airship cruise ship

• GTA 5 Cheats
• What is Discord?
• Find a Lost Phone
• Upcoming Movies
• Nintendo Switch 2
• Best YouTube TV Alternatives
• How to Recall an Email in Outlook
• Emerging Tech

The airship is making a futuristic, luxury comeback

Picture it: Dancing the night away with cocktails in hand, fresh air breezing over your skin as you step out onto a quiet balcony. Below, lights from small towns dot Earth’s darkened landscape as you pass overhead, the moon reflected in an inky lake.

Back to the future

Airships are making a cargo-first comeback, what will airship travel look like, the challenges to airship travel.

This is how air travel once was aboard passenger airships — and how it could be again, if airships continue on the promising path they’ve been sailing the past decade.

Like other new technology, passenger airship voyages won’t be cheap at first. It’s a cool $65K to secure a cabin-for-two aboard OceanSky Cruises’ maiden voyage to the North Pole , set for 2023-2024.

But there’s a market for adventure-seeking passengers who are looking for a sustainable and eco-friendly way to travel, said Carl-Oscar Lawaczeck, OceanSky Cruises’ CEO.

• Inside the MIT project that’s making Inception-style dream manipulation possible
• How the space industry is making space for women
• Scientists may have figured out how to make future beer even greater

“They are the ones who want to have the bragging rights of doing something first before anyone else,” Lawaczeck told Digital Trends.

Airships predated airplanes by a few decades; the first airship successfully took to the skies in France in 1852. After years of use in war as reconnaissance and bombing tools, an airship made the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1919, nearly a decade before Charles Lindburgh flew across in 1928.

1928 was also the first year that airship passenger flight began, and it was popular enough that when the Empire State Building was completed in 1931 it included an airship mast. Airships could carry more passengers than planes, and were far more comfortable, with dining rooms, observation decks, and private cabins, more like a cruise ship (but faster). By the mid 1930s there were regular flights from Germany to Brazil, and by 1936 a full season of flights between Germany and New Jersey further legitimized airship travel.

In 1937, the Hindenburg disaster, which was filmed and distributed via newsreels, cooled the public trust of airships at the same time plane flight was becoming more accessible.

Airships today aren’t the same as blimps but they are all dirigibles, meaning they’re all powered and steerable.

Some airships have rigid structures, semi-rigid structures or no internal structure (that’s a blimp) and they can use either hydrogen or helium for lift. Both elements are lighter than air, requiring no energy to rise up into the sky—though some kind of fuel is needed to move horizontally. This can be electric power from renewable energy, so carbon-free transport is possible.

The free vertical lift via lighter-than-air gases makes airships much more efficient than planes, which need fossil fuel for lift and acceleration. Helium is currently the preferred lifting agent as hydrogen can be flammable, though a lot less likely to explode—the issue in the Hindenburg disaster 100 years ago—considering new technology and materials. Once an airship is filled with helium or hydrogen, it doesn’t need “refueling”—the same volume of gas can be used for multiple journeys.

The airship revival that’s already well underway has thus far focused on cargo. This makes sense considering many companies and governments are looking to reduce carbon, while still transporting goods globally.

“We know that carbon taxes will be increasing and the jets are extremely polluting,” said Barry Prentice, President of Canada-based Buoyant Aircraft Systems International , an airship company. “Hence the cost advantage of airships should increase,”

Airships are about five times slower than planes, but most internationally shipped goods don’t need to be transported overnight in a fast, carbon-spewing plane to languish in a warehouse. That’s just a waste of fossil fuels, Prentice told Digital Trends. In fact, much of the world’s cargo already travels slowly on ocean-going shipping vessels.

Airships have other huge advantages for cargo: They can also take loads that are outside container-size dimensions, and they aren’t limited to the same busy, often-backed-up ports that ships are.

They can take off and land from roadless, runway-less locations such as a beach, field, or even ice. That creates a huge advantage for delivering vital equipment to remote or hard-to-reach areas, Prentice said.

That makes airships ideal for transporting large earth-moving equipment, water, and bulky supplies to an area that’s experienced a natural disaster when roads are underwater or destroyed. Prentice wants to see airships used to transport pre-built structures for schools and housing to less-accessible places, like areas of northern Canada not connected by roads.

Some of these advantages for cargo may also make airships exciting from a traveler’s perspective.

Travelers who aren’t dependent on airports or ports could go to a variety of new, far-flung destinations airship advocates believe. Islands with little or no infrastructure could be easily accessed, deserts and other forbidding-but-beautiful landscapes could be seen up close in comfort, and features like dunes and canyons viewed from new perspectives.

“When we provide a transportation mode that gives access to untouched nature, we have to do that with responsibility and respect”

“Flying above the Amazonian forest canopy could also be a great experience to observe the wildlife with a very limited disturbance,” said Pierre-Yves Fouillen, marketing manager of French airship company Flying Whales.

If you’re worried about the potential impact of airship tourism on these places, OceanSky Cruises’ Lawaczeck is way ahead of you. Having to build roads to access remote destinations can be devastating to the local ecosystem. Airships would remove the need for such invasive construction.

“When we provide a transportation mode that gives access to untouched nature, we have to do that with responsibility and respect,” he said.

The gondola hangs underneath an airship’s helium-filled balloon and comprises cargo or passenger space. It can be designed as a huge open hold for large earthmoving equipment or divided up into passenger spaces, so its totally customizable.

Since airships move and land slower, at 20 knots compared to planes’ 100 knots, airship designers don’t have to design to withstand 40 Gs—just 4Gs. “Everything is lighter and cheaper and easier and that gives a lot of possibilities. So you can do a lot more than an airplane,” says Lawaczeck.

Ocean Sky Cruises is eschewing the “gold and leather” look for something that nods to aviation history. ”The possibilities are amazing when you compare airships with planes—they’re non pressurized because you fly low which means you can make the big windows, put in glass floors, and more,” says Lawaczeck.

Like a gorgeous dining room with changing views, an observation area with information about the animal herds you’re flying over, or even a dance floor, a cocktail bar, and a cozy bed to fall into at the end of the night.

Like all new tech, airship travel will at first be expensive and exclusive. So like the first space tourists, the first passenger airship cruisers will do it for the unique experience and bragging rights.

Bridging the gap between commercialization and tech development to help make airship travel a reality is part of what OceanSky aims to do, Lawaczeck said.

Because of their carrying capacity, the next airship travelers after the very wealthy could be groups. Conferences, scientific expeditions, educational organizations, and other groups might find airships convenient — they can both bring needed equipment with them and utilize time flying for work or education. Eventually, airship experts agree that passenger service will be more affordable.

Long-term, airship travel will be cheaper than plane travel. While the new tech makes them expensive to build now, airships are fundamentally simpler machines than planes. Once scaled, they’ll be cheaper and easier to build and maintain. “The complexity of an airship is much lower. An airplane has landing gear that has to move in and out during flight, which puts an extreme amount of wear and tear and stress on the hull and landing gear, so there’s three redundant hydraulic systems,” says Lawaczeck. There are similar safety systems for wings and the other airplane gear on planes in order to take off, land, and fly safely.

Simpler is cheaper. Further driving costs down, airships will be able to carry much larger loads than planes—think 1,000 passengers (with plenty of room for the stuff they want to take along, too). Or more: “We don’t know the upper limits on airship size,” Prentice says. He says that in the past the German Zeppelins could lift about 70 megatons (MT). “With today’s materials and engineering, we could be much larger, certainly something in the 250 MT range seems possible.”

Not only will airships outcompete jet travel, they’ll do it with far fewer CO2 emissions. “I know that [airships] will be a mass-market product at some point,” says Lawaczeck.

