of the goodyear blimps on a field trip). This increases the density of the helium. It then becomes too heavy to float.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
Wow dude.
Led Zepplin is making a comeback?
All I can say is 'Wow'. Thrazzle
Officially, NT and CE (and presumably XP) don't mean anything - they are intended to create "impressions", for instance, CE was Compact, Consumer, Ummm... some other things.
Of course, even people *at* Microsoft will tell you what NT and CE mean, but the official line is that they mean nothing. Heh.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The CargoLifter is vapourware.
Even if they make it, it'll still be vapourware!
**>>BELCH
> The site does not mention top speed of this airship,
>but I doubt it would be much faster than highway speed.
As far as I remeber, that is good enough. The main purpose of these thngs would be to provide cheap heavy lifting capability in areas where there are no usable highways or waterways. Think of them as lorries that don't need roads.
For short distance transport in well developped areas, trains make more sense, for long distances regular planes are faster.
Liquify it; plenty cold enough out there to run that kind of refrigeration plant..
The US has a monopoly on helium? Excellent! When did this happen? I always thought it was a naturally occuring elemental gas. Is it patented?
Ahh, then the answer is most certainly yes.
I did the calculations a while ago to figure out what the pressure would be across the horizontal surface area of a person of a free-falling column of water. After only about 30 feet of drop the force was on the order of a metric tonne. The reason for my curiosity is that a friend of mine had had her back broken jumping off a thirty foot waterfall. I was incredulous about how this could happen until an EMT friend explained that this commonly happens when people jump too close to large waterfalls as they often get pulled into the waterfall itself and upon hitting the lake/pond/body of water they take on several tonnes of force. He even quoted a rule of thumb very much along the lines of 1 ton per 30 feet. If that holds, then a tank of water (presuming it did not break into droplets, though almost certainly it would unless it was a very very big tank) would hit people on the streets below the ESB with a force of ~60 tons! You would be crushed and die instantly.
Out of 97 on board, 64 escaped alive.
**>>BELCH
NT? New Technology? I'm told that's the same expansion as the NT in Windows NT
NT in WinNT in fact comes from the notion in 386 processors of Nested Threads. x386 and over have an NT register.
I think the rest came from Marketing
uninterestingly enough the splash screen for 2k says "Based on NT Technology"
so 2k is based on New Technology Technology
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
... and seeing it's a big balloon, it will also need to be patched! *groan*
Sounds like trouble!!
Zeppelin NT?
Now we get the Blue Blimps of Death...
it'll crash even more now....
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
So, who wants to bet on how long till it crashes? i give it 3 weeks uptime.
Lets just hope they don't mix the Zepllin CE, and version ME with the version NT, or things will just stop flying note to modorators: this was the forced stupid NT joke(s), now everyone else who does lame NT jokes can be called redundant,
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
Windows crashed terribly. And Microsoft created Windows NT.
The original Zepplein crashed terribly. And now we have... the Zepplein NT.
This dosen't bode well for the stability of the aircraft.
Umm, hydrogens performance is only about 10% better than helium. I would not call that "far better" especially in light of the fact that hydrogen is major fire hazard under the right conditions.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Hasn't John Bonham been dead for, like, 20 years now?
--"In dreams begin responsibilities" - Delmore Schwartz
sort of like over-the-counter drug names?
Zeppelin NT:
The Zeppelin NT is a relatively small Zeppelin with only 12 passenger seats. What sets it apart from simple blimps is that a carbon tube over the whole length makes the hull more rigid. Together with three propellers with a swivel angel of up to 120 degrees, that makes for excellent manoeuvrability (specs ). They're close to production.
CargoLifter 160:
In contrast, the CargoLifter will be gigantic (specs). It'll have a length of 260m and will be able to lift up to 160 tons of cargo. So far they've built a balloon for testing purposes and a hangar that is big enough to host fourteen 747s. Both the hangar and the ballon break a number of records. There are a couple of nice webcams.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
www.cargolifter.com
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
"Zeppelin NT? I bet it'll crash alot! HAHAHAHA!!11". Jesus F*ing Christ, my mother could have come up with that one.
> transfer vehicle between metropolitan airports
> and bedroom communities that would otherwise
> be a multihour bus or van trip away.
The site does not mention top speed of this
airship, but I doubt it would be much faster
than highway speed.
The fabric of the skin may have been the ignition source but carrying half a billion cubic feet of hydrogen to fuel the blaze doesn't help when you have a spark.
Deleted
Sorry, if that were the case earth's population would be devastated every time there was a rain storm.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I personally think they'd fill a neat little niche for luxury air travel - your own rooms, maybe even a buffet/dining area and kitchen....how about a lounge with a piano tinkling away in the background. I think I'd love it to be honest.....I mean, when you think of going for an ocean voyage, you don't strap on 1000s of Hp of engines to the back of a speedboat and mashing your way across the atlantic at hundreds of knots, instead you take a luxurious, leisurely cruise across. We might even see planes becoming things of the past - only to be used by businessmen and people in a rush whilst airships start to take the great unwashed masses at greatly reduced cost... just a thought. -Nano.
I stand corrected. I had no idea they were as fast as they are. A google search says they're faster than I thought, but perhaps not as fast as you think either. Looks like they top out at around 90 MPH, which is still 50% faster than I'd have thought one of those behemoths could get up to.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Yes, NT of Windows NT fame did originally stand for New Technology. Although Microsoft later dropped the expansion, so NT just meant NT at that time.
Interestingly, Northern Telecom owned the trademark to NT, and Microsoft had to pay them to use it. Microsoft was unable to sue anyone for using "NT" in their name.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Nah - you just shut the service down and tell people to take the PATH train for the remainder of the afternoon.
