A
irships. With that one word said, let
me just add this: if you’re still reading,
thank goodness.
It’s not that lighter-than-air craft aren’t
fascinating. They are, and there are some really crazy things
happening with them these days. It’s just that almost no
one knows that or seems to care. That apathy is born of
the fact that for 80-some-odd years, the world has had
little use for blimps.
But if everybody has been over blimps for so long, then
why are we seeing new companies and new ideas for new
kinds of airships popping up in the past few years? Don’t
these entrepreneurs know that there hasn’t been much
spark in the segment since the Hindenburg horrified
humanity when it went up in flames in Lakehurst, New
Jersey, back in 1937, claiming the lives of 36 people? That
worst-possible-case arrival signaled the end of commercial
airship operations. Not that they had much promise before
that hydrogen-fueled disaster. Airships were a doomed
species even before Lakehurst, with the advent of Douglas
airliners, among others, that would cut travel times to
theretofore impossibly short spans all while carrying
passenger loads factors higher than blimps ever could.
So today, is it possible there’s new life ahead for air-
ships? A few companies think so.FLOATING TERMS
Okay, before airship lovers go up in flames of anger by
my casual misuse of the terms, here are some definitions.
You’ve doubtless heard the terms “blimp” and “airship”
and “Zeppelin” and probably “dirigible,” too. But what’s
the difference? Are they four distinct kinds of things?
Happily, they are not. In short, they’re all airships.
(Phew. That was easy.) All airships are aerostats, which
are lighter-than-air craft that are flown by people. Hot
air balloons are aerostats, too. These days the govern-
ment uses the term “aerostat” to refer to large, tethered
balloons that are used for surveillance purposes at
the border.
A blimp is an airship that gets its shape from the skin
of the balloon itself. Whatever rigidity it does possess is
due to the pressure of the internal gas and the strength
of the envelope, which is what they call the balloon. They
also refer to the lifting compartments as gasbags. No lie.
In the case of a blimp, the entire airship is a gasbag.
Even though it will contain gasbags, a dirigible is notA new generation of airships is getting
floated. Is the lighter-than-air segment really
on the rise, or is it just a lot of hot air?
ABOVE: Each of Goodyear's three new airships will still be called the
Goodyear "Blimp" even though they're not blimps at all.LEFT: A young Charles Lindbergh (black suit) asking the pilot about the blimp he's set to
go flying aboard. With both radial engines running, it surely took some shouting.