All that stands in the way at this point is flight regulations. In the U.S. the FAA makes the rules for airship travel, including certification of parts, maintenance requirements, and operation and flight rules. Bob Boyd, the program manager for Lockheed Martin’s hybrid airships program says they’ve been working with the FAA on rules for cargo flights and predicts in another 2-3 years those will be ironed out. Lockheed is already taking orders.

In 1929, the Graf Zeppelin’s captain had to admonish his too-loud, hard-partying passengers as they glided over Siberia. It’s very possible that by 2029 some of us could be raging in the skies once again.

Editors' Recommendations

• The future of making stuff: Inside the evolution of 3D printing with Formlabs
• 3D printing lets hospitals make ventilator substitutes with common equipment
• Get off the sidewalk! Lime’s new scooter aims to make you ride on the road
• Make a wish upon a star: Here’s how to watch this week’s Orionid meteor shower
• Zeppelins could make a comeback with this solar-powered airship cargo mover

There are plenty of big questions that need to be answered as humankind prepares for potential future trips to Mars. What kind of rocket do we use to get there and back? Could the Martian surface be made to house life? Will it be a private mission from a company like SpaceX or a publicly funded one like the former Apollo missions? How do we make sure that astronauts and potential Mars colonists have ample supplies of macaroni and cheese?

One of these four space-age conundrums is currently being addressed by scientists at Washington State University. And (spoiler) it’s not any of the first three questions. What the Washington State scientists have developed is a method for tripling the shelf life of ready-to-eat packaged mac and cheese -- with the goal of potential space travel consumption as one of their driving factors.

Don’t go into space; it’ll wreak havoc on your gut. At least, that is one possible takeaway from a piece of research coming out of Northwestern University, where investigators have been exploring the impact of spaceflight on the gut microbiome, the communities of microorganisms found in the gastrointestinal tract.

“We analyzed mouse fecal samples obtained from NASA's Biospecimen Sharing Program," Martha Vitaterna, research professor in Northwestern’s Department of Neurobiology, told Digital Trends. "These were from the Rodent Research 1 (RR-1) mission, flown in 2014. DNA was extracted from the samples, and bacterial genes were sequenced from the DNA in order to identify what bacterial species were present and their relative abundances.”

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the sun. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

The Parker Solar Probe, launched last year, has completed its second orbit around the sun.

Simple Flying

Cruise ships of the air: how long did airships take to cross the atlantic.

Nowadays, avgeeks worldwide are enchanted by the majesty of larger aircraft such as the Boeing 747, Airbus A380, and Antonov An-225. This fascination is far from a recent phenomenon. Before commercial air travel on fixed-wing aircraft became mainstream, airships were also an option for those who could afford this very exclusive form of travel. These enormous aircraft even made transatlantic flights, but how did long such journeys take?

The age of the airship

In the early 20th-century, the skies were not dominated by the conventional fixed-wing aircraft that we know today, but rather by airships . Also known as 'dirigible balloons', these made use of either hydrogen or helium to achieve lighter-than-air flight. These gases were chosen due to their high lifting capacities. Helium had the advantage over hydrogen of not being flammable, although this gas was not so easily available at the time.

Transatlantic operations

As airship technology experienced further developments, transatlantic flight became a reality. The first commercial service flew from Friedrichshafen, Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1928, operated by the LZ129 'Graf Zeppelin.' This departed on October 11th, and arrived just four days later. This represented an advantage in terms of speed over contemporary ocean liners. According to Airships.net , these would typically require between five and ten days to make a transatlantic crossing.

In August 1936, the German flagship LZ 129 'Hindenburg' made the crossing from Lakehurst to Frankfurt in as little as 43 hours. This particular airship was the world's largest by envelope volume when it entered commercial transatlantic service in 1936. The 200,000 cubic meter aircraft offered passengers both comfort and speed, cruising at 70mph / 113km/h with a maximum speed of 85mph / 137km/h.

The BBC describes the 'Hindenburg' as having been like "a hotel in the sky." Its 50 passengers were accommodated in 25 twin-berth cabins, and they also had access to a restaurant, lounge, and cocktail bar. However, such luxury and speed came at a cost, with tickets in the mid-1930s costing between $400 and $450. This is the equivalent of over $8,000 today , and was also between three and five times as expensive as traveling on a contemporary ocean liner.

The end of an era

The decline of airships was brought about by a number of catastrophes in the 1930s. In 1930, the British airship R101 crashed during its maiden overseas voyage in France, killing 48 of its 54 occupants. This disaster spelled the end of British airship development, and further disasters were to follow.

In 1933 and 1935, two American airborne aircraft carriers ('USS Akron' and 'USS Macon' respectively) crashed in stormy conditions. The former of these saw 73 fatalities, but perhaps the most infamous airship accident is that of the German LZ129 'Hindenburg,' which caught fire while landing in New Jersey following a transatlantic voyage.

36 passengers and crew perished in the disaster, which shattered public confidence in airships as a means of travel. The LZ127 'Graf Zeppelin' made the final international airship flight a day later, returning safely to Germany from Brazil. The golden age of lighter-than-air flight was over.

What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comment section.

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

SAIL THE SKY

Airyacht : the sky’s cruise ship , experience life in the sky, the best place to admire unreachable perspectives on our planet., be relieved to enjoy while preserving earth from footprints and emissions..

 Reconnect to the planet

AirYacht is an invitation to rediscover the most beautiful sites on the planet with almost zero footprint. The extraordinary navigation, floating above the earth, everywhere!

It is no longer a desire, but a reality.

AirYacht has achieved the technological feat of creating a flying cruise airship, with more than 750 sqm of living space thanks to a 200m long airship.

Enjoying and preserving

Airship cruises will open new destinations, without affecting the visited places : No road, no airport, no degradations…

The chance to reach and enjoy without damaging the nature!

Length : 200 m

Height : 50 m

Speed : 0 to 50 kts

Range & autonomy : adaptable with set-up and speed

A new space of freedom on Earth

Enjoying fantastic views in complete serenity, landing in previously unimagined places.

Take time to reconnect with loved ones, with senses, with nature. AirYacht.

Housing : 750 m2

From 10 to 40 passengers

Set-up customizable according the airship cruise operator requirements.

• Trend Reports
• Newsletters

OceanSky Cruises’ airship hotel will fly to the North Pole

From 2024, swedish company oceansky cruises will fly elite passengers in a sustainable, floating five-star hotel that’s lighter than air. rose dykins reports.

In two years’ time, air travel pioneer OceanSky Cruises will launch expeditions from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, to the North Pole in its next-generation airship.

As the cabin isn’t pressurised, the on-board experience is quiet, with with pleasant quality of air. The airship also moves so slowly and smoothly, that OceanSky Cruises says no seatbelts are needed on board.

He adds: “Roald Amundsen flew from Svalbard and over the North Pole in 1926 with the airship ‘Norge’. Now we are doing the same expedition, but we will also land on the North Pole. The passengers will enjoy the Arctic nature in serenity and comfort in a hyper-efficient modern flying vehicle. They will be pioneering a new way to travel, flying for sustainable skies.”

Making it possible to fly continuously for days without needing supporting infrastructure, airships present a compelling proposition for high-end adventures, and accessing remote corners in the world with a minimal environmental impact.

Lawaczeck says: “[Airships] are the most efficient and clean aerial vehicles and they give us the freedom to access remote locations – wilderness, untouched places – without a footprint.”

• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)

• Motorcycles
• Car of the Month
• Destinations
• Men’s Fashion
• Watch Collector
• Art & Collectibles
• Vacation Homes
• Celebrity Homes
• New Construction
• Home Design
• Electronics
• Fine Dining
• Costa Palmas
• L’Atelier
• Les Marquables de Martell
• Reynolds Lake Oconee
• Scott Dunn Travel
• Wilson Audio
• 672 Wine Club
• Sports & Leisure
• Health & Wellness
• Best of the Best
• The Ultimate Gift Guide

Forget Ocean Liners: These 7 Luxe Air Cruises Will Take You Around the World in Record Time

Converted airliners with luxurious seating, gourmet cuisine, and open lounges are becoming the preferred means of transport for multi-week, global travel. their biggest attraction: time savings., jaclyn trop, jaclyn trop's most recent stories.

