In my view, the dream of the dirigible was intentionally destroyed by the (likely staged, i.e. bombed/sabotaged) public/publicized destruction of the hindenburg. It was the 9/11 of its day, and although airships were a largely european phenomenon (though americans had them as well) they were intentionally painted as “nazi” and “unsafe” through mass media after that.
Flying ships grant an autonomy and freedom to individuals that the MIC would not allow :( But the skies belong to us, and i hope to see them return - perhaps more as sail/kite powered vessels than as these diesel monsters.
Auguste picard, and many others, dreamed that balloon craft like this would unite the world and allow us to utilize the jetstream for peaceful purposes and keep the militaries out. Sadly this dream was murdered by tyrants and warmongers. And now we have to show identification, and submit to arbitrary search and abuse at “airports” instead of the free and unmolested travel that is our right :(
Imagine having a small neutrally buoyant craft moored to your place with a rope ladder...
The downside to airships like these is the wind. Fighting against the wind to get to your destination sucks in a low powered craft, if not outright impossible depending on conditions and power output. Maintenance needs to be high since you’re flying and crashing into the ground or ocean can be lethal. And letting everyone just fly as they wish would be brutal. Think of how bad traffic and accidents are in the city now, and how they’re not as bad because everyone’s on the ground already. Add in 1000 feet and some dickhead texting on his phone and running into your airship, or a bad driver coming in and plowing into 4 or more parked airships. We can’t have nice things because we’re slaves to love and can’t bear to cull the stupid out of our population. Best you can hope for is a jetsons style electric flying chair with a windscreen. Until you can’t charge it of course.
The downside to airships like these is the wind. Fighting against the wind to get to your destination sucks in a low powered craft, if not outright impossible depending on conditions and power output
It’s also their (potential) upside! You could say the same thing about sailing ships, and for the same reasons.
Maintenance needs to be high since you’re flying and crashing into the ground or ocean can be lethal
They certainly need to be robust, no doubt about that. You are more “floating” than flying though. Maintenance should be far less than an average jet airliner.
And letting everyone just fly as they wish would be brutal
If you are afraid of people having freedom, then you are afraid of yourself :(
I agree that letting people drive as they wish has been brutal, but this is largely to do with the speed they travel and their construction. Neutrally buoyant craft can be a lot more like bumper cars, there is a lot more distance and freedom of motion to avoid and or recover/decelerate from a collision, and speeds will generally be much lesser.
We can’t have nice things because we’re slaves to love and can’t bear to cull the stupid out of our population
Stupidity is an aspect of humanity, not an archetype. It cannot be bred nor murdered out. We are slaves to loveless, callous, ignorant [evil] slavers - not love.
Until you can’t charge it of course.
I agree there is a lot of r&d to do, but that’s exciting! Solar power might be a good way to go, even something as simple as simple as changing the color of the craft skin to absorb or deflect sunlight affecting buoyancy to rise or fall (gently).
Getting stuck in the age of sail was a thing. Waiting on the wind while you’re stranded and your supplies dwindling flat out sucks and can spell death if you’re not well supplied or rescued. Sailboats are still a thing albeit not popular anymore due to their drawbacks. Unpowered transoceanic flights are more of a niche than a desire of the average Joe.
Lessening the maintenance of a flying craft is something I won’t budge on and neither will any regulating body. Breaking down on the side of the road is terrible in extreme weather condtions(too hot or too cold) but at least you’re not falling out of the sky. A breakdown on an airship may be a gentle decent or it may be uncontrolled and slam the airship into a crowded freeway or a park or a school. If you’re leaving the ground, your maintenance MUST be a high priority, it can’t be lessened. Too much at stake for innocent people who had nothing to do with someone else scrimping on needed repairs.
Honestly I would love absolute freedom for all with its corresponding responsibility. But we have bad drivers, illegal drivers, hit and runs, risk takers and speeders(guilty). The airways are already fairly busy as is, adding millions more craft can be a nightmare for logistics. Right now any flying craft had to file a flight plan. A pain in the ass general drivers don’t need to do. Private pilot licenses already exist and could be expanded to include air ships if they were to increase in popularity but under no circumstances could an unlicensed party fly their airship. I would LOVE flying cars and VTOL anywhere, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds thought to see accidents and drawbacks associated with such a system.
As for the lower speed collisions being less of an issue, no sadly. It’s not the 1950’s with 5mph bumpers where it’s expected you’ll touch another vehicle. If your airship basket collides with my airships propeller, damage can be huge if not fatal for one or both crafts. You don’t see hot air balloons playing bumper cars for a reason. A casual bump to a high voltage power line can be instantly fatal. Bumping into a building could destroy your airship and everyone onboard could perish without much chance to escape safely.
