Zeppelins Over California

It seems that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow may not have been completely off the mark. According to Venture Beat, Airship Ventures has raised capital sufficient to build their first Zeppelin NT (Microsoft Windows reference purely coincidental). The airship will offer rides for up to 12 passengers out of the old Navy Blimp hangars at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley. Airship Ventures notes that airships are already flying safely in Japan and Germany, so now the US will have its chance. Rides will cost from $250 to $500 per person. Esther Dyson is one of the investors.

Comments

Purchased, not build.

[H.Dersch]

The Zeppelin NT is purchased from "ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH" and the 4th they are building, see this link (german)

Re:1985 Sydney

[BeeRockxs]

They're not blimps, so the engines are not attached to the person-carrying cabin, but to the hull. So they're not noisy for the passengers.

What about the impending helium shortage?

[ThreeGigs]

Remember this?:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/14/0219246

I hope they included the increasing price and decreasing availability of helium in their business plan. No wonder it's $250+ per flight.

Re:What about the impending helium shortage?

[Dr. Zim]

Helium is a HUGE expense when you're filling the ship from the start, but in normal operation, even the big boys only use a few bottles a week and that's from accidental valvings and impurities that leak in from the ballonets.

On Shamu, we'd shoot gas any time the purity dropped below a certain level, and when in the hanger (the big one at Weeksville, NC tha burned down a few years back), we'd hook up to a purifier truck... a huge contraption that used extremely high pressure to filter the gas.

The largest single ongoing expense for our Airship Shamu operation was personnel. A big ship needs two dozen men, ranging from pilots and mechanics to ground crew. Those need to be housed and transported for traveling operations such as most of those in the aerial advertising biz. Fuel was up there, too, but in pure gallons per hour, it's very hard to beat an airship for fuel economy.

The smaller ships of today have evolved and survived largely because they need less crew and are cheaper to operate on an ongoing basis. Not so much over the cost of helium.

Re:There was a Hardy Boys about this

[meringuoid]

if the Zeppelin had been running on Helium like it should have it would almost certainly have survived

Actually, the Hindenburg fire could well have had more to do with the surface coating than the hydrogen gas, although that certainly didn't help. At any rate most of the passengers and crew of the Hindenburg survived, and those who died were the ones who jumped out of the airship; people who stayed aboard survived. Compare that with the survival rate of any famous disaster on a jet plane and tell me airships are dangerous. I mean, these things were SUPPOSED to fly straight at skyscrapers. There's a mast at the top of the Empire State Building which was for mooring airships; if one had missed and crashed into the side, it would have gone bump, quite gently.

Re:Bang?

[Teancum]

As much as I get the joke, hydrogen as a lifting gas for airships is something whose danger is by far and away overblown. Germany used airships extensively using hydrogen... and it was the fact that they used what was effectively rocket fuel for the ship hull that did in airships like the Hindenburg, not the hydrogen gas.

Assuming that these airships are going to use some petrochemical substance like gasoline or JP-5 (military-grade jet fuel) to power its engines, I would be by far and away more concerned about some problem with the fuel system blowing up than the hydrogen.

As for why a 1930's technology isn't being used in the 21st century more extensively, there are a bunch of factors in that equation... including some irrational fear of hydrogen that makes it the target of lame jokes like this one.

Re:More Annoying Money Wasters for Rich People

[Jesus_666]

The money goes from rich person R1 to rich person R2. Some of it goes to the state as taxes. R2 then has to spend some money on wages for workers W1 to Wn who operate and maintain the zeppelin (again, some of that money goes to the state via taxes at various points). He also has to spend money on material and parts required to maintain the zeppelin, which goes to suppliers S1 to Sn. Again, taxes apply and if the zeppelin business runs well enough the material suppliers might be able to expand their businesses, thus creating more jobs.

I don't know how much taxes this generates as opposed to taxes on money that lies around on the bank, but it does also generate jobs, which helps society because (at least in theory) it reduces welfare spending, among other things.

Re:oh thats smart

[Deadstick]

The Goodyear Blimps pick up bullet holes once in a while. No, they don't fly around in circles going PPPHHHFFFFFFFFTTT!!! because the gas pressure is quite low; the support crews notice it when the rate at which they're replenishing helium goes up slightly.

rj

Re:1985 Sydney

[Dr. Zim]

Wrong. Goodyear has built it's own airship since before you were a gleam in daddy's eye. They developed their own designs in house and would have sneered at any outside tech. A quick trip to google can provide the Goodyear legacy far better than I can, if you're still interested. The ships you're talking about in Australia, at least from all photos I've seen of commercial ships there, were Airship Industries Skyship 500's and 600's.

I worked as a nightsign technician on Airship Shamu for a few years, as well as on Bud One, Gulf Oil's WDL ship, and the Met Life blimp before they made the switch to the lightships. The only serious manufacturers in the industry during the 80's were Goodyear, Aiship Industries (A British firm) and WDL, a german company that made a rugged ship that was more like a flying VW in it's simplicity. It wasn't until the 90's that the Lightships came into popularity because of their smaller size (cheaper operating costs).

Advertising has always been what paid the bills for commercial blimps, passenger service is break even at best. Smaller projects, like the 80' ship I helped build for the Florida Institute of Oceanography were always used as research platforms or surveillance, and typically could not carry passengers due to insufficient lift and FAA Experimental ratings.