Travelling Light - the Airship

[negator]

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May 6, 1937: a ball of
fire und alles ist kaput

The word airship elicits a fixed reaction in almost everyone who hears it: “what about the Hindenburg?”. It’s as if, every time someone proposed travelling on a cruise ship, you were to ask, “but what about the Titanic?”.

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[Legzman]

Good ol hydrogen. Oh wait...that would help stabilize the climate if we replace gasoline with it. It's also safer. At least today it is not so much back in '37.

But what the hell do I know?

 

[Friday on my mind]

Originally the hindenburg was suppose to use Helium which is not flammable,but the US had a corner on it and had cut the germans off making them use hydrogen.



"The Hindenburg was originally intended to be filled with helium, a gas which is heavier than hydrogen but which is not flammable. Most of the world's supply of helium comes from underground fields in the United States, but the United States had imposed a military embargo on helium against Germany. Eckener expected this ban to be lifted and modified the design to have double gas cells (an inner hydrogen cell protected by an outer helium cell).[1] The ban remained, leading the Germans to modify the design of the airship to use only hydrogen as the lift gas, despite the fact that hydrogen, unlike helium, is extremely flammable.[2] It contained 200,000 m³ (7,000,000 ft³) of gas in 16 bags or cells, with a useful lift of 1.099 MN (247,100 pounds).

The Germans had extensive experience with hydrogen as a lifting gas. Hydrogen related fire accidents had never occurred on civilian Zeppelins, so the switch from helium to hydrogen did not cause much alarm. Hydrogen also gave the craft about 8% more lift capacity."


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[senob44]

I prefer Zeppoles to Zeppelins but interesting nonetheless.

 

[stainedblueyes]

I think it would be pretty pleasant to travel by Airship, and relaxing - given that they've solved the whole "ohmygodweregoingtoexplodeanddie" problem. Alas my latent love of Archery prohibits me from doing so...