This was nowhere near the only deadly airship disaster, nor was it the last, but that’s not really what ended airship travel. With the advances in airplanes by the end of World War II, lighter-than-air ships just couldn’t compete. Even postwar piston aircraft were cruising at more than 3 times the speed of most airships with range to make nonstop transatlantic crossings, and once the jet age really started to take hold in the ’50s it was all over. I mean, by the ’60s multiple countries had started supersonic passenger aircraft programs. Not a lot of success there, but still there were nowhere near enough customers to support commercial service on airships when faster, cheaper options existed.
Yup, no one is going to hop an airship when they can get somewhere in a fraction of the time. The only difference might be cost, but spinning up a zeppelin industry likely couldn’t compete in terms of ticket price compared to jets.
If they have a future it’ll be moving stuff, not people. If it’s faster than a container ship and can carry more than a plane then it could have a valuable niche.
There are a handful of Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airships flying around nowadays. If you want to see a landing and start, I recorded this a few years ago.
The problem is weight. The heavier the load the bigger the gas bag needs to be to carry that load. The whole thing very quickly gets out of proportion and considering they were using hydrogen the heavier the load the riskier it was.
Modern airships are helium-based, but helium is way too expensive to ever be commercially viable on a large scale.
You don’t use up the hydrogen in operation, so you don’t need to create it on the vehicle. Attempting to do so would just add weight and probably wouldn’t work anyway as I suspect the amount of energy you would require to convert water into hydrogen is a lot more than a few solar panels could ever provide.
The issue is hydrogen is just inherently dangerous. Compounded by the fact that no one really cares anyway because airships don’t have a purpose to exist in the modern world outside of a very few niche scenarios.
Hindenburg only carried 70 passengers at its largest configuration, and it could only carry that many because they were forced to use hydrogen as the lifting gas instead of helium because of American export restrictions. Hydrogen carries more but is significantly more dangerous, and likely would not be used in any modern aircraft because of safety reasons. Perhaps modern advances in lighter materials and other weight saving methods could help, but even 100 paying passengers doesn’t seem commercially viable.
This was nowhere near the only deadly airship disaster, nor was it the last, but that’s not really what ended airship travel. With the advances in airplanes by the end of World War II, lighter-than-air ships just couldn’t compete. Even postwar piston aircraft were cruising at more than 3 times the speed of most airships with range to make nonstop transatlantic crossings, and once the jet age really started to take hold in the ’50s it was all over. I mean, by the ’60s multiple countries had started supersonic passenger aircraft programs. Not a lot of success there, but still there were nowhere near enough customers to support commercial service on airships when faster, cheaper options existed.
Yup, no one is going to hop an airship when they can get somewhere in a fraction of the time. The only difference might be cost, but spinning up a zeppelin industry likely couldn’t compete in terms of ticket price compared to jets.
If they have a future it’ll be moving stuff, not people. If it’s faster than a container ship and can carry more than a plane then it could have a valuable niche.
That’s actually a fantastic idea, I hadn’t thought of that
There are a handful of Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airships flying around nowadays. If you want to see a landing and start, I recorded this a few years ago.
What airships need to do is become like cruise ships. Put an amusement park and a casino up there, I’m sure nothing bad will happen.
The problem is weight. The heavier the load the bigger the gas bag needs to be to carry that load. The whole thing very quickly gets out of proportion and considering they were using hydrogen the heavier the load the riskier it was.
Modern airships are helium-based, but helium is way too expensive to ever be commercially viable on a large scale.
Just go back to using hydrogen. It’ll be a blast!
Some solar panels on top of the balloon, nowadays you can even create your H on the go from the H2O in the air!
You don’t use up the hydrogen in operation, so you don’t need to create it on the vehicle. Attempting to do so would just add weight and probably wouldn’t work anyway as I suspect the amount of energy you would require to convert water into hydrogen is a lot more than a few solar panels could ever provide.
The issue is hydrogen is just inherently dangerous. Compounded by the fact that no one really cares anyway because airships don’t have a purpose to exist in the modern world outside of a very few niche scenarios.
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You’d think they would have cruise line zeppelins.
Hindenburg only carried 70 passengers at its largest configuration, and it could only carry that many because they were forced to use hydrogen as the lifting gas instead of helium because of American export restrictions. Hydrogen carries more but is significantly more dangerous, and likely would not be used in any modern aircraft because of safety reasons. Perhaps modern advances in lighter materials and other weight saving methods could help, but even 100 paying passengers doesn’t seem commercially viable.