• Inside the Race to Launch a New Space Station
• This Flying Car Just Wowed the Detroit Auto Show. It Could Be in the Skies by 2025.
• Boom’s Supersonic Jet Could Take Off by the End of This Year, CEO Says
• Share This Article

You don’t need to own a private jet to vacation in one.

Related Stories

• Chevy’s New Corvette Could Be Its Most Powerful Yet
• One of Jay Leno’s Favorite Ferrari Mechanics Was Just Arrested for Theft and Fraud
• 20 Fascinating Facts About the Iconic Ferrari F40

By flying in small groups, say the organizers, guests dramatically cut the costs of private flight but enjoy similar perks of enhanced service and cuisine. These cruises are often connected to five-star hotels, have their own doctors and private chefs, and sometimes include private limousines and drivers for each couple or family—so if the airplane feels crowded, an escape is available on landing.

The trips use midsized business jets for regional travel or, for traversing time zones, “bizliners.” These are converted commercial jets with luxe interiors that feature a smaller number of seats (often recliners for sleeping) as well as open areas, a serious galley and larger bathrooms.

The Four Seasons Private Jet, for instance, is an Airbus A321 with just 48 seats to accommodate roughly a quarter of the passengers of the A321’s commercial configuration. The aircraft travels with an executive chef, doctor, a Four Seasons concierge, a journey manager, and an assistant journey manager. The jet also has a lounge.

The itinerary includes stargazing in Costa Rica with Costa Rican astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz, visiting the world’s largest waterfall system at Argentina’s Iguazú National Park, and taking a four-night cruise to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard a luxurious polar ship. There will also be a cocktail party at Machu Picchu and a private concert by the Bogotá Philharmonic, among other insider-access events.

Not everyone can clear three weeks to join a standard tour. For the time-strapped, the brand is debuting more family-friendly programs for 2024 and 2025 that cover more ground in less time.

Its African Wonders tour takes travelers across a wide swath of geography in 13 days, starting in Athens with a visit to the Parthenon, before heading south through the African continent to see Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza, Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, and attractions in Rwanda, Mauritius, Zambia, and South Africa.

There are also smaller group trips closer to home. Starting at $227,000 for two adults, Four Seasons Resorts Hawaii is partnering with VistaJet and Lanai Air to curate a four-island journey showcasing Hawaii’s history, culture, and natural beauty for private parties of up to eight.

VistaJet has fashioned its own Private World tours that range from single destinations to longer, multi-stop itineraries. Its three-week tour of Southeast Asia , in association with Ariodante, begins in Jakarta before heading to Sangiran and Cambodia to explore the remnants of the Khmer Empire, including the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Ta Prohm. Following that is a helicopter trip into Vietnam’s Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park for a four-day trek through the jungle with a team of experts into the world’s largest cave, Hang Son Doong.

Abercrombie & Kent’s Wings Over Europe’s Iconic Capitals is an air adventure that spends 11 days experiencing the best of London, Paris, Rome, and Athens.

Limited to 13 guests, the tour takes you by private charter to the changing of the Mounted Guard in London, breakfast atop the Eiffel Tower, and a secret passage that connects Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo with the Vatican. Afterward, you’ll travel along the Athenian Riviera by electric trike.

By contrast, the company’s Africa: Across a Continent by Private Jet is a 22-day trip that explores the continent’s natural and manmade treasures, from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the Serengeti to the mountain gorillas of Rwanda to the medina of Marrakech.

Starting at $134,000 per person, the aircraft is a converted Boeing 757 with just 48 recliners for crisscrossing Africa. The journey includes exclusive access to many of the sites, including the Sphinx in Egypt, a hot-air balloon trip over the Serengeti, luxury safari camps in the bush, and glamping in the Sahara. Helicopter trips, wine-tastings and even a voodoo ceremony are also options.

“This is the next best thing to having your own private jet,” says Stefanie Schmudde, vice president of product development at Abercrombie & Kent. “Guests enjoy the benefits of private air, while on an itinerary that makes the most of each day.” Put another way: Maximizing time is why these air cruises work.

Read More On:

• Private jets

More Aviation

This New Space Capsule Was Designed to Feel Like a Luxury Car Inside

I Watched the Total Solar Eclipse While Flying in a Jet. Here’s What It Was Like.

The World’s First Flying Motorcycle Could Hit the Skies by the End of the Decade

This New Hypersonic Aircraft Will Hit the Skies Later This Year

Culinary Masters 2024

MAY 17 - 19 Join us for extraordinary meals from the nation’s brightest culinary minds.

Give the Gift of Luxury

Latest Galleries in Aviation

The 11 Best Private Jets for Any Kind of Trip

8 Tropical Resorts That Fly You There on a Private Jet

More from our brands, nike brings brand power to paris ahead of olympics; medalists dawn staley and jordan chiles meet, nycfc $780 million stadium project receives city council approval, ‘deadpool and wolverine’ rocks cinemacon with 9-minute clip featuring hugh jackman’s debut and jokes about cocaine and strippers, photography curator pleads not guilty to child pornography charges and attempted enticement of a minor, the best swim goggles for men, according to competitive swimmers.

Look inside this luxury blimp promising to revolutionize air travel

There's no word on how much a trip will cost on this flying cruise ship, but, in the meantime, you can take a tour of the swanky interior

You can save this article by registering for free here . Or sign-in if you have an account.

Article content

Do you dream about riding in a blimp? Soon you’ll be able to ride in a luxurious modern-day version of the airship.

The Airlander 10 is a hybrid air vehicle — part lighter-than-air blimp, part plane — that can take off and land from virtually any flat surface, eliminating the need for airports. It’s also designed to use less fuel than a plane, but carry heavier loads than conventional airships. The aircraft — dubbed “the flying bum” because of its curvaceous design — had first test flight two years ago, and was originally developed for the U.S. military as a surveillance machine, but now it’s been rebranded as a luxury aircraft.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

• Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay, Rex Murphy and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.
• Unlimited online access to National Post and 15 news sites with one account.
• National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.
• Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.
• Support local journalism.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

• Access articles from across Canada with one account.
• Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.
• Enjoy additional articles per month.
• Get email updates from your favourite authors.

Don't have an account? Create Account

“Air travel has become very much about getting from A to B as quickly as possible. What we’re offering is a way of making the journey a joy,” said Stephen McGlennan, CEO of HAV.

This month Hybrid Air Vehicles Limited revealed the 46-metre-long cabin, created in partnership with Design Q. The aircraft can carry up to 19 passengers (plus the crew). It can only travel up to 148 km/h, but can stay aloft for up to two weeks. There’s no word on how much one of its “three-day expeditions” will cost, but in the meantime, you can take a tour of the interior of this flying cruise ship.

Even in the sky, a fully stocked “altitude bar” is a must-have.

And you can take your drink over to these sofas and stare out the huge windows.

Or take a seat and stare at the stunning ground.

Actually, forget the view, check out these luxury bean bags.

This sky bed is nicer than most land beds.

And this is what you’ll be seeing when you lie down.

With files from The Associated Press

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here .

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

Poilievre attacks Trudeau for not reading intelligence briefing notes, breaking 'with liberalism itself'

Chris selley: poilievre promises the conservative faithful all their canadian dreams will soon come true, in 1996, the titanic film crew was poisoned in nova scotia. we may soon know how, why j.k. rowling won't be making nice with emma watson, daniel radcliffe any time soon, terry glavin: trudeau just doesn't think chinese interference is anything to be angry about.

