Between Sea Vessels and Cargo Planes

Friday, February 26th, 2010

The US Navy is mulling the return of airships, because they fit a niche within the wide gap between sea vessels and cargo planes:

But the time premium you pay for airship travel buys you several advantages: airships are highly fuel-efficient for a ton-mile; as long as they avoid storms, they endure few stresses in flight, affording them extremely long service lives; they can be scaled up to a very, very large size at low cost compared to airplanes.

Hat tip to John Noonan — who dismisses the whole idea:

Led Zepplin will make a comeback before military zepplins ever do.

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