Comments on: The Zeppelin engineers knew what they were doing

By: Longarch

Longarch — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 02:37:56 +0000

Also, while passenger airships might be un-economical, stratospheric airships seem to have a bright future for cheap rural Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_satellite#High-altitude_platform_station

The nightmare scenario, of course, is that repressive police states could use airships for ultra-affordable surveillance.

By: Longarch

Longarch — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 02:28:28 +0000

“So no clockwork, brass and goggles in our airship future?”

If a country has a healthy manufacturing base, the workers and their families will have enough spare money to spend lavishly on cosplay. Japan and Taiwan are great places to see cosplayers, especially when their economies are enjoying relatively good times. (The COVID-panic has not been good for supply chain resilience, so currently East Asia’s consumers are not consuming enough cosplay luxuries.)

Assuming that the consumer society does not completely implode due to mismanagement, I suspect a skilled marketing visionary could convince the people who spend money on clockwork/brass/goggle costumes to spend enough money on airship tickets to make new zeppelin construction financially viable.

However, currently the capitalist oligarchs think that they can keep starving the consumers without doing any long-term damage to capitalist oligarchies. So we might have to fix late-stage capitalism before we can enjoy any kind of middle-class consumerism.

By: Altitude Zero

Altitude Zero — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 17:33:57 +0000

Dirigibles were very valuable in WWII for spotting U-Boats, accompanying slow-moving convoys; no convoy guarded by blimps ever lost a ship. They are one of those things that have some very specific niches where they are very useful, but outside of those, not so much…

By: Grasspunk

Grasspunk — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 14:53:24 +0000

So no clockwork, brass and goggles in our airship future?

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:36:30 +0000

We live near the 3C highway (SR 3) northeast of Columbus. That is the route the Goodyear dirigibles take to and fro Ohio Stadium, where tOSU plays.

It seems they more meander than fly. Very low (regulation minimum) and very slow, more like 20 mph (or less) than 80 mph. I can’t believe that speed. Shouldn’t it be 80 kmph?

The Goodyear makes a fine camera platform in calm weather. It’s real function is to advertise Goodyear. Fuji has one for the same purpose.

They are curiosities, not transportation modes.