5 spring sunglasses guaranteed to elevate your eyewear game

Trends! Colours! Shapes! Price points!

Canadian clothing and fashion brands: They're local and spectacular

Supporting well-known brands and hidden local gems

Advertisement 2 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The best online deals in the Canadian retail space right now

Casper, Shopbop, Best Buy and Sephora, to name a few

Here are the 5 best drugstore makeup dupes

Putting drugstore products to the test.

What your mom actually wants this Mother’s Day 

The perfect gift for any type of mom — from the pickleballer to the hostess

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here . By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy .

You've reached the 20 article limit.

You can manage saved articles in your account.

and save up to 100 articles!

Looks like you've reached your saved article limit!

You can manage your saved articles in your account and clicking the X located at the bottom right of the article.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

The Airship: Cruise Liner of the Future or One More Dream?

By Roger Collis, International Herald Tribune

• Feb. 4, 1994

T HE dateline was Lakehurst, New Jersey, May 6, 1937. At 7:23 P.M., the German zeppelin Hindenburg, docking after its first ocean crossing of the season, burst into flames, killing 36 people. The disaster ended the reign of the great airships. No matter that the nine-year- old Graf Zeppelin had retired that year after 144 uneventful trans-Atlantic crossings, and in 1929 flew from Tokyo to Los Angeles nonstop. The British had dismantled their R- 100 after the crash of the ill-designed R-101 on its maiden voyage to India in 1930. The Hindenburg disaster was the coup de grace for public and government confidence in airship safety.

Since then, airships in the form of blimps - nonrigid airships without a frame - have found a role in police work and coastal surveillance, off-shore rig maintenance and as TV camera platforms to cover sports events. And, of course, as flying billboards, they are familiar sights above cities like San Francisco, Tokyo and Sydney.

But today, airships are beginning to make a comeback as passenger vehicles - for regular shuttle services and luxury sky cruises. Traveling at speeds of 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) an hour just 800 feet (240 meters) above ground, airships offer spectacular views, and a quiet, spacious environment - you can walk around, even open the windows. Modern airships are safe, comfortable, cheap to operate and environment-friendly. (Airships consume about eight gallons of fuel an hour and can operate for a week on the fuel that a 747 uses taxiing from the gate to the runway.)

"We're exploring the possibility of sky cruises over parts of the world that are best seen from a ship - rain forests in Brazil and Peru, Hawaii, châteaux of the Loire, flights along the Nile to see the pyramids, air safaris in Kenya; the idea of cruising over Venice would be spectacular," says George Spyrou, chairman of Airship Management Services in Connecticut, which owns and operates airships. "Airships are natural tie-ins with cruise ships - coming in to Cannes and then doing a sky cruise, you'd pack the ship out."

Airship Management operates Skyship 600 airships - originally developed by a British company, Airship Industries, of which Spyrou was marketing director. In 1990, Airship Industries collapsed, and design and manufacturing rights for the Skyships were acquired by Westinghouse.

The Skyship 600 is 193 feet long with a cabin for 10 to 12 passengers and a cruising speed of about 50 miles an hour. The 6,000- cubic-meter envelope (about 210,000 cubic feet) is filled with inert helium rather than the inflammable hydrogen of the prewar airships. (By a tragic irony the U.S. government refused helium supplies for the Hindenburg - for which the ship was designed - for strategic reasons.)

The early ships were also bedeviled by structural failures in the elaborate aluminum skeletons enclosing the gasbags. The Skyships are built with modern lightweight composite plastics - the gondola is bonded to the envelope - with fiber-optic avionics and controls.

"State-of-the-art with conventional aircraft is what they call fly-by-wire, electronic signaling to the controls with no rods and linkages," says Roger Munk, architect of the Skyship and now with Westinghouse as technical director of its airship program. "We've gone one step beyond that. We are the first aircraft in the world to fly with a fly-by-light system. We've thrown away all electrics and do all the signaling with optic fibers."

Skyships are powered by two Porsche turbo engines, linked to variable-pitch propellers, which can vector, or swivel through 200 degrees to move the ship up and down and forward and backward. The ship can therefore hover and maneuver with even more sensitivity than a helicopter (in fact, more like a Harrier jump-jet) but without the noise and commotion. In calm conditions, it can hover six inches from the ground or sea. The only power an airship needs for hovering is to counteract the wind. "It's just like a fish in the water up there," Spyrou says. The old zeppelins could sail the Atlantic at 80 miles per hour (making the crossing in two and a half days) but were clumsy when it came to docking: They were only able to move forward against the wind.

W IND is the nemesis of an airship. In windy patches or updrafts, the ship can pitch and roll like a sailboat dipping through the waves. In bad weather, such as rain or snow, or wind over about 25 knots (29 miles per hour), most airship pilots would not take off - although an airship can cope with such weather when airborne.

"It's not so much the wind speed as the gusting," Spyrou says, "It's taking off and landing. If we have a steady 30-knot wind we can mast, no problem - but if we have gusting, shifting conditions of 20 to 30 knots, the pilots are very uncomfortable. So we try not to fly, or stand off. It's a buoyant vehicle. You are not going to have a problem unless you bump into something." An airship is more durable than it looks. It can fly for several hours with a hole the size of a saucer in the envelope.

"We're a lot less weather-dependent and we can fly twice as often as larger airships - we were overhead at the Wembley Cup final when they were registering 35 knots," says Hugh Band, marketing director of Virgin Lightships, part of Virgin Atlantic. "Lightships are smaller than Skyships, but more aerodynamic and sleeker. We can fly in, yes, in gusting conditions of about 30 knots. We fly 50 knots flat out in calm conditions."

Lightships are made by American Blimp Corp. in Portland, Oregon. They carry four passengers and light up at night with a giant light bulb inside a translucent envelope. "We do champagne night cruises over the theme parks in Orlando charging $80 to $130 for half an hour to two hours," Band says. "We're looking at developing a larger-scale passenger Lightship."

Enter the U.S. Navy, which awarded Westinghouse a $168 million contract to build a giant airship to replace Boeing AWACS surveillance aircraft. An airship would have longer endurance and be much less expensive to operate. The Skyship 5000, 400 feet long (nearly twice the length of a 747), with an envelope of 70,000 cubic meters - smaller than the Hindenburg's 200,000 cubic meters - is scheduled for 1996. A civil version could carry 100 people in a double-deck configuration for trans- Pacific and trans-Atlantic flights at speeds up to 100 miles an hour.

Meanwhile, Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik in Friedrichshafen, Germany, is developing new airships (205 and 330 feet long seating 12 and 84 passengers) with a top speed of 87 miles per hour. They will have semi-rigid airframes - a hybrid of a blimp and a prewar dirigible. In silhouette, they have an uncanny resemblance to the old zeppelins. Perhaps in 1996, when the prototype flies, the ghost of the Hindenburg will finally be exorcised.

Explore Our Style Coverage

The latest in fashion, trends, love and more..

How ‘Carefluencers’ Got Big:  On TikTok and Instagram, people are sharing what it’s like to take care of relatives who have reached their final years .

The Buzz on Boat Shoes:  The category of footwear  created when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president is being reinterpreted and rediscovered.

Are You a ‘Spring’ or a ‘Winter’?:  Seasonal color analysis, a fad from the 1980s  seeking to identify a person’s most flattering color palette, is drawing views and exasperation on TikTok.

Barbie, the Book:  A bookstore event for the newly published “Barbie: The World Tour” brought out the die-hards.

Loving Sticks:  Those who appreciate “ something as basic as a stick ” are sharing their enthusiasm through a newly popular Instagram account.

