https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
Apart from the 80% of the entries that are basically “Crashed during bad weather” - my personal highlights:
… breaks loose from its mooring during a storm and is blown over the English Channel; after sightings in Wales and Ireland and a brief touchdown in Belfast, the airship was blown out over the Atlantic Ocean and is never seen again.
Zeppelin LZ 8 Deutschland II (brand new) is caught by a wind gust while being walked out of its hangar and damaged beyond repair after it smashes on the roof of the hangar.
… the airship, weighed down with gold and burgundy paint, reached 600 feet altitude before beginning an unplanned right descending turn, making a “controlled descent” into a garbage dump, impaling the blimp on a pine tree, coming down just a quarter-mile from the site of the Hindenburg’s 1937 demise.
… suffers an intentional mid-air collision with a radio-controlled airplane.
Yes, those things are really hard to park.
lol, the gilded blimp crashing into a junkyard
No cigarettes
I fucking love Archer
I still haven’t seen the series-ending movie because I was so underwhelmed by the final season.
Let’s put a billion birthday balloons worth of MRI gas in a terminally slow aircraft and inexplicably fly it over sports stadiums.
Modern airship designs can go hundreds of km per hour.
With modern technology we also can contain fire into pockets.
This isn’t much different than criticising a plane because petrol is flammable.
Wait, what? I’m in my phone at work so searching sucks, can you link one of those fast airships?
There are other gasses to use.
And that don’t readily explode when exposed to an ignition source?
(I actually think hydrogen party balloons would be fun).
lol, I worked in one (dangerous) shop where a common prank would be to wait for someone to be in thier hood, upend a large styrofoam coffee cup from the break room on the edge of someone’s bench, fill it with aceteline from a torch and spark it.
I’ve seen that prank too. Feels like an old fabricators’ rite of passage. Also probably where a lot of cases of tinnitus originate.
Well, the Nazis were stupid and used hydrogen instead of helium. The Hindenburg, pride of Nazi Germany, was full of rich people when it blew up in New Jersey, so who really cares anyway?
Far from the only fuckup they made.
Yeah, but how were they to know the central reservation on the autobahns would need a barrier as well as earthworks?
The Nazis had to use hydrogen because that other gas was hoarded as a strategic reserve by another nation.
But still Nazis. So…
Anyway big flying things are cool. Still would be.
its just that planes are faster, cheaper to build, less of a hassle to land and take off…
It’s also worth noting that it wasn’t the hydrogen that caused the fire. The Hindenburg had an aluminium skin. It began having degradation issues, so they painted it. The paint was iron oxide based. Aluminium and iron oxide are the 2 main ingredients in thermite.
Analysis of the video shows that it was the skin burning off. It would have gone up almost as badly, even if filled with helium.
Thermite is known for being freaking hard to ignite, even torching it is not enough sometimes. So I doubt that had anything to do with the fire.
Not according to myth busters. Although some thermite reactions likely accured the blimp would have gone up without it
Well they weren’t totally stupid, they couldn’t get helium because the US restricted them from getting it as the largest supplier. The plan was originally to use helium, but they went with the second best option.
Helium is very finite and very leaky. If you want flying ships you need something else.
Big ass vacuum
A gigantic maid with a vacuum cleaner
And a big ass.
They should just get some guy to make more Helium. Lazy kids…
Hydrogen is awesome, for it is cheap. Just make it more expensive is not a good strategy.
they were abandoned because commercial airliners were faster, safer, more durable, and could carry more people.
Also hard to maneuver, hard to park, and not very good in even moderately bad weather.
…and they don’t fuck up our limited helium reserves en masse.
EDIT: they might fuck up other things, but it would be some serious waste, because there are much more important applications to our limited helium.
Hard to say that theyre really safer, when the primary safety incident everyone thinks of, occurred during the 1930s, a time whose airplanes certainly wouldnt have been as safe as modern ones either
We shouldn’t have made them from led.