This is something I do not quite understand: today we have regular inflight refueling of cargo jets (well at least in the military), and passenger jet terminals are mostly equipped with "jetways" (exceptions include really small airports like Kona on Hawaii). If folks are already accustomed to walking through jetways to "de-plane" then why not install something similar at the top of the ESB. I estimate that you could get more people on a Zeppelin/Dirigible than you can in most helicopters that fly from Manhattan to the outlying airports. Of course people already pay money to ride the elevator up to the top of the ESB so why not provide them with a view of the city as part of the transit from/to Manhattan to/from the airports. The only snag would be the delay in unloading a large number of people. Solution: restaurant and bar to bilk folks for more money (the Chrysler building has a nice rest/bar atop it).
Perhap's re-compressing the gaz will do it ?
Electric powered compressors ?
Read this.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The major source of helium is natural gas fields. Natural gas contains about 2% helium.
While it is true that the US supplies 80% of the world's consumption, this is NOT because helium isn't found in other gas fields around the world. The U.S. can run their production plants cheaper than other countries. It still takes some effort to separate the helium from natural gas and other components (especially hydrogen). The U.S. is also one of the largest (if not THE largest) consumer of helium.
Helium COULD also be distilled from air (cryogenic distillation), but since there is only 0.0005% helium in air, this is too costly for now. However, it would be MUCH cheaper than getting it from the moon. I don't think cryogenic distillation from will ever be competitive with recovery from natural gas, but it's certainly a better alternative than getting it from the moon.
... the Aereon was an Airship*.
9 -31.html ). Except that there is something a little suspicious about that announcement. Any avid reader of Aviation Week & Space Technology (sometimes called Aviation Leak) can tell you, we have had pulse detonation test planes flying since the 90s (when their unique "donut on a rope" contrails started appearing around military test sites). This already flown technology is one of the other Revolutionary Concepts this team is supposed to be developing a flying prototype of. There are also numerous UFO sightings of large hovering triangular shapes that are too fast to be airships (or at least conventional airships); and an Aereon like vehicle is one of the proposed explanations ( http://www.nidsci.org/news/aereon.html ). What if the Revolutionary Concepts NASA wants to develop with this industry team are actually existing classified technologies that have commercial applications, and NASA is just providing a backstory to explain their development if or when they are declassified?
The Aereon concept is a weird hybrid rigid lighter-than-air vehicle shaped like large delta wing. It was the dream of the Aereon Co. ( http://www.njave.com/aviation/aereon/index.html ). Its history is told in the book _The_Deltoid_Pumpkin_Seed_; but we all know the story: it was an innovative idea that never caught on because it was too different for the little minds of the conventional world to appreciate. How many times have we heard that myth?
Maybe not. The world of aerospace is full of lighter than air concepts that never get developed because of good technical or economic reasons, no matter how cool or elegant they are: Aereon, Skyship, Atlantis Autonomous Airship, etc. But the idea of a rigid hybrid aircraft/airship has a lot of merit; and better it has potential uses. Military Uses. If you could make a vehicle that combined the hover and long loiter time of an airship with the speed of a subsonic aircraft, you'd have a good recon platform. Make it stealthy and you'd have a nice ground troop insertion method. If you don't care about stealth then it would make a great radar platform or subhunter.
That is probably why NASA selected the concept a couple of years ago as a Revolutionary Concept project that would be pursued by a NASA/Lockheed/Microcraft team ( http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/PAO/PressReleases/1999/9
So what's the point of all this? IF this is true, then the state-of-the-art in lighter than air craft may be much more advanced than a lot of you Zeppelin fans think. All you people wishing that SOMEONE would develop this technology properly may be comforted to know that the U.S. Navy** may already have a fleet of advanced rigid airships. And IF the gov't is going through all this trouble to delcassify it with the Revolutionary Concepts program, then someone must think it has potential civilian applications.
* apologies to Mr. Dundee
** The Navy has always seemed more excited about lighter-than-air aircraft than the USAF, and one of the UFO sightings happened right outside a USAF base which suggests to me that the craft might be of Navy origin (the USAF wouldn't turn on a bunch of lights on a classified aircraft just outside one of its own bases, but a less-than-professional Navy crew with their own "UFO" might not be able to resist the temptation of having a little fun by scaring the crap out of a bunch of Air Force guys).
the hindenburg put a lot of people off even though we now know what the cause was.
:D
I hope people DO realize that it was the aluminium oxide skin of the craft that ACTUALLY caught on fire first. This skin was arranged in panels. Also, the fact that these panels were attached together with 'string'. During the voyage to New York, the airship picked up a lot of static charge caused by moving through the rain and wind. Some panels were electrically connected by the (now wet ) string, some weren't because the string hadn't got wet enough.
So, when it reached its landing point, a mooring rope was dropped. That EARTHED the airship, and most of the charged 'panels' discharged. Some didn't, and of course then there was a potential difference, causing a spark. Now, aluminium oxide is used as fuel for rockets now, but it wasn't then and people didn't know how combustible it was. This spark happened towards the back end of the airship near the tail, where the rain hadn't soaked the string to make it conductive (and thereby lose its charge). This fire from the skin panel spread quickly, and of course the hydrogen didn't help but when you look at the footage of the hindenburg burning up, look at the SKIN of it and how quickly it burned. The hydrogen just dissipated UP when it burnt off.
Btw, I saw a tv program that revealed all of this a while ago, so I'm not pulling it out of my ass
Delphis
The linked article is fascinating
And most of the fatalities weren't from burning, but from jumping out. The people who stayed inside the airship walked away.