What Happened to the Wrap Dress?:  A pandemic, the demise of “girlboss” culture and new values around what’s “flattering” have made the classic design seem outdated to some .

Argument: The Age of the Airship May Be Dawning Again

Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app.

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

• World Brief
• Editors’ Picks
• Africa Brief
• China Brief
• Latin America Brief
• South Asia Brief
• Situation Report
• Flash Points
• War in Ukraine
• Israel and Hamas
• U.S.-China competition
• Biden's foreign policy
• Trade and economics
• Artificial intelligence
• Asia & the Pacific
• Middle East & Africa

The New Idea of India

Inside the gop’s foreign policy, ones and tooze, foreign policy live.

Spring 2024 Issue

Print Archive

FP Analytics

• In-depth Special Reports
• Issue Briefs
• Power Maps and Interactive Microsites
• FP Simulations & PeaceGames
• Graphics Database

Her Power 2024

The atlantic & pacific forum, principles of humanity under pressure, fp global health forum 2024, fp @ unga79.

By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time.

Your guide to the most important world stories of the day

Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent

The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week

Weekly update on what’s driving U.S. national security policy

Evening roundup with our editors’ favorite stories of the day

One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture

Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors

A curated selection of our very best long reads

The Age of the Airship May Be Dawning Again

Dirigibles ruled the skies once. can they make a comeback.

• Science and Technology
• Afghanistan

You might think that the tragic end of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 marked a clear end to the airship era. The famous footage of the German airship plunging in flames became the overwhelming image of a seemingly doomed technology.

You would be wrong.

For decades, the Goodyear fleet of blimps have been the only working airships most people had a chance of seeing in real life. But a handful of companies are looking to bring back the spectacular dirigibles.

The government of Quebec will be pitching 30 million Canadian dollars (23 million in U.S. dollars) to Flying Whales, a French company, to start building its massive zeppelins. The company has only been around since 2012, and it hasn’t gotten any of its airships off the ground—yet. The plan has been derided by opposition parties, not as a flying whale but as a white elephant.

But cargo airships may actually make a tremendous amount of sense. They are relatively cheap, they can carry enormous amounts of material, and they emit significantly less greenhouse gas than other modes of transportation.

The compelling arguments for dirigible travel put these airships in a class of technology, with nuclear power and lunar colonization, that is experiencing an unexpected modern renaissance.

Flying Whales’ LCA60T model, according to the company, will be able to carry up to 60 metric tons of goods, travel up to 62 miles per hour, and serve remote areas with ease. If all goes according to plan, the company hopes to get the first airship off the ground in 2022.

There’s still a healthy dose of skepticism around the company’s lofty promises. Its main backers, prior to Quebec’s financial endorsement, have been the French National Forest Agency and the Chinese government.

Flying Whales’ website is enigmatic, and the section of the site explaining the airships’ structure isn’t particularly helpful—the description of its structure reads “what else… – Hi George :)” while if you’re looking for details on their “safe lifting gas” it reads, somewhat snarkily, “helium obviously.”

It’s that last point that might make the whole idea completely untenable: There might just not be enough helium left.

The R-100 airship, circa 1920. Theodor Horydczak/U.S. Library of Congress

A slow, steady return

While the most famous airship may be the Hindenburg, it was hardly the first—nor was it the last.

For a time in the first half of the 20th century, airships were fashionable, practical, and futuristic. But their calamitous track record ultimately soured the public.

Less remembered, perhaps because its downing was never immortalized on an album cover , was the English airship R101. The dirigible was dubbed the “socialist airship,” as it was designed and built by the United Kingdom’s state aviation department. The R101 was constructed as part of a state-sponsored competition, pitting government engineers against private-sector workers. The “capitalist airship,” the R100, was designed and constructed by a scrappy engineering team on a remote airbase in Yorkshire.

The opulent socialist airship was rushed to flight, even amid a variety of problems. It took off, en route to British India, just as its capitalist competitor set off for Canada. The government airship sagged and crashed into the French countryside just a day into its voyage, killing 48 of the 54 onboard—including the aviation minister—while the private airship conducted a celebrated tour of Montreal and Toronto before heading back to London. (“Everybody’s talking about the R100,” goes the chorus of a song from the iconic francophone Canadian folk singer La Bolduc.)

Most airships of the day took off using the highly flammable hydrogen—thanks mostly to an American monopoly on helium, its nonflammable alternative. Washington had banned the export of the gas, in part over fears of the military uses of the airships, which had been used in the world’s first air raids on London during World War I.

The helium-buoyant American ships weren’t always safe, either. The USS Akron carried out several successful flights across the continent, but it was ultimately pushed down by strong winds in 1933 and crashed into the Atlantic , killing 73 people on board and two rescuers.

As U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked after the Akron went down, “ships can be replaced, but the Nation can ill afford to lose such men.” Eventually, governments stopped replacing the ships.

The USS Akron over New York City in the early 1930s. U.S. Navy/Interim Archives/Getty Images

But it was the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, made famous by the newsreel footage of the zeppelin bursting into a ball of flames as it tried to dock at the Lakehurst air base in New Jersey, that really scuttled the industry. The United States’ decision to lift its helium ban after the crash did little to revive faith in airships. The U.S. Navy used its small fleet for anti-submarine warfare and reconnaissance in World War II, but the airship industry was effectively dead.

It would stage a comeback, in a limited way, some decades later, when Goodyear opted for nonrigid airships—blimps—for its advertising campaigns. Airship Industries came around in the 1980s, promising a return of the dirigible. Its ships, like Goodyear’s ships, had no rigid structure inside, meaning they could carry only limited cargo and no more than 14 passengers. The airships of earlier in the century had immense metal structures inside, allowing them to carry more. These new nonrigid ships were made famous by Bond villains , Pink Floyd , and, later, by Ron Paul supporters .

Fame aside, the blimps had little use for commercial air travel or cargo transport. The niche purpose of the blimps meant Airship Industries was hemorrhaging money, and it shut down by the end of the decade.

As with many other commercially nonviable products, airships later found a home in the U.S. military. There was a hope that the dirigibles, which are capable of taking off and staying aloft for prolonged periods of time, would be ideal for persistent aerial surveillance.

The contractor Northrop Grumman was awarded a $517 million contract to build a surveillance airship in 2010, and it managed to build a successful prototype in 2012 . The contract was axed a year later . Raytheon was awarded nearly $3 billion for its model, which tethered the airship to a mooring and allowed for constant surveillance of a wide area for a month at a time.

One of Raytheon’s spy blimps was tested in Maryland, where it hung eerily in the sky above suburban homes. In 2015, it broke loose from its mooring and drifted haplessly through Pennsylvania , trailed by fighter jets, before crashing in a field. Raytheon’s hopes of building more surveillance dirigibles crashed with it .

A similar program in Afghanistan, which became notorious among Kabul residents , saw even worse results. The tethers that kept the Big Brother balloons in place were notorious for snaring helicopter blades—one incident killed five American and British service members.

An aerial visualization of the Ocean Sky airship. KIRT x THOMSEN

A commercial appeal?

The market for military airships and commercial blimps remained limited thanks to past failures, though not dead entirely.

The cruise company OceanSky is forging ahead with plans to send a passenger airship to the Arctic , using a ship originally designed under the U.S. military’s surveillance program, with a planned voyage in 2023.

Many are banking that the real future of airships, however, is in cargo.

In the vast expanses of the Canadian north, there has long been a need for reliable transportation. Many communities are only accessible by road when winter rolls around and the ground and lakes are solid enough to drive on, if they are accessible by road at all. That means basic goods need to be stockpiled when the weather is cold or flown in by cargo plane—never mind supplies to build long-term infrastructure. Many of these remote communities are reliant on gas generators and are facing shortages of reliable housing stock.

The airships also promise to be a boon for economic development, if they work.

