the.com/airship
a balloon with ambition, drifting through the brief golden age before physics sent the bill
means A powered, steerable lighter-than-air craft, kept aloft by a gas-filled envelope rather than by wings — think dirigible or blimp.
from A plain English compound of "air" and "ship," stitched together in the 19th century when inventors imagined sailing the sky as one might sail the sea. "Air" traces back through Old French and Latin "aer" to Greek "aēr" (the lower atmosphere, the mist we breathe); "ship" is solid Germanic stock, from Old English "scip." The pairing was a hopeful one — a vessel for the ocean overhead — and for a few decades the metaphor held, until the Hindenburg made the comparison feel rather too literal.
- top speed
- Hindenburg cruised at about 80 mph
- lifting gas
- hydrogen: cheap, abundant, dramatically flammable
- size
- Hindenburg neared 800 feet, longer than three blue whales
- comeback bid
- modern firms chase cargo zeppelins burning less fuel
- slow death
- airplanes simply outran them by 1940
hindenburg — german lz 129 zeppelin that caught fire in lakehurst, new jersey on may 6, 1937, killing 35 of 97 people aboard
goodyear wingfoot three — american blimp that has been flying since 1975 and is one of the most recognized advertising airships in the world
norge expedition — italian airship that flew from norway to alaska in 1926, first to cross the arctic over the north pole