Comments on: World's largest zeppelin dedicated at NASA facility

To be called the Eureka, the 246-feet long zeppelin is the pride and joy of a company called Airship Ventures, which will offer the public rides, as well as help NASA do scientific research.

[Penguinisto]

Existing Zepplin, or all-time? I'm sure the Graf Zepplin and Hindenberg were pretty hefty in and of themselves.

Also... "NT" gah - cue the BSOD ("Blue Sky of Dirigibles") jokes! :) .

/P

[nextcube]

Graf Zeppelin was 776ft long, and Hindenburg (oh, the humanity!) was 803ft. long, FWIW.
Hindenburg carried a crew of 40-61, with 50-72 passengers, so it was pretty hefty.

As a side note, the current Goodyear GZ-20 blimps are 192ft long. The "Spirit of Akron" was bigger, but I can't seem to find the dimensions at the moment...

[jasonaorr]

Zepplins, dirigibles, airships -- whatever you want to call them -- are relics of a by-gone era and do not represent the future of air travel, despite the naively optimistic claims made by airship enthusiasts. They are slow, space-inefficient, and have pathetic weight capacities. Their use will not and should not extend beyond novelty sight-seeing ventures just like their non-rigid cousins the hot-air balloons. I have no idea why tech sites are reporting on these ridiculous dirigible exploits.

Penguinisto, you're right -- this is by no means the largest dirigible ever built. They were building larger airships 70 years ago. This is no real technological breakthrough here, "new technology" notwithstanding.

[Galaxy5]

This is not air travel - this is sightseeing.

As for the technology, I'd point you to the engines and carbon composite structure of the airship, which most certainly is 'new' and allows the NT to weigh far less than older designs based on aluminum, use less fuel, carry more payload (can carry many more people than a Goodyear airship) and use more advanced engines that can swivel and pivot for directional control.

Part of the reason a "tech site" is reporting on this is that Ames Research Center is a technology hub in the Bay Area - besides being sandwiched between Google and Yahoo, the NASA center does invaluable work in Human-Computer Interfaces, has a very much in-demand supercomputer facility, develops the thermal protection systems for the Constellation program, is home to several startups, and collaborates with more established companies to develop public-private technologies and partnerships.

As for larger airships 70 years ago, there were far larger airships - and they used hydrogen, which while it was half the weight by volume of helium, had a bad habit of being flammable in the presence of oxygen. Without hydrogen as a lift option, helium-based airships must be both smaller and lighter to achieve similar performance - and the NT does.

[LO3]

Whether airships are the future of air travel is a different issue form whether their use should not extend beyond novelty tours.

They are very valuable for border patrol, anti-submarine, missile defense, and other surveillance-heavy work that requires extensive presence with minimal fuel consumption. Our UAV-heavy troops in Iraq and Afghanistan would benefit from them.

[William_Cousert]

>Without hydrogen as a lift option, helium-based airships must be both smaller and lighter to achieve similar
>performance - and the NT does.

The Hindenburg was designed with helium in mind The U.S. (the only major supplier of helium at the time) refused to sell large quantities of helium to the Germans, so they had to settle for hydrogen.

see http://www.ciderpresspottery.com/ZLA/greatzeps/german/Hindenburg.html

The total lift of a helium balloon is only 10% less than a similar hydrogen balloon (see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,786149-2,00.html)

[malbeau]

jasonaorr has a very narrow view of air transportation.

- not all travel must be done quickly
- not all airfields are space-limited
- weight capacity should be appropriate to the use. Unlike the ground vehicle delusion that "bigger is better", aircraft are carefully sized to meet the need.

As an example: when moving heavy equipment or structures - a bridge for example - a fuel-efficient zeppelin offers a superb transportation option that is quieter and more fuel efficient than helicopters and most ground vehicles we use today.

[Galaxy5]

I should add that watching this airship lift off is pretty amazing - if you'll pardon the perversion of a line from "Aliens", it's like an express elevator to heaven!

[baisa]

Couldn't they mix hydrogen and helium, in some still-non-flammable proportion, to achieve lower weight of the gas?

[getwired]

Hydrogen, by nature, is flammable. You can't take that flammability out or lessen it by mixing it.

[Zeppelin-NT-Insider]

This idea is not new.
The engineers thought about this long before the Zeppelin-NT 001 was built.
It ist true, what you write. It is a possibility.
The only reason not to do this, is the history.
The zeppelin was supposed to be the safest aircraft in the world.
So hydrogen was out of discussion.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

If Microsoft built airplanes - this is what they would look like.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Hey, did any of Gates' relatives work on the Hindenberg?

[Zeppelin-NT-Insider]

If Microsoft had built this....
- it would never fly... grounded for safty reasons
- it would be to heavy to be even moved on the ground
- it would consume 1000 gallons per second...
- it would´nt look that nice - more like an overcolored rainbow

[pauljweighell]

Not a ?Zeppelin? !

Zeppelin was the brand name of Count Zeppelin and his company. Was this airship built in Germany by descendants of that company? I think not. I understand this airship was built by Airship Ventures so it?s an Airship Venture not a Zeppelin. Might as well call a Honda car a Duisenberg!

Future of flying?

Airships may not be the majority future of air travel as mentioned in some posts here but they seem more fuel efficient as all the fuel can be used for motion as the gas holds the airship up against gravity. In a conventional aircraft much of the fuel is used just keeping its mass up in the air.

Safety

Given a reasonable degree of good design and gas choice airships are failsafe, if an airship engine dies it still floats whereas a conventional aircraft is anything but failsafe as a failure of major components may cause it to crash.

Hydrogen Fuel In Cars?

As an aside I note the comments about hydrogen and airships and wonder if the general public will be pleased to have hydrogen fuelled motor cars for just the safety reasons mentioned here? All that hydrogen leaking out of al those pipes and tanks? Being atomic weight 1 hydrogen leaks through just about anything I am told. If one does not store it as very cold liquid it will escape and one day it will ignite?

[Zeppelin-NT-Insider]

The Zeppelin-NT was built in Friedrichshafen am Bodensee in Germany !
Look here : www.zeppelin-nt.de
IT is the ONLY real Zeppelin in the world.
IT was built by the rightful descendants of the Graf Zeppelin, the inventor of all Zeppelin-Airships !
IT is german high tech exspecially designed for these purposes.

[Zeppelin-NT-Insider]

Ah.. it is, of course, Number 4.
No. 1 was in africa
No. 2 is in Japan
No. 3 is in Germany for the DZR (German Zeppelin shipping company) www.zeppelinflug.de
No. 4 now in your country.
No. 5 > sorry still secret<
No. 6 >sorry still secret<
...
more to come soon.. :-)
Keep an eye on them, the zeppelin-nt familiy is growing.
The Airwhales are coming back :-)