In 2016, a junior mining company in Quebec inked an agreement with U.K.-based Straightline Aviation to use a design being developed by Lockheed Martin to haul rare earth minerals from a remote open-pit mine—the road that was initially planned would have cut across a caribou migration path. That plan went belly-up when the minerals company went bankrupt, although Straightline is forging ahead with plans to offer commercial and tourism flights .

The interior of the Ocean Sky airship. Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd and Design Q

Stranded resources and communities are a policy concern in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia, and elsewhere. Flights are expensive and carbon dioxide-intensive, and they require airport infrastructure. Shipping is more viable as Arctic ice melts, but that often requires deep-water ports and can have damaging impacts on marine life. It’s part of why people keep coming back to airships.

That’s the niche Quebec Premier François Legault is hoping Flying Whale can fill in the province’s remote north.

It’s why the French forestry sector is interested in the ships as well. The promise of lifting lumber from far-off places earned the company praise from French President Emmanuel Macron as one of the “industries of the future.”

The opportunity is also caveated with an array of risks and problems. There is no guarantee that the airships will even fly in the frigid north— Le Journal de Quebec reported that the airships will need a significant amount of water, which may be hard to come by amid Arctic temperatures.

Quebec seems unphased.

“If we don’t take risks, we go nowhere,” Legault told reporters earlier in February. Quebec’s investment earned it a 25 percent stake in the project, which in turn brought derision from opposition politicians—one questioned whether the government was inhaling helium when it made the decision.

The money puts Quebec on par with China in the project—Beijing put in $4.9 million for its 24.9 percent stake, through the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China General and the Ministry of Science and Technology. China has plenty of Arctic ambitions itself—and vast distances to cover in its underpopulated west.

The Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

A lack of lift

There’s one massive drawback for the airship industry: The world is almost out of helium.

In recent years, helium prices have skyrocketed as supply has dwindled. Far from just being used in party balloons and blimps, the gas is necessary for MRI scanners and rocket engines. Stockpiles of helium often escape, and are wasted, during other extractive projects. While there have been shortages before, helium is a nonrenewable resource and can take an enormously long time to generate—estimates suggest the earth’s supply could be gone this century .

If the world runs out of helium, it’s not clear that there’s a good alternative. The dangers of hydrogen are well established, and the gas behind the Hindenburg disaster is unlikely to make an air travel comeback.

Hypothetically, there could be an airship lifted by a vacuum—that is, by material that can contain nothing at all inside but withstand the atmospheric pressure from the outside. It is, at this point, science fiction, although NASA has posited that some kind of vacuum airship could eventually be used to explore the surface of Mars.

Airship companies seem satisfied with helium for the time being. OceanSky cruises has a reassuring FAQ on its website, telling those looking to join them on an airship trip to the North Pole that 600 of their cruise ships “would account for just 1% of annual helium consumption” and that each ship “stays filled with the same helium as from its inception, less a tiny annual leakage.”

If these airships can take off despite carrying a century of failed projects, a lack of its necessary resource, and economic justifications that still seem more wishful thinking than reality—it might just be the return of the zeppelin.

Justin Ling is a journalist based in Toronto. Twitter:  @Justin_Ling

More from Foreign Policy

Nobody actually knows what russia does next.

The West’s warnings about Vladimir Putin’s future plans are getting louder—but not any more convincing.

China Is Gaslighting the Developing World

Beijing’s promises of equality are a guise for hegemony.

Post-Erdogan Turkey Is Finally Here

Last weekend’s elections offer a first glimpse of a political future beyond the reigning strongman.

How the United States Lost Niger

Growing Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence in the Sahel is testing Washington’s clout in an increasingly strategic continent.

U.S. Policy on Venezuela Is Converging

Biden’s ‘coalitions of the willing’ foreign-policy doctrine, israel prepares for iranian attack in the near future, how a culture shift in the israeli military helps explain gaza’s death toll, what actually happens when a country bans abortion, decolonizing the united nations means abolishing the permanent five, how to defend u.s. rights to a million square kilometers of ocean floor, north korea is ghosting the biden administration, the chipmaking world hedges its taiwan bets.

Sign up for World Brief

FP’s flagship evening newsletter guiding you through the most important world stories of the day, written by Alexandra Sharp . Delivered weekdays.

Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

Are We in an Airship Renaissance?

One hundred years after the first U.S. Navy airship took to the skies, zeppelins and blimps are poised to make a comeback

Mark Piesing

At 6:50 pm on September 4, 1923, the first American-built rigid airship took to the skies. The U.S. Navy had designated the 680-foot-long zeppelin ZR-1. A month later, it would be formally christened the USS  Shenandoah . But that day, newspapers dubbed the vehicle “Leviathan of the Air.”

Front-page photos captured the scene: 250 men clutching ropes, slowly dragging the silver airship from the vast dark maw of Hangar No. 1 at New Jersey’s Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Engineers had spent seven months in the 224-foot-high hangar assembling parts that had been fabricated at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia. The design for ZR-1 had been reverse-engineered from a German airship forced down in 1917 after dropping 4,600 pounds of bombs on targets in Great Britain.

Images of the airship passing through the 1,350-ton steel doors of the hangar evoke another scene: when NASA’s Saturn V rocket slowly emerged from the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building in the late 1960s—the first leg of its long trip to the moon. Both moments heralded a new era of flight aboard colossal craft that loomed over their Lilliputian builders. And, like the rockets that would carry U.S. astronauts into space, the USS  Shenandoah  and the growing fleet of U.S. airships owed their existence to weapons of terror developed by German engineers when the world was at war.

Similar to the Saturn V, the builders of the first American zeppelin (“The Mightiest Ship of the Air!” proclaimed newspapers) had big dreams for their creation. The Navy envisioned a fleet of commercial airships that, like merchant marine vessels, would form a reserve force that could be mobilized to defend the country. Some believed the airships would completely revolutionize warfare. “The ZR-1 is the forerunner of the great airplane carriers of the future, those mother birds that will convey flocks of steel-beaked fliers armed with huge bombs capable of destroying battleships, forts, and encampments,” declared an editorial in the Maine-based  Kennebec Journal.  At one point, the Navy even planned to send the ZR-1 on an expedition to the North Pole.

But while the Saturn V would fulfill its promise of opening a new chapter of exploration, the airships would have a less illustrious destiny. To be sure, the lighter-than-air behemoths enjoyed moments of glory—most famously as aerial cruise ships outfitted with dining halls, cabins, and observation decks. Indeed, these early airships offered a luxury experience in the air that would be unmatched for decades.

Unfortunately, with the airships’ huge size came massive maintenance and refueling expenses, not to mention ground crews the size of small armies to handle landings and moorings. Safety became a growing concern: The lightweight construction materials made airships vulnerable to high winds and thunderstorms. The USS  Shenandoah  crashed in 1925, followed by the USS  Akron  in 1933 and the USS  Macon  in 1935. Meanwhile, as aviation technology continued to progress, airplanes ultimately proved they could get the job done faster and cheaper. The catastrophic failure of the  Hindenburg  in 1937 destroyed the market for airships as passenger-carrying transports, leaving them to eke out an existence as mostly niche aircraft (think Goodyear Blimp).

But after nearly a century in exile, airships seem poised to make a comeback, thanks to a new generation of engineers who are enamored with the golden age of lighter-than-air vessels and see their potential. By using electric propulsion systems powered by solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, airships could help the aviation industry significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Airships could also play an important role in delivering humanitarian aid to places that have been devastated by natural disaster, since they don’t require infrastructure such as airstrips. And, airships are no longer quite so fragile: The era of cotton and aluminum has given way to carbon-fiber tubes and fire-resistant synthetic fabrics.

