Airship Ventures Zeppelin

Hot-air balloons you've seen; maybe you've even ridden in one. If you've been to a big-time sporting event, you've had a chance to see blimps in action overhead. But chances are very good that you've yet to get a good look at a zeppelin.

For residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, that's about to change. A company called Airship Ventures is bringing just such an aircraft to its new home at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif., sometime in the coming days. Sightseeing flights (the company calls it "flightseeing") will start later this month from Mountain View and in early November from several other locations, with ticket prices starting at $495 per person.

This photo shows the Airship Ventures Zeppelin on its maiden flight in May over Friedrichshafen, Germany.

(Zeppelins, also sometimes known as dirigibles, have a rigid frame that provide the distinctive, cucumberlike shape, and a soft material such as canvas is wrapped around the frame. Blimps and balloons, by contrast, have no framework and get their shape directly from the internal pressure of the gas providing the lift.)

October 23, 2008 11:13 AM PDT

Photo by: Airship Ventures

| Caption by: Jonathan Skillings

[bdennis410]

If economies continue to develop there may turn out to be many more uses for airship technologies.

[PedroClemente]

This Is Not The Zeppelin People Want To See.
Wake Up Robert, Please :(