The first modern airship, the Zeppelin LZ1 , took flight in — three years before the Wright Brothers made their famous flight. Due to their relative cost-effectiveness and longer range, airships were seen as the more attractive form of air travel in the early 20th century.
They also played a key role as military aircraft, and were used for bombings in the First World War. By the s, luxury airships were whisking well-to-do passengers across the Atlantic Ocean, and were considered a technological marvel.
But all that came crashing down with the infamous explosion that destroyed the Hindenburg on May 6, During a landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey, the hydrogen-filed craft exploded in a massive fireball. The cause of the fire is still unknown today. It seems likely that airships would have been phased out anyway due to improvements in aircraft technology that allowed for much shorter travel times — but the Hindenburg disaster ended the era of passenger airships virtually overnight.
The R, moored at Cardington, Bedfordshire, Photo by Wikimedia Commons Since then, the use of airships has been extremely limited, as technological advances have allowed aircraft and helicopters to dominate aviation. Though blimps played a useful surveillance role in the Second World War, airships today are mostly used for overhead photography at sports events, and as massive flying billboards.
Today, the Van Wagner group, an airship organisation, estimates that there are only 25 blimps currently operating around the world; there are even fewer zeppelins. But all this is about to change, if Igor Pasternak has his way. The COSH — Control of Static Heaviness — system works by rapidly compressing helium into storage tanks, making the airship heavier than air. While conventional airships take on air to descend, they must still dedicate most of the space in the helium envelope to actually storing the helium itself.
As with many other commercially nonviable products, airships later found a home in the U. There was a hope that the dirigibles, which are capable of taking off and staying aloft for prolonged periods of time, would be ideal for persistent aerial surveillance. The contract was axed a year later. In , it broke loose from its mooring and drifted haplessly through Pennsylvania , trailed by fighter jets, before crashing in a field. A similar program in Afghanistan, which became notorious among Kabul residents , saw even worse results.
The tethers that kept the Big Brother balloons in place were notorious for snaring helicopter blades—one incident killed five American and British service members. An aerial visualization of the Ocean Sky airship. The market for military airships and commercial blimps remained limited thanks to past failures, though not dead entirely. The cruise company OceanSky is forging ahead with plans to send a passenger airship to the Arctic , using a ship originally designed under the U.
In the vast expanses of the Canadian north, there has long been a need for reliable transportation. Many communities are only accessible by road when winter rolls around and the ground and lakes are solid enough to drive on, if they are accessible by road at all. That means basic goods need to be stockpiled when the weather is cold or flown in by cargo plane—never mind supplies to build long-term infrastructure.
Many of these remote communities are reliant on gas generators and are facing shortages of reliable housing stock. In , a junior mining company in Quebec inked an agreement with U.
That plan went belly-up when the minerals company went bankrupt, although Straightline is forging ahead with plans to offer commercial and tourism flights. The interior of the Ocean Sky airship. Stranded resources and communities are a policy concern in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia, and elsewhere. Flights are expensive and carbon dioxide-intensive, and they require airport infrastructure. Shipping is more viable as Arctic ice melts, but that often requires deep-water ports and can have damaging impacts on marine life.
The opportunity is also caveated with an array of risks and problems. There is no guarantee that the airships will even fly in the frigid north— Le Journal de Quebec reported that the airships will need a significant amount of water, which may be hard to come by amid Arctic temperatures.
China has plenty of Arctic ambitions itself—and vast distances to cover in its underpopulated west. In recent years, helium prices have skyrocketed as supply has dwindled. Far from just being used in party balloons and blimps, the gas is necessary for MRI scanners and rocket engines. The same principles apply to the airships. Zeppelins like the Hindenburg were the largest rigid airships ever built.
Amazingly, they still are. Size presents a challenge to the modern cargo rigid airship. This means that the cost of the envelope of the airship reduces tenfold. For the hypothetical rigid airship to be as effective as cargo boats are today, it would have to be over five times as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Beyond the logistics of building the thing, the docking of the airship would be a challenge due to limited control mechanisms, and strong winds could make it collapse.
But if these challenges could be overcome, the scientists say, a fleet of 1, rigid airship carriers "would be able to transport energy equivalent to 10 [percent] of current world electricity consumption. Type keyword s to search.
Today's Top Stories. Archive Photos Getty Images. Rigid airships were largely abandoned after the Hindenburg's crash and an increased military preference for planes. But they could make a comeback as cargo vessels.
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