Engineers are contemplating airships in myriad forms. They can choose from zeppelins, which have an internal metal framework; blimps, which are essentially oversized balloons; and semi-rigid, which are blimps that have a metal keel extending along their base. Familiar concepts from previous decades are being dusted off and adapted to our own era. For the first time in nearly 100 years, a new generation of giant rigid airships is currently undergoing flight testing at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, by LTA Research and Exploration, a company founded in 2016 by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The company’s proof-of-concept, 400-foot rigid airship is called Pathfinder 1.

Elsewhere in the world, other airship startups are under way. Russian engineers are building on a Soviet-era design for an airship in the shape of a flying saucer. Proposals are being drawn up to deploy airships for transporting hydrogen from one coast of Australia to the other. Flying Whales, a company backed by the French government, has just announced another $137 million of funding and has started construction of the assembly line for its LCA60T rigid airship. Israel-based Atlas has built and sold airships—12 blimps in total—and work has already begun on founder Gennadiy Verba’s latest design, an all-electric sightseeing blimp. The British company Hybrid Air Vehicles—whose Airlander 10 design is capable of transporting up to 100 on short-haul journeys—announced last year that the Spanish Air Nostrum Group had reserved 10 airships to fly on its regional routes.

“The problem with American big-rigid design during the 1920s and ’30s is that the technology didn’t match the dreams of their promoters,” says John J. Geoghegan, author of  When Giants Ruled the Sky . “The materials used were not strong enough, and there was not a sufficient understanding of the aerodynamic forces that acted upon an airship in flight. This meant these big rigids were not robust enough to survive the weather conditions they encountered. Now, that has all changed.”

War and Peace

The airship industry in the United States can trace its beginnings to October 20, 1917, when a German zeppelin, L-49,was forced to land at Bourbonne-les-Bains, where it was captured by French forces. “Efforts of the crew to fire the ship on landing were frustrated and the recovery of the ship’s structure almost intact provided the source of much valuable design information for the Allies, and ourselves, for French engineers, with great thoroughness, carefully measured and recorded dimensions of each part,” concluded an assessment by the U.S. Navy.

Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne was a visionary who saw the potential of lighter-than-air (LTA) aviation for the U.S. Navy. In October 1924, Lansdowne achieved one of the greatest feats of the golden age of the airship when he flew the  Shenandoah  on a 19-day, 235-flight-hour journey across the U.S. from Lakehurst to San Diego, up the West Coast to Seattle, and back. Americans were in awe of the flying colossus.

But just 11 months later, on September 3, 1925, after a remarkable 56 flights, the  Shenandoah  got caught in a storm over Ohio and broke in two. Fourteen men out of 21 died in the crash.

The Navy had done an impressive job reverse engineering the L-49, but therein was the problem. The German airship was a “height climber,” a class of advanced, high-altitude airships designed to fly too high to be shot down by enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns. As such, the L-49’s metal skeleton had been lightened—and weakened—to enable the giant bomber to reach 25,000 feet, a fact that should have eliminated the design as a peacetime airship. “The German pilots had figured out that to survive they needed to slow down in the gusty air, almost completely coming to a stop to reduce the impact of the wind,” says Alan Weston, CEO of LTA Research and Exploration. “The American pilots didn’t know that.”

For Ron Hochstetler, a retired airship consultant, the  Shenandoah  crash represents many of the challenges he faced in airship development during his career. “The  Shenandoah ’s creators had little experience with its delicate design,” he says. “Or with the limitations of the new materials that the ship incorporated.” Too little time and resources were given to understanding the operational limits of the design, and too much performance was expected from such an untried vehicle concept. “Yet its owners, builders, and flight crews invested extravagant amounts of faith and hope for its success only to have these dashed to pieces on the farmland of Ohio,” says Hochstetler.

Tragically, there was evidence that the  Shenandoah ’s crew had eschewed the cautious approach adopted by wartime German zeppelin pilots. One Navy lieutenant even bragged to a newspaper about his battles against the elements and his “thrilling races” with clouds and near brushes with death. “We had just cleared the gap through the Rocky Mountains when I saw a dim cloud dead ahead, too close for us to miss it,” he recalled. “We began shooting down like a plummet when the powerful down currents caught us. When we hit the cloud, we were more than 2,000 feet up. When we emerged from the storm, we were less than 300 feet from the ground, because our wireless antennae, which hangs from the cabin, had been wiped off.”

Rather than foreshadowing disaster, newspapers reported such stories as confirmation that U.S. airships could endure even the worst conditions as long as capable men were at the helm. And, despite the  Shenandoah ’s demise, America’s love affair with rigid airships continued to grow with the building of the monumental Goodyear Airdock (now called the Akron Airdock) in Akron, Ohio, and the construction of even larger airships—the USS  Akron  and USS  Macon —in the early 1930s. Still, the Americans continued to fly their rigid airships more aggressively than the Germans, and the Akron and the Macon both crashed during storms. In contrast, the German zeppelins flew for around 19 years without a single fatality until the loss of the  Hindenburg .

It’s understandable then, that today’s lighter-than-air pioneers have a bittersweet feeling toward the squandered opportunities of the past. They are hoping that this time hubris and haste don’t doom the airship a second time—just as low-carbon transportation technologies are needed most. “The rigid airships were the most extraordinary vehicles ever flown,” says Weston. “There were failures and great successes. It’s tragic that simple screw-ups like this doomed airships in the U.S.”

Weston and other modern-day pioneers are determined not to repeat the same mistakes. “We all devour any old airship memorabilia we can find, but the technological advances over the last 100 years mean that we are really doing something completely new,” says mechanical engineer Jillian Hilenski, who is working on the Pathfinder. “We’re entirely redesigning components and using carbon fiber tubes and titanium joints to make up the skeleton of the ship. That alone is such a huge innovation compared to the 1930s that it almost doesn’t seem we are comparing apples with apples anymore.”

Hochstetler’s dream of lighter-than-air flight began when, as a university student, he saw the Goodyear Blimp lit up at night on a local airfield where it was overnighting. “I was struck that airships were like clouds and belong in the sky, that they don’t have to scramble their way into the air like a jet or fall to the earth if they don’t keep going,” he says. “It was marvelous, and it totally intrigued me.”

Hochstetler’s first project was the Piasecki PA-97 Helistat. Built for the U.S. Forest Service, it was an experimental heavy-lift airship designed to carry timber from difficult terrain. Propulsion was provided by four Sikorsky H-34J helicopters attached with scaffolding to the bottom of the large helium-filled envelope, a retired Navy ZPG-2W blimp. “When I walked into the hangar that the Helistat was being assembled in, I was overwhelmed with the thrill of seeing a great big real airship for the first time,” Hochstetler recalls. “I was so excited to be part of what I believed was the renaissance of the giant airship age. But I also discovered I was the only person on that project who held this conviction. In time I began to understand the reason for my coworkers’ cynicism. The project was being done on the cheap. And consequently, it wasn’t likely to result in an exemplary aircraft. In fact, the other assemblers referred to the Helistat as the ‘Hindentitanic.’ ” The name proved to be prophetic. On July 1, 1986, after lifting off on a test flight, the prototype crashed, killing one of its pilots.

“Realizing that the Helistat project was not likely to end well, I decided to leave the company in May of 1985,” says Hochstetler. “When I heard about the crash and the death of one of the pilots, I was shocked and saddened, but not surprised.”

Hochstetler also worked on the now-infamous Cargolifter AG project, wherein a German company in the 1990s sought to build a gigantic airship, the CL 160, which would be equipped with a massive crane capable of carrying 160 metric tons. The company declared insolvency in 2002 after burning through $250 million worth of investments. Cargolifter failed because the challenges of building such a complex ship were underestimated by its promoters. A hangar was built for the planned airship. The largest freestanding hangar in the world, it is now a holiday resort featuring an indoor rainforest. The epic failure of the CL 160 still haunts the airship industry and engineers.

