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.

Bang?

[mrbluze (1034940)]

Rides will cost from $250 to $500 per person. Esther Dyson is one of the investors.

Or, for a hydrogen filled Zeppelin, they are offering the discounted, insurance free rate of $50 per person, one way.

Re:Bang?

[mrbluze (1034940)]

Or, for a hydrogen filled Zeppelin, they are offering the discounted, insurance free rate of $50 per person, one way.

Any person having a bad outcome in the said NT Zeppelin will be met with the BSOD (Blue Sky of Death).

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[witherstaff (713820)]

Just in time for the next Indiana Jones movie. I wonder what tickets cost if you leave the Zeppelin via a bi-wing plane.

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[Random BedHead Ed (602081)]

"No tickets." Anyway, it's a moot point because that feature's being delayed until Zeppelin NT 5.0, which I hear may be renamed Zeppelin 2010.

Re:Bang?

[h4rm0ny (722443)]

"Passengers will PLEASE observe the no smoking sign"

Re:Bang?

[Teancum (67324)]

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.

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[RubberDuckie (53329)]

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.

1985 Sydney

[Harry8 (664596)]

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...

Re:1985 Sydney

[BeeRockxs (782462)]

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.

Re:1985 Sydney

[steevc (54110)]

I have memories of a Goodyear airship flying over my school back in the early 70s.

Airship Industries operated from the old Cardington Airship hangers in the 80s. They did trips over London

http://www.aht.ndirect.co.uk/airships/ss500/index.html [ndirect.co.uk]

One morning I drove past to see one spread over the airfield after they could not get it in before a storm.

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[jd (1658)]

Talking of Cardington, the R100 and R101 used a superior design to the Zepplins. The R101's chief problem was corner-cutting and beaurocracy, which led to the infamous crash. Mind you, 6 survived, which isn't bad going for plunging to the ground from a few thousand feet, having a hydrogen gas bag explode and then having a largely aluminium frame ignite. More would have survived if better materials for the frame had existed - witnesses reported that most had survived the crash landing and died in the subsequ

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[Deadstick (535032)]

Goodyear has been operating blimps since 1925 for aerial advertising and filming. The three operating in the States were all built by Goodyear. There are four overseas, including one in Australia that was used to film the Sydney Olympics. That one might have been purchased locally, but I doubt it; Goodyear is quite proud of the blimps it's been making all these years.

Goodyear has never made a serious business of selling blimp rides, although lease arrangements in certain venues sometimes force them to offe

Re:1985 Sydney

[Dr. Zim (21278)]

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.

aerial photography

[ianare (1132971)]

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.

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[wesborgmandvm (893569)]

slow, stable, and not too high.

I rode "Bud One" a 15+ years ago. It is slow and we stayed low but I would not describe it as stable. It was summer time in Central Florida and while there was no real wind, the air ship pitched constantly due to up currents from sun heated roads and down currents over ponds and lakes.

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[jeti (105266)]

The Zeppelin NT is not new. The first one was completed in 1997. Three of these Zeppelins exist and they've transported over 50.000 passengers. The only thing new is that they plan to build one in the US. It is normally built in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

Purchased, not build.

[H.Dersch (901499)]

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

Good, if your name is Zorin...

[boombasticman (1232962)]

and want to flood the silicon valley to push the prices of computer chips.

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[sticks_us (150624)]

That was truly a righteous remark, and worthy of some mod points!

And In other News...

[AndGodSed (968378)]

... it has been reported that a farmer has modified his cessna cropduster with machine guns. Something about "German Invasion"...

oh thats smart

[Nate Fox (1271)]

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!

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[iamdrscience (541136)]

The obvious remedy to this would be to make the lights of the blimp read "Ice Cube's a pimp".

Re:oh thats smart

[Deadstick (535032)]

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

What about the impending helium shortage?

[ThreeGigs (239452)]

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

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 (21278)]

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.

The Hindenburg crash set airships back 50yrs...

[distantbody (852269)]

...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==

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

[vertinox (846076)]

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.

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[Teancum (67324)]

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

The Hindenburg crash set airships back? Nope.

[Hasai (131313)]

What really killed the airships wasn't the Hindenburg, though that certainly didn't help. It was the weather.

Airships have a HUGE sail (amount of surface the wind can push against) compared to their weight, and that puts them at the mercy of any sort of significant convective weather. Couple that with the pathetic state of weather forecasting during that period, and you have disasters like those that occurred to the U.S.S. Macon and the U.S.S. Akron. So, launching one of these ships in anything but ridiculo

Re:

[.orvp (208389)]

They are rich, they are powerful, they are once again literally over us.

I for one welcome our new recreating/floating overlords

Re:More Annoying Money Wasters for Rich People

[neumayr (819083)]

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.

Re:More Annoying Money Wasters for Rich People

[JaredOfEuropa (526365)]

They take rich people's money, which would otherwise be locked down in someone's personal possession, i.e. not in the economy.

Not really, the savings you and your fellow rich men have in the bank are being put to good use, e.g the money is on loan at interest to others, or reinvested. Or perhaps the money appears to be locked down in equity, in which case it has already left the owner's hands in exchange for that equity. If you'd keep your savings in an old sock, then it would truly be locked down.

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).

Re:More Annoying Money Wasters for Rich People

[Jesus_666 (702802)]

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.

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[vijayiyer (728590)]

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 nob

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[Fieryphoenix (1161565)]

That's kind of the point... the rich person's money IS in the hands of a smallish company providing a service, which owes the bank, which owes the depositor. Money can be like electrical current, what's most important about it to the economy is not how much there is, but how quickly it cycles through different users.