I am living near lake constanz, on the swiss side, however, and, what's more important, I am living even closer to the regional airport. This Zeppelin issue might become important because the swiss and german governement are depating about a flight route policy in the swiss-german border region. This is because a lot of people (germans and swiss) are feeling that jets are making to much noise.
Now, if such a zeppelin is making less noise and can be used to transport people closer to their destinations, well that might be bad news for the local airport.
yeah it was not the hydrogen that caused the Hindenburg crash. It was something else. But H2 is what actually burned isn't it? Isn't that what caused the airship to explode and kill almost everyone? OK it wasn't the jetfuel that caused the Concorde to crash. That's comforting.
Blimps are such a dumbfuck idea as to be almost beyond comprehension. The weather has to be great you can't land ot take off in high wind (does anyone remember the photograph of the US Airship Los Angeles standing 700ft straight up, nose down from its mooring in a high wind?) Does anyone realized that almost every Helium US airship crashed and killed their crews? Uh, the Shenendoa, the Akron, the Macon? Almost all of the British airships like the R101 crashed and burned or just crashed?
This is a small airship, obviously meant as a demonstrator. Their site says the concept can scale from here without much trouble.
Airships wouldn't replace jet aircraft, but they could certainly supplement them as regional transportation. Despite their large size, they can land in a relatively small amount of space... the Goodyear Blimp's landing field, here in Southern California, is the size of a large store parking lot. Couple that with their quieter (than a jet) operations, and you have a great short hop commuter aircraft between smaller markets (Akron to Pittsburgh, for example) or as a transfer vehicle between metropolitan airports and bedroom communities that would otherwise be a multihour bus or van trip away.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
Moderators are dickheads. How can this post be redundant when it's #13?
You need to read this.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
From here to NYC is about 400 mi. If I leave my house at 6:30 AM, drive to the airport, board a 737, fly to LGA, take a taxi to Midtown, I *might* get there by noon. That's an average of about 60-70 mph, so if the logistics could be handled well, there is plenty of opportunity for airships to be competitive with jets.
It just boils down to operating costs.
... Zepplin NT is looking for new mascots. It is rummored that Alvin has it in the bag.
over past few weeks I've been amazed why /. ..
:)
editors consider everything 'infamous'
I mean, who hasn't heard of the crash of Hinderburg zeppelin?
Or is it just that they really teach americans
only about the civil war and make them memorize
the zillion names of US presidents leaving no
memory resources for anything else?
not trying to catch flame, just had to ponder it out loud.
Oh yeah - NT? New Technology? I'm told that's the same expansion as the NT in Windows NT. *sniff sniff* I think I smell a lawsuit.
"People may buy your Zeppelin NT instead of Windows NT by mistake, so we're launching this lawsuit." Don't laugh - they'll do it.
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul, ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul! Uzg-MS-ishi amal fauthut burgulli.
In the case of the Hindenberg, not that much.
You are forgetting the fatal flaw of the Hindenberg: the canvas outer covering used a doping compound of aluminum powder and nitrocellulose. Given that these are two prime ingredients for modern solid rocket fuel, even if the Hindenberg had been filled with helium the airship was essentially a flying bomb waiting to happen.
Yan
Gilina: "I can't believe you're not Sebacean."
John: "Human. It's kinda like Sebacean, but we haven't conquered other worlds yet, so we just kick the crap out of each other."
Farscape, PK Tech Girl
I think this line's only filler
There was something on PBS recently about this, and the theory is that a static spark ignited the doped fabric when the lines touched ground.
Researchers conducted a test with an actual scrap from the Hindenberg's doped canvas skin and it went up in a flash when exposed to a spark. According to the show, records revealed that the Hindenberg's manufacturer had secretly conducted such expirements back in the day, and had reached the same conclusion.
Though hydrogen fueled the fire, the researchers said they believe this is what started it in the first place.
Yes. The idea was to make the fabric of the covering waterproof. To do so they mixed aluminum powder with oil and saturated the fabric with it.
This is why the Hindenburg looked shiny and metallic even though it was just fabric. You can see the same effect on many airplanes of the day. The Spirit of Saint Louis comes immediately to mind.
This is basically thermite, and according to modern tests gave the fabric a lower flashpoint than the hydrogen gas it contained.
This is not to say that the disaster wouldn't have happened otherwise but it may well actually be the point of ignition that started the whole thing off.
KFG
Right. If the accident happened today, it would look a lot better than any of the recent jumbo jet crashes. Many of the passengers _walked_ off the Hindenburg.
The radio announcer was hysterical, making the disaster seem worse than it was. If it happened to a jet today, it would be viewed as miraculous that so many of the passengers survived.
> the first Zeppelin to do so since the infamous Hindenburg disaster.
Not true. LZ-130, Graf Zeppelin II, continued to fly for some time after the crash of her sister ship, in both a civilian passenger and military capacity. The original Graf Zeppelin, LZ-127, (decommissioned during the construction of the Graf II) was even recommissioned to fly shorter-range flights.
There is a lot of speculation surrounding the Hindenburg (LZ-129) and the disaster at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. For a real source of information regarding the ship, read Michael Mooney's, "The Hindenburg." Mr. Mooney flew on LZ-129, helped in it's testing and was involved with the Goodyear-Zeppelin company during the construction and operation of the most famous airships ever flown.