“It didn’t take me that long to realize that the reality of working in lighter-than-air was very different,” says Hochstetler. “I quickly found that there wasn’t a lot of romance and there wasn’t a lot of money.”

Staying Aloft

LTA Research’s Alan Weston had long been interested in the potential for airships to be more fuel efficient than any other form of aviation. Now, it’s their potential for aiding humanitarian relief that really excites him. “I grew up in Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, and Zambia, and I know roads are terrible in many parts of the world,” he says.

Bathed in light within its huge hangar, LTA’s Pathfinder 1 looks more like a spaceship than an airship. The company recently conducted a test flight inside LTA’s giant hangar at California’s Moffett Field, a duplicate of the Akron Airdock (which the company also now owns) originally built to house the USS  Macon . Says Weston: “There is not enough space to turn around or do a loop-the-loop, but we can go up and down, sideways, and forwards and backwards to test our primary functionality—and do it tethered so it can’t hurt anything.” LTA is now preparing to conduct extensive outdoor testing.

The materials used to construct Pathfinder 1 showcase how 21st-century technology is being applied to 20th-century designs. The outer covering is flame-retardant and made of multiple layers of synthetic materials. As a safety measure, lidar sensors constantly monitor the helium in the gas cells. If there’s a volume change, the lidar helps indicate if it’s due to changes in elevation or temperature—or caused by a significant gas leak. Twelve electric motors lining the sides and tail of the airship can be rotated 180 degrees for vertical liftoff and directional control.

The workers who constructed airships like the  Macon  had to climb tall, swaying ladders. Today, a cradle-like apparatus (nicknamed the Roller Coaster) slowly rotates the giant airframe on its horizontal axis, enabling workers to remain safely on the ground.

And yet, both investors and potential investors have been frustrated by what they perceive as the slow pace to launch the modern airship industry.  “They seem to think that airships are in some way easy because they see these things bobbing around in the sky flying quite slowly,” says Mike Durham, chief technical officer at Hybrid Air Vehicles. As such, “there are still a lot of businesses in the lighter-than-air world that pop up, work from a garage or a garden shed for a few years, make all sorts of claims on the web about how great their product is, and then disappear,” says Durham. “The airship world has been tainted somewhat by those types of businesses.”

Initially, Atlas’ Gennadiy Verba was one of these people. “I did mistakenly think that airships were a very simple technology,” he says. “I couldn’t understand why this kind of aircraft that’s very easy to build was not everywhere.” The end of Cargolifter, for example, hit him hard because it was a large project that had received a substantial amount of funding. “Its failure created a lot of doubts among investors about airships and the possibility of implementing this technology,” says Verba.

The veterans of the lighter-than-air industry have a long list of lessons learned from such failed and cancelled projects. The bullet points include an understanding of the history of the airship and its complexity; prioritization of teamwork over charismatic leaders; designing aircraft that can be mass produced; and, finally, an effective method of controlling buoyancy on the ground, vital for heavy-lift airships. And then there’s an underlying conundrum: The potential customers for this new generation of airships are not always prepared to pay for their development. What’s an airship company to do?

Sébastien Bougon, founder of the French company Flying Whales, is taking a very different approach—a very French, state-backed approach—to building the next generation of airships. “Americans like to go straight to building an airship or a rocket,” he says. “In France, we prefer the Airbus approach of step by step, working hand in hand with the regulator, because airships make people very nervous here, even though we invented them.”

Bougon’s vision of a rigid airship for heavy-lift transport came over dinner with the CEO of the National Forest Agency in France, who was struggling to transport enough logs out of remote regions of southern France. They approached the National Aerospace Agency, which agreed to support their idea. One year of preliminary studies moved into a four-year “de-risking phase,” when the French government and a consortium of French companies looked at more than 100 airship projects, including Cargolifter, to understand why they failed, as well as studying 12 different shapes.

“We were design agnostic, but there are too many people in the industry who think they have the solution,” says Bougon. “They tell me we must make a blimp. Others, that it should be a rigid airship. Some, a deltoid shape. Okay, so let’s study them all. In the end, we decided on the same as previous centuries, a rigid airship.” A manufacturing line is being prepared near Bordeaux, with plans to ultimately produce 160 units.

Ultimately, it’s the success or failure of companies like Flying Whales and LTA that will determine whether these mammoth craft will once again be seen in the skies. Airships never cease to inspire wonder, and they resonate with those who yearn for more stately modes of transportation. Says Hochstetler: “It is a dream that has bitten so many people.” 

Mark Piesing  is an aviation journalist and the author of  N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia  (Custom House, 2021).

Check out the interactive history of the USS Shenandoah.

This article is from the Fall issue of  Air & Space Quarterly , the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today.  Explore the full issue.

Want to receive ad-free hard-copies of  Air & Space Quarterly ?  Join the Museum's National Air and Space Society to subscribe.

Airship Travel

North pole expedition, capricorn voyage, life onboard, in the path of the norge.

On May 9, 1926, the first-ever flight over the North Pole was achieved by the airship, Norge. In the wake of this momentous occasion, we are bringing back the expeditionary spirit of the past with a refined level of comfort and luxury. Take in the breathtaking views of the stark landscape that the ice masses of the Earth’s northern-most point has to offer and relive the journey of Roald Amundsen and his crew.

Image courtesy of Nasjonalbiblioteket

Breathtaking Scenarios

While travelling low and slow, you feel close to the migrations, nearly being a part of them from an unparalleled vantage point. With airship travel, we have the luxury of requiring little infrastructure which allows us to reach remote lands, preserving the environment with a minimal footprint.

Starting the journey

Our journey will begin at Longyearbyen on Svalbard, the planet’s northernmost city, with a tumultuous history of power exchange and coal mining, now finds itself on the edge of power over some of the world’s most untouched, diverse but still fragile arctic ecosystems.

You will join us on board alongside the guests filling our 8 onboard cabins where the first hours will undoubtably be taking in the nature as we sail by, polar bears, snow foxes and reindeer herds that live throughout the national parks and nature reserves that cover most of the island. Our first evening onboard will be filled with briefings, a cocktail hour, exquisite dinner, and conversation. Whales splashing along the glacial coastlines. After a lively evening, it will be time to retire to your cabin for a good sleep before an early morning arrival at the North Pole.

Standing on the Arctic Ocean

Much like Amundsen and the Norge, we will depart from Svalbard, but unlike that journey, our destination will be the North Pole. Desolate and out of reach for many, you will step into the vast snowy landscape as many explorers had only wished to do.

There is no land where you are so as you move across this windswept dry snowscape, you are actually walking on continental ice that we are increasingly losing each summer to climate change. The importance and historical significance of your steps as witness to the changes to the earth are immense and we hope to inspire our travellers to be advocates for the planet.

Practical Information

Estimated launch: no later than 2026**

*approximately $200,000 USD , but is variable per the exchange rate at the times of payment. **According to the airship industry and our manufacturing partners, the first large-scale airships for commercial operations are estimated to be flown before 2026.

Airships To The North Pole

THE HISTORY OF THE NORTH POLE QUEST

Even today, we still don’t know exactly who first stepped on the geographic North Pole: Cook in 1908? Peary in 1909? Kuznetsov or Gordiyenko in 1948? Fletcher in 1952? Not to mention the expeditions of Parry, De Long, Nansen, Andrée and many others, who tried with ships, hot air balloons and airplanes.

It is not easy, today, in the age of satellites, GPS and Google Maps to imagine that only ninety years ago little or nothing was known about the morphology, climate and appearance of the Arctic. The romantic urge to venture into the unknown has given way to an ordinary habituation, which is fulfilled between online surfing and thousands of contrails crowding the sky….

Privacy Overview