There’s some research done on aerogel airships. There’s still hope
Oh that’s fucking cool.
Every 100 years, I guess. We gotta go through all the shit every 100 years.
what if it was made of helium though
that stuff doesn’t burn
Helium has problems of its own, sadly. Besides being a little bit less effective at actually lifting, it’s relatively scarce on Earth and it leaks even faster than hydrogen
I mean, we could be using the heavier neon, which is also a noble gas and lighter than air. But it’s almost as rare as helium, and you’d need significantly more of it to produce the same lift.
I believe we’re also already getting dangerously close to depleting our supply of helium, as well.
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As I understand it - with the disclaimer that I have no particular expertise or experience in the matter - it’s not quite as dire as that. Historically the USA accounted for basically the entire world’s production, and American reserves that are known and economical to access are getting within something like 50 years of running out. However, other countries have begun to produce much more substantially in recent years, and we probably do have enough to last a good while once the rest of world reserves are accounted for
However it is still functionally non-renewable and meaningfully finite, so we shouldn’t waste it
The moon has it.
Meaning we can mine it all there until we risk fucking with our tides or awaken SpaCe’thulu
That’s actually not a big deal for blimps. Blimps don’t lose a lot of helium, they only need to be serviced for if like once a year. When people say we have a helium crisis, they’re talking about high-purity helium for advanced medical work and advanced science.
Phew, so it’s only a crisis for important shit. Dodged a bullet there! :D
The thing we’re running out of?
Apparently aerogels, lighter than air solids, are being explored.
Which means we can do cool new form factors, too!
yeah I didn’t think of that
It’s a Noble gas that we can’t synthesize chemically and is light enough it just floats away forever when released. And it provides less lift than hydrogen.
Helium’s sole advantage is also why it’s about the least-renewable thing out there.
The Empire State Building was designed as a zeppelin docking station. Boarding/de-boarding and flight times are barely competitive with the modern subway. It was fun and novel, but quite impractical.
To be fair have many people still been trying to improve on the technology or are we still using some ancient blueprint.
Avation science has come a long way.
Zeppelins were used in 1910-1937. The helicopter was invented in 1939.
honestly, I bet we could probably make a hydrogen one reasonably safe, if we really wanted to. Sure, its flammable and all, but so is jet fuel, and we can throw giant tanks of that stuff into the air safely with enough engineering put into it.
Elsewhere in the thread I’ve seen mention of aerogels being explored!
Which is pretty cool.
Sure, its flammable and all, but so is jet fuel, and we can throw giant tanks of that stuff into the air safely with enough engineering put into it.
As long as we don’t paint the airship skin with it.
I do find it somewhat interesting that there is a sense with some that a hydrogen airship could never be safe enough to carry crew, or even exist unmanned, but at the same time, we can make rockets containing massive tanks of liquid hydrogen, right next to huge tanks of liquid oxygen, propelled by a massive continuous explosion, safe enough to put people in. Obviously the accepted risk for rockets is a bit higher, but still, its not like we dont know how hydrogen works, and what conditions it does and doesnt explode under.
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We had the pandemic, now likely a great depression, so why not Hindenburg?
Who needs Hindenburg when you have Boeing? Also Boeing: Bits Of Engine In Neighbours Garden
I don’t understand this meme. Everyone knows that modern airships use helium instead of hydrogen, right?
It was my understanding that these vessels were propelled by flatulence.
I don’t understand this meme either. Everyone knows that modern airships use farts instead of hydrogen, right?
I thought they used farts
I farted a thought.
I thought farts used them.
I thought they used farts
I thought they used farts
He is not H.
Dummy
We need more airship content
Whatever happened to the Goodyear Blimp? Feels like it’s been decades since I’ve seen it!
They’re actually having a 100 year celebration right now and all 3 of the US based Goodyear blimps are over Akron, Ohio this week.
It’s still around. It regularly flies over the Rose Bowl for big games.