Actually the last passenger carrying zeppelin was the Hindenburg's sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II, number LZ-130, which was under construction at the time of the Hindenburg accident (Hindenburg was LZ-129), and completed in 1938. They were never paying passengers, the German Air Ministry never allowed this, and with the advance of war most countries forbid the Germans permission to fly the ship over their soil. Both the Hindenburg & the Graf Zeppelin II were primarily designed for helium lifting, but as the only supplier of helium at the time was the US, and the US refused to sell helium to the Germans, hydrogen had to be used. The best theory about the fire is that it was the doping solution applied to the canvas to waterpoof, which had a very low flashpoint. The Graf Zeppelin II had a different doping solution, using bronze insteal of aluminum, and also conductive connections between the skin and the body, allowing any static charges to be equalized without sparks. The Graf Zeppelin II was scrapped in 1940, due to the war's requirement for materials, after over a million miles of flight.
It was never a terribly well-thought-out idea, docking a lighter-than-air ship nearly a quarter mile up in the air. Still, it has a retro-cool appeal...a good friend and I are working on a novella about an alternate universe in which the authoritarian US gov't. continues to moor airships to the top of the ESB.
For more on the history of the Empire State Building (including the dirigible mooring mast) see http://www.esbnyc.com.
This Zepplin NT is a toy. The Hindenburg was _800_ feet long, and was used for transatlantic passenger service with lounges and smoking rooms and berths! This thing is like 210 ft long, and carries a dozen tourists in a cramped cabin. The Goodyear blimp is 192 feet long!
Using the Zepplin name is a marketing ploy, and apparently a good one since I'm wasting my time reading about a run-of-the-mill blimp on Slashdot.
-Braddock
How CargoLifter's Airship Will Work
But now NT CAN!
We're toast!
grep -ri 'should work'
No, I'm talking about a large tank full, aiming a fire hose downward or something, so it wouldn't break up into droplets.
Well, it's not JUST a marketing ploy - the Zeppelin NT was contructed by the Zeppelin company ... ie the same Zeppelin company which made the original Zeppelins, founded by Graf von Zeppelin. They've always been around; they just haven't been making Zeppelins since the late 1930s ...
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
They had transparent floors...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
The airship market was utterly devastated by the Hindenberg tragedy. For 70 years, nobody's beeen able to think of an airship without thinking of the film footage of the ship burning and falling out of the sky.
It has literally taken *70 years* to even begin to recover and we are even now, no where near the level of sophistication that the ships were in those days.
However, if you're interested, there's CargoLifter and Advanced Technologies who're pushing now:
http://www.cargolifter.com/
http://www.airship.com/
and of course Zeppelin:
http://www.zeppelin-nt.com/
Deleted
Some historitiens told, that it was not of the fabric, but because of the new color of the fabric, which was electrostatic and *flammable*. The nazis had commanded to use the color, that looked better, as they misused the zeppelins as propaganda.
Where's Zeppelin IV: Their best album with Black Dog and Stairway To Heaven. Also comes with a Red Snapper for the groupies.
"Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." Dark Helmet - Spaceballs
It's supposed to be like helicopter rides... Every seat is a window seat, I guess, so you're paying for the window XPerience.
All the need for patches is un-intentional...
The blimp started out being a little hot air ballon, and they kept expanding upon it to turn it into a full passenger carrying blimp.
As a result, the current blimp is a monster built over an old and tiny framework.
They should have built it all from Scratch
To avoid having to Patch
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
Microsoft is actually licensing the NT in Windows NT from another company. I think the name is Northern Telecom or something like that.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Airships today should also be using hydrogen for the same reason, but the misinformed public won't allow it. See my other post, Dammit! They're still saying hydrogen is dangerous!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The Diamond Age yet. The first thing I thought when I saw this story was: "Holy cow! Stephenson may not be too far off!"
'Course, we don't have a Victorian renaissance in progress yet, nor do we have the Feed.
But dangit, I want a Hoplite suit, a sword like Nell's, and a Young Gentleman's Illustrated Primer. Now that'd be cool.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I'm pretty sure M$ is gonna sue for the "NT" in the name.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Although it's a superior lifting gas, it's not very superior. The reason hydrogen was used is simpler: it's easier to produce.
Actually, back in the day the Zeplins got up to about 130 MPH. When was the last time you saw a bus doing 130? (Speed doesnt count) At 130 Mph, zepplins would be faster than everything except airplanes, at least in the US. And flying, no even if it were at bus speed, beats driving any day.
I would mod you up if I could!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Although it is true that hydrogen was probably not the main factor in the Hindenberg disaster, that doesn't mean that it isn't dangerous inside the hull of a Zeppelin.
Back in the days of luxury Zeppelin travel, passengers boarding the craft would have to turn over their lighters and matches to the crew. Smoking was allowed only in a special "smoking room" which was specifically designed to contain any fires (no matter how small).
Originally, the man behind the Hindenberg (can't remember his name right now) wanted to use helium instead of hydrogen. Unfortunately, the Zeppelin co. could not secure any helium from its primary supplier, the U.S., because of strained relationships with the Nazis (despite a personal meeting with Roosevelt himself).
The movie
The Story with pictures
The FBI investigation (337 pages in 4 PDF files)
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Compress it
I doubt it. When it comes down to it, people don't like being couped up that long. A blimp is a lot different than a large ocean going luxury liner. Are you going to have shuffleboard and 3 pools on your Zeppelin? :-)
Zeppelin 2000 Professional is okay for small amounts of people and crew.
It is not recommended for mass transportation of many people for long distances...
Features include:
Of course, most of Slashdot would rather fly on Debian Derigibles - This new and exciting form of air transportation is recommended only for the aeronotical elite who prefer to build their own blimps. Using a network of peer-to-peer open source docking bays and home-built blips, you can get a hair-raising trip around the world for free!
Plus you'll be laughing at all of those paying outrages amounts of money for just a little spin in the air with NT.
