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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.
Where's the waste?
They take rich people's money, which would otherwise be locked down in someone's personal possession, i.e. not in the economy. That's what I'd call wasted.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
why exactly is this limited to people with a house in Malibu? people routinely spend several hundred dollars on a special activity while on leave/holidays.
What is...?
But I agree, I don't object to money sinks for rich folks. People will be putting food on the table by providing this money waster, perhaps science or engineering will be advanced a little bit, and most importantly it's the rich people's own damn money. I prefer rich people spending cash on useless frippery, to taxing those people to death and spending the taxes on, say, putting little rainbow-colored stickers on every lamppost along a (shortish) stretch of highway to "give it an identity", for a cost of $200.000 (I kid you not).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I disagree that the Hindenburg crash was the only reason why airships aren't flying today. What that crash did was to remove the luster and glamor of airships from governments that were earlier subsidizing the airship industry and dumping huge amounts of money into an unproven technology.
More to the point, the economics of operating airships are such that it is far more expensive in terms of personnel costs, hanger sizes, and economies of scale compared to fixed wing aircraft that airships died out a slow death.
I would agree that there are niche applications that could use airships much better than fixed wing aircraft or even helicopters could be used... but aircraft technology has improved substantially where even many of these niche applications are being filled by fixed-wing aircraft.
If there was money to be made by flying airships, there would be a great many airship companies today. I think there would have been some other companies who certainly would have tried before the 21st century... and there have been other previous attempts to make a commercial model for airship travel.
Also, it wasn't the Hindenburg that shut down the USS Akron. It was the Navy doing a hard analysis of the technology and considering other technologies to be much more effective. Also, nearly every airship of the era had problems and lost lives... it wasn't just the single incident.
Money in a bank also creates jobs; interest doesn't appear by magic. It is earned when the bank gives out loans as investments which could be used for anything from a start-up loan, a mortgage or a loan for an expanding company, all of which directly or indirectly create jobs.
Taking all 24 accidents and incidents, 697 of 1955 aboard were killed - no more than 36% of those aboard on average.That's just crazy. Statistically, if you drove 100 million miles during the period 1989-2004, you would have an 83% chance of dying. For the same period, if you flew 100 million miles, you would have a 2 percent chance of dying. Furthermore, from 1989 to 2004, the death expectancy for driving dropped about one third, but that for flying dropped to only about 2%. Flying is much safer now, and is getting even safer at a much faster rate than driving is getting safer.(2)
References:
(1) List of commercial aviation accidents and incidents by year
(2) Comparative death rate by year for driving vs flying
That's a great idea. Let's have you be in charge of what's useful and what's a waste, and tax people at extremely high rates so that money doesn't go into what's a waste. Rich people like the Wright Brothers should have been taxed into being "mddle class" with a respectable job too. What silliness to waste their time on a machine only rich people can afford. Wait a second. Maybe an even better alternative is to just tax you (and other volunteers) at a higher rate, since that's what you've chosen. Then nobody loses.
Assuming that you drive 24 hours a day in that 15 year period, that comes out to about 760 miles per hour. I think you're underestimating the chance of death a bit.
That's nonsensical. You use transportation to get somewhere. The distance to your destination is the same no matter what mode of transportation you use. (Minus things like having to follow rodes as opposed to being able to fly direct, but this doesn't make for a great change.) If a plane can go ten times faster than a car then you can spend ten times fewer hours inside the plane to accomplish the same travel, thus the proper measurement is per mile, not per time.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Actually, Mythbusters did a story on this myth. While there was thermite in the paint on the Hindenberg, it did not have a major effect on the disaster. The myth was busted.