...and let the smutty jokes commence!

Airship? Silicon valley? All we need is Christopher Walken.

Ah, the myth about hydrogen being the cause of a certain disaster...never put facts before a good story (or myth)...

...the bit I really liked is where they got the now classic, "it's an ideal thing to monitor the environment"...

...apparently you can get away with anything (except environmentally friendly anything with nuclear or atom in its name) if you state something like,"for environmental reasons..."

IN saying all that, I wouldn't mind a Zeppelin myself...beats queuing at rush hour!

"airship flight back home where it belongs."

Not Lakenhurst, New Jersey then where most US airship activity took place.

Let alone a mention of Friedrichshafen where it all begins.

Or Howden, Pulham (and later Cardington) where UK activities too place.

Mine's the one with the silk outer and rubber pockets.

But can we cross the Atlantic in Art Deco luxury?

"The craft is one of only three Zeppelins currently in operation in the world. It's also the first to touch down on US soil since the ill-fated Hindenburg crashed in 1937. Of course, Eureka is filled with helium, a considerably less "Oh, the humanity!" combustible gas than hydrogen.

Free Download - A Practical Guide To Disaster Recovery Planning"

Don't you just love these!

and welcome to Blimp My Ride.

Paris, she's seen some semi-rigid things in her time

How is that NASA thing different this I was lucky enough to have a flight in in over last Xmas operating out of Florida business airport for family and friends..

This comes with a built on TV !

http://bp0.blogger.com/_snzFGO0UiQA/R9nRH8GyF8I/AAAAAAAAAB8/Tave8EO7Sek/s1600-h/DSC_0028.JPG

and

http://bp0.blogger.com/_snzFGO0UiQA/R9nRH8GyF9I/AAAAAAAAACE/yvMDWqXhzxI/s1600-h/DSC_0064.JPG

Great fun :-)

Dave

I assume you're referring to the myth that the dope on the Hindenburg was made of thermite and it burned up because it's thermite and the hydrogen made no difference whatsoever?

Take a look at Mythbusters' Jan 10, 2007 episode.

Or did you mean Hangar Two?

Mines the one crumpled on the floor...

re: "Once the bag is punctured, the hydrogen is long gone."

Not quite; the Hindenburg was a rigid airship (you can see the metal frame collapsing in the newsreels of the disaster as it hit the deck) and the hydrogen was only at a slightly positive pressure, so unless it was punctured both at top and bottom, the hydrogen wouldn't go anywhere fast, unless it ignited at the air/gas interface then it would quickly burn the envelope and free more gas, which would burn the envelope and free more gas...etc. That is what we see on the newsreel.

The flammability of the envelope may have contributed to the fire, but other hydrogen filled airships (and ballons) also went up in flames, albeit less publicly, whereas I can't recall any helium filled aircraft doing the same.

What no one has pointed out yet, is that airships are useless in bad weather. With a top speed of 35mph, anything above a 36mph headwind will see it going backwards, and airships can't tack like a sail boat (no keel and a huge wind-catching side profile) I watched a Virgin Lightship try it once; every time it turned its nose slightly out of the wind it shot backwards pushing the tail downwards towards the ground - very dangerous. More airships have been lost through bad weather than fire.

Is it me or does the guy in the first photo on the second page have Yoda sat on his knee?

I had a fly in it when it was at Damyns Hall this summer. It's the coolest thing I've ever flown in, and pilot in command Kate Board is pretty cool too - can we have a picture of her please?

I don't think that Brian Miller put his point across very well, but the point remains: put your hydrogen inside a certified, non-flammable skin and you will be an awful lot safer than the Hindenburg was.

As with all gases, an explosion will only occur if it is well mixed with an oxidiser, or oxygen itself - you don't see much fuss about the tanks full of liquid hydrogen that are common to most space-rockets, do you?

The thing that really hacks me off is the way that people have been quoting the Hindenburg 'disaster' as the justification for ignoring airship technology for the last 70 years. Let's at least acknowledge that even with that (now completely obsolete) hydrogen/canvas technology, two thirds of the passengers survived, which is a d*mn sight better than most modern airliners can manage when they seriously prang on landing/meet an unexpected hillside/impact a skyscraper. Given that even a punctured helium/semi-rigid Zeppelin stands at least a chance of just gently losing pressure and coming to ground, which would you rather be in?

For a 200+ foot aircraft, that's piss-poor use of space I'd say!

For that much cash, I'd hope for a passenger compartment that was purpose built to give me a big field of view. Why are the seats facing forward? Why don't the windows go down to floor level? Why is the floor opaque?

I can understand all these things in a plane or bus, but not in a zeppelin.

Burns with a blue flame, the Hindenburg was orange. Proving that it wasn't the hydrogen that caused the fire.

As all the footage of the disaster was in black 'n' white this little bit of evidence was overlooked but all the newspapers described the fire as being orange.

Acherly, hydrogen burns with a non-luminous flame. For the non-cognoscenti, this means that the heat goes up, not out. I've actually witnessed this at (too) close hand. You can get burned on a hydrogen flame because by the time you feel it, you are in it. It is too dim to see in daylight, and gives off tiny amounts of radiant heat to the sides.

The newsreel footage of Hindenberg burning clearly show the luminous nature of the flame. Whatever is burning there, it most certainly isn't the hydrogen.

Of course, one could argue that although filling the Hindenburg with helium would not have prevented the fire itself (it wouldn't, the Mythbusters groundbreaking "experiments" notwithstanding) it might have acted in a fire suppressant mode to contain the disaster. This might be worth modelling to see what's what.

I visited the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen this year and I can highly recommend it.

I had no idea that the US even had airships like the USS Macon, which actually acted as an aircraft carrier, launching propellor-driven planes by dropping them out the bottom.

There's also a great big partial reconstruction of the Hindenburg which you can go inside. Very swish.

I actually only went there because I was going to Germany (and nearby Switzerland) and Friedrichshafen's tiny airport happens to be a Ryanair destination, but it was well worth a visit.