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
I think within 15-20 years we will see luxury airships carry 125-150 passengers on 3-4 day flights. Would you want to cruise at about 35-50 knots about 3,000 feet altitude around the Hawaiian Islands? I'm sure a lot of people do (including me). :)
With the use of non-flammable helium and the use of modern aerospace materials for airships, such an airship is well with the range of current technology. The Zeppelin NT points the way for to build such a thing with the time period I mentioned above.
The really appealing aspect about the cargolifter is that you can fulfill tasks unimaginable with any kind of aircraft.
Imagine you can get your stone house built in Russia, Indonesia or any other place with cheap labor and just plug it into it's place in America or Europe. With this kind of technology you can envisage huge wharfs for houses, factories in low-cost labor countries.
http://www.airship.com/
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And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll
Woe oh oh oh oh oh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
Another point is that only about 1/3 of passengers died. Could you imagine getting 2/3 of passengers out of a 737 if it caught fire in the air on the approach to the runway?
Thermite also needs iron oxide. There wasn't any of that there. The reaction betwen aluminum and iron oxide yields aluminum oxide and molton iron, plus a large amount of excess heat.
The energy needed to start the reaction (which is self sustaining after ignition) is supplied by a magnesium fuse usually.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
So this has nothing with Jimmy Page or Robert Plant?
But they're adding multimodal freight to the picture as well so it'll probably end up competing with freight aircraft like the 747 and Antonovs.
It's a completely new paradigm so we'll see.
Deleted
The site does not mention top speed of this airship, but I doubt it would be much faster than highway speed.
Highway speed in LA is about 20 mph average. Zeps are very quiet VTOL aircraft, basically. Needing only a ground crew of three, and being quite cheap to take off and land, they could be practical for short-hop trips into places that would not permit or could not justify a full-blown airport.
Most cities have strict limits on the number of medivac helicopter flights that can be performed, because the residents balk at helicopters flying over all day and night. A quiet 60-70 mph airship beats hell out of an ambulance ride in from the boonies, and is politically feasible where a medivac service might not be.
Sucks to be you I guess.
Would you believe me if I told you that it was all in the wrist?
KFG
Actually the album was untitled. It's commonly referred to as IV just because its their 4th album.
The band wanted to release it without even their name on it, but the label didn't like the whole idea, as they thought it was commercial suicide. Putting "Led Zeppelin" on it was a compromise. Now it's one of the best selling alnums of all time.
I think we'll see zeppelins come back as commercial transport about the same time the telegraph becomes the primary means of long distance communication again.
telegraph n. a method of electronic written communication over a long distance. (From Greek roots tele == distance and graph == writing.) The Internet (especially e-mail, newsgroups, and the Web) is the world's largest telegraph network, only instead of morse code AM'ed over copper wire, you have ASCII code over fiber in the backbone and V.90 over copper in the last mile.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Think about the winds you get ~1000 feet in the air, and how hard it would be to keep the Zep and the "zepway" connected to each other under unfavorable conditions. Get a brisk day and a wind shift, and you have a nasty accident.
Parked jets and jetways are pretty stable structures.
Tyler Durden says use soap...
Why does it piss me off so much when the media continues to misinform the public about this point? Hydrogen is a superior lifting gas, and the airship industry will be much more economically viable when the public becomes educated enough to accept its use. If you want to see these graceful behemoths transporting stuff over your city, get the word out!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Hmmm, if you drop a penny off the top of the ESB, you could kill somebody or dent the sidewalk.
If you drop a lot of water off the top, could the speed (terminal velocity) cause injury to people below?
Blue Skies of Death
http://ooze.bloomnet.com/Music/LedZeppelinTMTC.htm
Wouldn't Londoners say "Oh bugger"?
All joking about getting "incinerated" aside, a simple change of materials -- NOT switching from hydrogen to helium -- has made modern airships much safer. See my other post, Dammit! They're still saying hydrogen is dangerous!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
This time with a real hyperlink
This would be worth it just for the sake of the helium. Even a small leek (or even seepage) would cause everyone to sound like the chipmunks.
[done in best Alvin voice]: Oh the humanity!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
A blimp is basically a sack full of gas. The Zeppelin NT is semi-rigid and has high manoeuvrability.
If your looking for size, check the CargoLifter.
Hindenburg: Out of 97 on board, 64 escaped alive.
Concord: (moment of silence)
US Airships: Too fucking small. Half-assed attempts invite failure.
Take it Hugh!
**>>BELCH
Personally..... I think the market that Zepplin need to be focusing on is the cruise ship business.
Zepplins require smaller/cheaper support facilities than ocean liners, they aren't restricted to ocean-side destinations, they don't experience turbulence, and they view must be amazing.
Yes. The NT is pretty small.
But have a look at the specs of the Cagolifter 160. It's HUGE.
Agreed. Zeppelins and balloons would be even more cost effective than Helios could ever be. They are already used for radar installations in some coastal areas.
Unfortunately, the balloon broadband theory isn't very practical, regardless of it's cost. Which is why Helios is a total joke for this application.
Don't get me wrong, Helios is a nifty project. I'm sure that it will produce technology advances in wing design, airframe design and composition, automatic guidance systems and more. But, as a broadband solution, you must be joking.
Realistically though, I'd guess it was just a case of trying to fit several thousand news-hungry geeks down a relatively small bandwidth connection. Some connection requests are bound to go unanswered, which would make it look like someone had just pulled the plug out. Incidentally, I connected from Yorkshire, and didn't get 404'd at all. But I might be helped by the big fat pipe that my workplace has to the net : )
The Zeppelin NT isn't a stratospheric solar powered airship. It's a passenger carrying airship.
