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

1985 Sydney

[Harry8]

Failed Australian Entrepreneur Alan Bond had blimps used for joy rides in the 80s in Sydney. They were pretty noisy and slow. I think they got taken to the US and had goodyear painted on the side and hung out around sporting events as they were worth more as event billboards than joyride vessels. I wonder how this is different, IF it is different...

aerial photography

[ianare]

I would love to go on one of those flights with some nice photography equipment. You really couldn't ask for a better platform for aerial photography: slow, stable, and not too high. The fact that the city and the surrounding area are beautiful doesn't hurt either!
IF they actually build it (we've been hearing about the return of dirigibles to the US for years now) I would go for a ride next time I'm around San Fran.

The Hindenburg crash set airships back 50yrs...

[distantbody]

...Who knows if there's any significant air transport market for airships to fill in this day-and-age, but I thinks it's interesting to speculate whether fixed-wing aircraft would be the dominant air transport technology that it is today had the Hindenburg not gone down. OTOH maybe airships would have been killed of by fixed-wings regardless.

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Re:The Hindenburg crash set airships back 50yrs...

[vertinox]

Depends what happens to fuel costs.

In theory, an airship ability to move 1,000lbs of cargo is the same as carrying 10,000lbs of cargo due to fact its altitude is simply stabilized in the air by how much ballast and helium. Yes there is still the cost of the fueled into the momentum of the airship which is still offset by mass, headwinds, and of course aerodynamics.

Though the main advantage the airship has over the fixed wing is that the fixed wing has to use its engines to keep itself aloft where the airship could turn its engines off at any point and not risk falling out of the sky.

So it really depends on how much fuel costs for air travel is going to get in the near future. If something like peak oil got really bad, one solution for international shipping could to simply take an airship into the jet streams, turn off the engines, and say just drift until you are close to your destination and then turn the engines back on to get to your exact destination.

Of course that would make shipping things from Japan to California quite efficient, but shipping to California to Japan would take a bit longer using this method.

If we do find cheap alternative fuels for fixed winged aircraft I'm sure we'll stick with that, but otherwise airships might be more economically viable.