Airships are impractical, but I’d still like to fly in one.
Probably part of the reason they seem so luxurious is that they stopped flying them at the peak of their luxury. Meanwhile, planes started fairly luxurious but they’ve become more and more unpleasant for the passengers as time went on.
Still, even a business jet seems cramped and loud compared to what people had on ships like the Hindenburg. The amount of space inside makes it seem a lot more like a cruise ship than a plane.
If we have to have billionaires, couldn’t we at least get one eccentric one who has a cool personal airship instead of the penis rockets?
They could not compete with planes on price. If it takes a week for maybe 50 passengers to travel between continents, the passenger tickets would have to cover all operating expenses for the airship during that time.
A jet plane could do 10x as many trips and carry around 300 passengers each time
I think I read that a zeppelin ticket cost as much as the yearly salary for a teacher back in the day.
Airplanes are also hell and gone safer. Earth is too dense and her sky too thin to fool around with aerostatics
So… why don’t trains suffer from the same fall back then?
What do you mean? Trains did not travel between Europe and America. They have lower operating costs, more capacity and a lot more domestic passengers? They are also not limited by cargo weight.
This picture was not taken in 1936, it was taken in 1929 or 1930.
That’s R101, note her distinctive ring of circular intake vents around the nose. R101 crashed killing most of the passengers and crew in October of 1930, which pretty much killed British interest in airships. Her rival/cousin, R100, was scrapped the following year.
I’m unaware of any other airship that would have been flying in 1936 that moored to a high mast like that; the Germans preferred to moor their airships at ground level and load/unload via ramps directly to the surface like an ocean liner at a pier, the Americans never operated passenger airships. USS Akron and USS Macon were both aircraft carriers that used the vastly inferior yet safer helium as a lifting gas. Where R101 and Hindenberg crashed and burned, Akron and Macon merely crashed.
Great write up, ty
That doesn’t look dicey at all.
You’re just being crazy. What could possibly go wrong?
Sleep mode.
When it floats like that you have to fish it out and buy a new one.
This is really interesting to me, thanks for posting this as I haven’t seen it before.
One of my ancestors brothers was at the front of the R101 airship that flew a few years before this and crashed in France.