It's like saying that a 747 wouldn't make a good stratospheric communications platform because it's too heavy, can't fly that high, doesn't have enough fuel to stay up for 6 months - well Doh.
An airship doesn't need to supply power just to stay in the air. It only needs the power to hold position and supply power to the payload, the mass of which is irrelevant because the helium is holding it up.
It's the aerodynamics that matter and there *are* plans in the works for comunications airships that fly in the stratosphere.
http://www.airship.com/
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I really hope they make sure that WORMS can't chew through the blimp material.
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
Europe and Japan has trains which go that fast. The Bullet trains cruise at 200 kph, about 125 MPH, the french TGV at about 300 kph, and they are working on the next generation, planned for 360 kph. The world record is 515.3 kph, set in 1990 outside of Paris.
They should use hydrogen. It's cheaper, safe (contrary to popular belief) and gives far better performance.
The Hindenburg exploded not because it had hydrogen in it, but due to a big screwup in the doping of the skin (aluminium powder == rocket fuel; add iron oxide == thermite; add combustible hydrocarbons for added excitement!)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"It seems to me this ship should be able to carry more than 19 passengers, which would make for a far reduced price. The cabin looks awefully small.
Really, over 200$ for a small roundtrip?
I can fly to any destination within Europe for that (from Friedrichshafen).
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
Yep. Exisiting blimps.
When I see a Cargolifter actually lift something, I'll change my tune.
However, people have been talking about Blimps and Zeppelins being the airplane/autogyro/helicopter killer since the 1920s...and it's not happened yet.
So...but like the new Amiga...the Cargolifter is just vapor at this point.
Existing blimps are *tiny* advertising platforms or small passenger carriers.
http://www.cargolifter.com/
Need I say more?
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I get get to them from here just fine.
-Kevin
Some time ago I heard about a company, who would attempt to provide unmanned zeppelins as low-cost satellites. A zeppelin could be stationed above a city at very high altitude, where it would be powered by solar energy. From here it would be able to act as a perfect relay station for mobile phones or other types of radio networks. This is a part of the same concept the Helios airplane is trying to achieve.
The idea is really good for several reasons. Especially the low prices would make it useful and making it more easy to deploy. At the same time the altitude would be less that a satellite, making the radio transmitters being able to reach it at a much lower power. But also the advantages that it could be landed for maintenance, upgrades etc. would make it compatible to a satellite. And pollution would be less than a rocket...
The list goes on and on.
In my opinion this type of use is much more interesting that being able to provide tourist tours (not that I think tours are a bad idea).
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
I saw a documentary the other day about the design and construction of the Empire State Building. Apparently it was supposed to be just 86 storeys, but in order to be taller than the Chrysler building they added a mooring mast for 'lighter-than-air-ships' to the top...
;-)
they even showed artists impressions from the time...
unfortunately the plan was abandoned as people were unwilling to walk the floating gangway from the gondola to the top of the Empire State Building
Yeah, but the Hindenburg was huge! Look at
these stats.
Lengths of Aircraft
747-400: 232 feet (71m)
777-300: 242 feet (74m)
goodyear gz-22: 206 feet (63m)
zeppelin nt: 246 feet (75m)
hindenburg: 804 feet (245m)
-Kevin
Here is a link to a RealVideo entitled CORRECTING HISTORY: Hydrogen and the Hindenburg, including explanation by Addison Bain, retired NASA scientist.
All of www.zeppelin-nt.com is unavailable right now...
The Slashdot effect is one thing, but when the web pages are physically removed it's quite another!
http://www.themeparks.ie
Actually normally i dont get off on the anti MS jokes in every post - but this one is funny - well worth the rating.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Or remote areas for Z'NT
The Cargolifter also will not compete with freight planes but with the people moving exceptionally big loads like reactors for chemical plants, constructional parts up to 160 t and so on.
It will move them at around 80 mph and deploy them to every point around the world from house to house without the need for infrastucture (roads and the like). It will only need the possibility to tow it down with 40 t force while loading and unloading.
The Hindenerg didn't crash because of the hydrogen ignited, but because he outer covering was extremely flamible which was ignited by an electostatic discharge. PBS had an excellent documentary on it and here is a link to Q&A with the researcher who determined this.
Hi! I think the Zeppelin NT name is very fortunate, because it allows even unwitty idiots like myself to make dumb jokes about Microsoft. Hell, I don't even have to read the rest of the comments to notice that there are already 48 other comments saying the same thing, only funnier. I can just post this stupid comment and then tell my friends about it later. We will all get a good chuckle!!!!
But the way I see it is like this; if the boat I'm on sinks I can at least grab a life preserver and not sink with it. If the car I'm in crashes, then at least I've got a chance of walking away (and I've already been hit by a car [his fault] and a van [my fault] so I'm not too scared by that). But if a plane I'm in takes a dive then the chances of me actually surviving it are pretty slim. Kinda unnerving really. I know that's not the most rational way to look at things (especially when you consider the satistics), and perhaps I have control issues, but that's just the way my brain works.
Zeppelin 2000 Professional
Still, your point is very interesting - I'll be sure to mention it at some point in the future.
But who can replace John Bonham?
Yet Another Web Site
Also add improper electrical insulation. The skin charging up isn't necessarily a problem, so long as it discharges evenly. It discharged when the mooring rope hit the ground, BUT some panels didn't because they weren't properly grounded to the airframe. You then have a potential difference between panels covered in pretty much rocket fuel and lots of fire.