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[PenguSven (988769)]

Does anyone else get as tired as I do of hearing about time and money wasting recreation for the wealthy? How can anyone really care about this who doesn't already have a house in Malibu?

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.

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[by Anonymous Coward]

250 USD is a lot of money? I have a few British pennies in my pocket that should about cover that fair.

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[h4rm0ny (722443)]

Zeppelins are great. We should really be using them for more than simple tourism. Their lifting capacity is much greater than an aeroplane and their cost much lower. Slower of course, but faster than a ship, I think. Next time I come to the US, I'd be more than happy to take two or three days on the journey in the comfortable, ship-like capacity of a zeppelin.

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[Teancum (67324)]

There are a great many engineering problems that are associated with airships that have made it a technology that is difficult to work with compared to a wide-bodied fixed wing airplane like a 747 or A380.

Problems that need to be considered is having to fly in less than ideal weather, engines powerful enough to push through a strong headwind, and being able to handle the airship both at departure and at arrival. Airships simply can't even compete against large airplanes in terms of these basic handling req

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[Cheerio Boy (82178)]

Okay...

1) No technology is "proven" out of the box.

2) All technology that is being given attention in any form improves over time.

3) Payroll initially comes from the investors then from customers just like any other business.

4) The money spent on hiring all those people GOES BACK INTO THE ECONOMY.

So what you end up with is what is basically a young technology that will improve over time and stimulates the economy.

You gotta start somewhere my friend...

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[Teancum (67324)]

A 747 does have a 1930's comparator: The DC-3

That was the "state of the art" at the time for heavier than air vehicle. And a pretty good design all things considered (I've even flown in one on a regular commercial passenger flight).

The point I was trying to make, however, was that bringing this into the 21st century that perhaps some refinements could be made to the handling system that wouldn't necessarily require so many people... especially if you could build some automated systems that would adjust ba

Wasters for Rich People: low hanging fruit

[mysticgoat (582871)]

Whether parent post a troll be, matters not. Reply I shall</yodavoice>, as these points have yet to be addressed:

Dirigibles made with today's technology are an interesting concept, and could become an important part of the infrastructure in a few short years.

Dirigibles could provide manned, stratospheric bases that could replace cell phone towers and fiber optic cables (think point to point laser links operating above cloud cover over hundreds of miles). Such bases would be excellent command/contr

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[Josef Meixner (1020161)]

It didn't in the last 11 years, it seems not everything bearing the name "NT" is doomed from the start. Besides, Windows NT wasn't bad either. The first flight of NT 07 was in September of '97 and there was no serious accident yet.

Re:There was a Hardy Boys about this

[meringuoid (568297)]

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.

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[Registered Coward v2 (447531)]

But the average survival rate of a plane-crash is ZERO - and the amount of people inside are in the hundreds. There were 3 major air crashes last year !

Actually, the survival rate for commercial aviation crashes is around 24% for this decade. Last year alone, for example, in the April 15th crash in the Congo almost all of the passengers survived; as did all of the passengers on the BA 777 that had an unplanned early impact with the ground at Heathrow.

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[Teancum (67324)]

I think you have your automotive accident statistics way off... as are your airplane statistics in terms of the number of accidents.

Three whole major air crashes involving commercial passenger travel? That is it? Seriously? In other words, it is "news" when a major crash occurs precisely because it is such a rare occurrence. Automotive crashes might make local press coverage if some famous celebrity or politician died, or perhaps on the morning traffic report when it shuts down a major arterial road...

Re:There was a Hardy Boys about this

[fnj (64210)]

There were 3 major air crashes last year !

Three major air crashes is probably about a thousand deaths.

I don't know what your definition of "major" air crash is, but there were 24 accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft worldwide in 2007. Three of these resulting in the loss of 100 or more lives, and one more nearly so. The total loss in the three accidents was 403 out of 403 on board(1).

Taking all 24 accidents and incidents, 697 of 1955 aboard were killed - no more than 36% of those aboard on average.

If we can cure the pedestrian-death problem - cars would be close to equaling planes right now.

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 [wikipedia.org]

(2) Comparative death rate by year for driving vs flying [airlines.org]

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[Sibko (1036168)]

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%.

How about, instead of comparing the two in distance traveled, we compare them in time. A plane might take 8 hours to go from Vancouver to Toronto. How long do you think it takes a car to travel that same distance. To travel 100 million miles in a car... I don't think it's even possible to do that within someone's lifetime, so you could theoretically say it has a 100% fatality rate. So here's a question: Which is safer, flying for 5000 hours, or driving for 5000 hours? I personally think flying is safer s

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[meringuoid (568297)]

You probably wouldn't have a passenger dirigible over the atlantic as the time and associated costs (like food) wouldn't be worth it - so Jumbos would do that, but it doesn't make ANY sense to fly a jet from L.A. to New York - THAT trip would be much more sensibly done in a dirigible, even if it did take a few hours longer.

LA to New York is actually a longer flight than New York to London. America's a big place.

I actually think the Hindenburg accident would have been survivable for the airship industry.

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[vertinox (846076)]

What would interest me far more would be an attempt to make hydrogen airships once more. It is like any technology involving large amounts of energy, there are dangers but they only apply if you don't design your machine properly.

An unmanned automated airship would be the best candidate for such a thing. As long as it doesn't crash on anyone, if it were to burn up the only thing lost would be it and the cargo.

I'm curious of you could get enough solar cells light enough to wrap it in it so that it could powe