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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.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
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...
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
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 Zeppelin NT is purchased from "ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH" and the 4th they are building, see this link (german)
and want to flood the silicon valley to push the prices of computer chips.
... it has been reported that a farmer has modified his cessna cropduster with machine guns. Something about "German Invasion"...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
250 USD is a lot of money? I have a few British pennies in my pocket that should about cover that fair.
so instead of the gangsters in oakland shooting their guns in the air for fun, they'll have a target. and fourth of july will come early if one of em hits it!
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.
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...
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
...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.
==C:\WINDOWS\system32\lusrmgr.exe==
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.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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