Whoops. Whoops almighty.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Personally, I would much rather pay money to fly in a hydrogen-filled airship with added safety precautions. For example, they could design the cabin so it could glide upon detachment from the "gas bag" (anybody know the technical term for it?). In case of a problem, the cabin could just detach, turn a bit, and escape. Also, they could add some kind of monitoring system in case of a fire. Remember, in the original Hindenburg accident, people on the ground realized something was wrong long before any of the passengers did.
NOO, they have many propellors an many sides and can start and land like an helicopter. It is an real zepelin, no blib, which is just an ballon in form of an zeppelin P.S: Could someone please mod down the wrong answers to this question?
Anyhow, during the WWII, the US used blimps to host radars to detect approaching U-boats on the Atlantic coast. So, your idea does not seem to be too far fetched.
how does a zepplin land to take on passengers? ballast? anchors?
(too shy to post with a sig)
To be more specific, the doping material on the canvas covering used on the pre-World War II Zeppelins as a way to reflect heat and keep out moisture was a combination of aluminum powder and nitrocellulose.
It was a NASA engineer (who knew that aluminum powder and nitrocellulose are propellents in solid rocket motors) that discovered this fact from looking at a piece of the Hindenberg's canvas covering that managed to survive the crash. He noticed that the stuff burned exactly like solid rocket fuel, and using modern material analysis deduced the doping compounds I mentioned above. In short, the Hindenberg was a flying bomb waiting to happen.
It should be noted that the Zeppelin company did its own internal report (completely in 1938) that noted the doping compound's penchant to burn quickly, but the Nazi government quickly supressed the findings.
And I thought software demos had a lot of hot air.
Totally different markets.
The nearest market would be the helicopter market or pleasure boat market.
Cargolifter OTOH, will compete with 747s for freight cargos.
http://www.cargolifter.com/
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BTW, I still use aeroplanes, but only out of convenience (if I could afford to go by boat [hah! Like I'll ever afford that!] I would).
Personally I'm glad to see the zepplin fly again. Especially given my affinity for steampunk.
Hi altogether,
...). It maneuvers nearly like a helicopter and can turn and climb or descent on the spot.
r ship/
...
There were technical questions about this wonderful flying machine Zeppelin NT. I will try to remember what I know from the news and the currently defunct webpage.
1. Anchoring and pick up passengers?
It operates ca. 800kg heavier than air. It can land like an aircraft and does not float away while boarding/unboarding. It has an anchoring mast, but needs only three groundpersonell for anchoring compared to roughly 20 for a standard blimp. It can do groundoperations up to 20kts wind as far as I remember, whithout ground personal at all.
2. Maneuvering?
Three Engines, two at the sides with the ability to turn the props for reverse thrust, direct lift and even downforce, one in the rear, giving forward or upward thrust and driving an additional fan for movement around vertical axis(turning). All is completely fly by wire (hopefully NOT NT controlled
3. Only 19 passengers?
There are plans to build a larger one for 40 passengers. Buy it and convert it to your own flying luxury yacht. Also, I think there are different (easier) certification rules for aircraft up to 19 passengers (commuter category)then for aircraft with more passengers.
4. Solar / electrical powered aircraft and airships
Take a look at the following link:
http://www.isd.uni-stuttgart.de/arbeitsgruppen/ai
for a solar powered airship called "Lotte". It looks really cool. I work only some hundred meters away from their place and can see it flying sometimes.
Also look at
http://www.lange-flugzeugbau.de/
for the first commercial electrical powered motorglider to be certified (hopefully) next year. The engine-unit is already flying in a modified glider.
So, Zeppelin NT? The sight of any flying airship, might it be a blimp or a Zeppelin, is just cool. Especially with a huge outboard color display on the ballonett for delivering messages and fun stuff in the dark. No noise, only a little humming overhead and a large ship passing gently.
Even cooler is, to hitch a ride. Last year a friend of mine won one in another airship, and I had the pleasure to accompanny her. Two hours over Munich in Summer, with the windows down, like in a car, gently floating in the thermals at 50 kph close over the city. Just incomparable to any other flying experience I had before. A Ship, not a plane!
Justdreaminggoneflyingregards
Yeah, a Blue Storm Of Dead.
Somehow I wonder if calling it NT is a good thing. I mean, is this one going to go up in flames or succumb to a fatal BSOD?
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
on the other hand, nobody knows how to fly it and it doesn't really go anywhere of interest to non-zeppelinux fliers.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
At any rate, a few months ago there was something on the Discovery Channel (or some such channel) about the Hindenberg disaster. One guy claimed that the main culprit wasn't the hydrogen in the gas bags, but the material they used to paint/seal the outside (claiming it was the same stuff we use in solid rocket boosters today). Whether this is true or not, the guy did have a point: Hydrogen burns clear, and the exploding zeppelin was anything but.
When will someone make a Final Fantasy style airship? It couldn't possibly be that complicated...most of them seemed to be just wooden cabins in the shape of a small boat, with propellers and a big air sack providing the lift. I'm sure it wouldn't cost that much, relatively speaking...not much more than a blimp or a plane... maybe do this as a promotion or something? There are hobbyists with hot air balloons...
Damnit, I want my airship!
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
There's a classic alternate history short story by Fritz Lieber called Catch that Zeppelin! based on just that fact.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
It would have some effect. However, as the skin burned away opening holes in the gasbags, most of the H2 would just rise up into the atmosphere. Imagine a large column of H2 rising upwards. There's no O2 in the center so how would it get the oxygen to burn? Only the H2 around the outside would burn. By then the inner H2 would have risen far away from the fire.
Did you draw those cartoons? They're pretty funny. Although, I take exception to your depiction of the AC. I do *not* wear a pocket protector :-)
Zeppelin NT is a lot more mass to move than Helios. The small amount of power created by the solar cells wouldn't add much power. However, they would add a lot to the cost.
By the late 30's, flying boats where already carrying passangers across the Atlantic. When land planes that could fly this far came along, airships would have had it. An 40's aircraft would have carried about the same number of passangers. Be twice as fast, only needed about 5 crew and would have cost about an order of magnitude less to build. You just can't argue with that.
I retract my last sentence...I forgot to take into account the additional metal needed to create the framework. But I guess you'd use fiberglass or carbon fiber instead for lightness.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Apple Zeppelin X looks like a giant cough drop lozenge. With Zeppelux you may have to sit on milk crates to start, but if you have Debian Zeppelux, you can use the apt-upgrade command to get leather captains chairs.
"Oh shit", say Londoners, as German Zeppelins take to the skies.
Some of the panels weren't sealed properly to each other. Those small gaps allowed electrical arcs to be created as it flew through the bad weather at Lakehurst and picked up static electricity.
They should give the thing electric engines. They should cover the top half with solar cells, add something to store the engergy in (the fuel cells they are going to put on helios), and a small diesel generator in case all of that is not enough. Then it would be much more NT than it is now.
Zeppelin for Workgroups: Allowed rudimentary communications with other Zeppelins in the area, so their pilots could call and say "Oh my God!! I'm being burned alive!!!" Manufacturer claims "Safest Zeppelin yet!!"
Zeppelin 95:Much hyped successor to Zeppelin 3.x series. New 'easy to use' control panel resulted in many Zeppelin 95s floating out of control, as their pilot's didn't think to look under 'Start' to shutdown. Manufacturer claims "Safest Zeppelin yet!!"
Zeppelin NT 3.51:Industrial strength Zeppelin, filled with new and improved 'Helium' gas, which is designed to not incinerate its passengers twice a day. However, customers are deterred by the 'retro-styled' control panel, and sluggish handling with gondolas of the day. Manufacturer claims "Safest Zeppelin yet!!"
Zeppelin 98:Same as Zeppelin 95, but with only one choice of inflight movie channel, and the video screen is stapled to the passenger's faces so they can't look at any other inflight movies even if they want to. Still explodes regularly. Manufacturer claims "Safest Zeppelin yet!!"
Zeppelin NT 4.0Addresses speed concerns of Zeppelin NT 3.51 by integrated the gondola control panel into the actual airframe itself. Occasional H2 impurities in the airframe result in spectacular incineration when the gondola control panel sometimes short circuits. Manufacturer claims "Safest Zeppelin yet!!"
Zeppelin ME: No-one cared about this one. Manufacturer didn't bother wasting time claiming "Safest Zeppelin yet!!"
Zeppelin 2000:Not too bad an airship...however, none of the seats or fittings from any of the previous Zeppelins can actually be installed without tweaking. Some pieces of equipment don't fit at all
Zeppelin XP:If you get out of your seat, you have to buy another ticket. If you cross your legs, you have to buy another ticket. If you get out the in-flight magazine, you have to buy another ticket. Continually radios back to Zeppelin headquarters about what you have in your suitcase. However, the gondola decor is really nice looking, and only a few beta testers have been incinerated alive so far.Zeppelin NT? What, are they trying to crash these things?
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
The soon to be release Microsoft Zepplin XP goes faster, the seats are better, but at 30,000ft you've gotta call Microsoft or it deflates and you crash to your horrible death.
:-)
Apple Zepplin X looks the best of them all, but the steering controls are weird, and there's no tvs in first class.
Zepplux, the grass roots version, goes faster, stays up in stronger winds, but you've gotta sit on milk crates the floor
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
If you'd read the article before posting comments on it, you'd have seen that they are filled with helium, although recent research suggests that Hindenberg didn't burn because of the hydrogen, but because of a flammable skin.
Not just Helium in the Moon. It's Helium-3, an isotope. It's exciting because many researchers say this would be the perfect fuel for a fusion reactor. Yet another reason to get into space.
There was an article in Wired magazine the other year about this. It seems the US government controls about 80% of the worlds reserves of helium, which is of course nonflammable but due to the tensions of the 1930's refused to export to Germany leading to the use of hydrogen instead.
Of course the interesting point is the supposedly hugh amounts of helium on the Moon, any excuse for a trip I guess!
On another note: I'm currently waiting for a delivery of a new Server system - which is stuck in a traffic jam, if only these blimps were available now we could have real blue sky computing 8)
See Budapest by Blimp.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
While the Cargolifter is certainly a great thing for lifting huge payloads, i think that smaller, unmanned zeppelins could also be used as relay stations for say, world wide cell phone coverage. they can climb to great altitudes and, in contrast to a balloon, can head in any direction thanks to motor power. On the other hand side they are - at least as far i know - cheaper than the NASA aircraft.
".Sig Stealer" was here
In that case, how would you get the Helium from the moon (where it is now) down to Earth (where it's needed)? Since it's lighter than air, it's not like you could just fly it down in a Zeppelin or something.
Cheers //Johan
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
It has great uptimes and it never crashes. Yup, it can stay up there for months. Of course tickets are free.
The bigger an airship gets, the better.
It's lifting capacity is defined by the *volume* of helium it can hold. i.e. the lifting capacity goes up by the cube of the size while it's own weight increases with the surface area of the gas bag, i.e. with the square of the size.
So, yes, you can have rooms, restaurants, viewing platforms, theatres etc. Just make it big.
The Zeppelin NT is a *fraction* of the size of the rigid airships of the 30s and 40s.
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It runs fine with Service Pack 3, but those patches on the ship sure don't look good.