I love flying. I wish I could do more of it. I’d own my own small plane if I had the means and the money to build my own landing strip on my ranch. But allowing every Tom Dick and Harry to have an airship and fly however they want is a recipe for disaster. When the world was younger and the sky was less busy im sure it would have been great for a time. But the world we live in doesn’t make it very easy to pull off now. The road has rules, the ocean has rules and the sky has rules. Once we reach the stars, there will still be shipping lanes and again more rules. I would much rather the rules be simple and fair to everybody but they haven’t put me in charge yet.
Getting stuck in the age of sail was a thing. Waiting on the wind while you’re stranded and your supplies dwindling flat out sucks and can spell death if you’re not well supplied or rescued. Sailboats are still a thing albeit not popular anymore due to their drawbacks. Unpowered transoceanic flights are more of a niche than a desire of the average Joe.
All true. Waiting on the wind with a craft that can rise or fall easily shouldn’t be nearly as problematic, but wind power is certainly slower and more unpredictable no matter how you slice it.
Lessening the maintenance of a flying craft is something I won’t budge on and neither will any regulating body
The “regulating bodies” are the ones that prevent such individual autonomy and access to the skies - it’s core to their purpose/existence. This isn’t about maintenance schedules, or adherence to them - and that wasn’t the reason or method the dream of the “average joe’s” access to the skies was crushed. In any case, the maintenance on a neutrally buoyant sailing vessel will unquestionably be much lesser on such vessels - though that is not to say less important! No one wants anybody falling out of the skies - especially not over our heads!
You don’t see hot air balloons playing bumper cars for a reason
No one is saying you should! The chances for such a thing are far lesser is all, and design can play a huge role in that (as it could in cars too if we didn’t live in a malthusian and industrialized nightmare)
I love flying. I wish I could do more of it. I’d own my own small plane if I had the means and the money to build my own landing strip on my ranch. But allowing every Tom Dick and Harry to have an airship and fly however they want is a recipe for disaster.
There would undoubtedly be growing pains, but i am not envisioning giving anyone jet engines. Such needed safety margins and techniques to achieve them will never exist with that attitude, and are the purpose of its popularization. Almost nothing would be as dangerous or suicidal as “ford’s nightmare” we are currently living anyway.
But the world we live in doesn’t make it very easy to pull off now. The road has rules, the ocean has rules and the sky has rules.
But not rules we would or did choose for ourselves. They are certainly to our detriment as result. There is a reason for such authoritarian militarization of the skies, and it is the same reason we can’t just humbly request the stolen airspace back. If we really want to take to the skies safely (and slower, in my view) it is on us to do it and do so with new techniques! Sitting around for our enemy to “do the right thing” and return what they stole is not a good or effective plan. Dirigibles don’t need runways and are vastly more “green”/efficient even when equipped with giant diesel engines.
Once we reach the stars
And what if i told you that such rhetoric was only ever scifi (fiction) pushed by mass media? Would you still be content to “wait for the enemy to return what they stole from us”? Even if such a place existed, does it sound like a good plan in that case?
Dirigibles are awesome.
In my view, the dream of the dirigible was intentionally destroyed by the (likely staged, i.e. bombed/sabotaged) public/publicized destruction of the hindenburg. It was the 9/11 of its day, and although airships were a largely european phenomenon (though americans had them as well) they were intentionally painted as “nazi” and “unsafe” through mass media after that.
Flying ships grant an autonomy and freedom to individuals that the MIC would not allow :( But the skies belong to us, and i hope to see them return - perhaps more as sail/kite powered vessels than as these diesel monsters.
Auguste picard, and many others, dreamed that balloon craft like this would unite the world and allow us to utilize the jetstream for peaceful purposes and keep the militaries out. Sadly this dream was murdered by tyrants and warmongers. And now we have to show identification, and submit to arbitrary search and abuse at “airports” instead of the free and unmolested travel that is our right :(
Imagine having a small neutrally buoyant craft moored to your place with a rope ladder...
The downside to airships like these is the wind. Fighting against the wind to get to your destination sucks in a low powered craft, if not outright impossible depending on conditions and power output. Maintenance needs to be high since you’re flying and crashing into the ground or ocean can be lethal. And letting everyone just fly as they wish would be brutal. Think of how bad traffic and accidents are in the city now, and how they’re not as bad because everyone’s on the ground already. Add in 1000 feet and some dickhead texting on his phone and running into your airship, or a bad driver coming in and plowing into 4 or more parked airships. We can’t have nice things because we’re slaves to love and can’t bear to cull the stupid out of our population. Best you can hope for is a jetsons style electric flying chair with a windscreen. Until you can’t charge it of course.
It’s also their (potential) upside! You could say the same thing about sailing ships, and for the same reasons.
They certainly need to be robust, no doubt about that. You are more “floating” than flying though. Maintenance should be far less than an average jet airliner.
If you are afraid of people having freedom, then you are afraid of yourself :(
I agree that letting people drive as they wish has been brutal, but this is largely to do with the speed they travel and their construction. Neutrally buoyant craft can be a lot more like bumper cars, there is a lot more distance and freedom of motion to avoid and or recover/decelerate from a collision, and speeds will generally be much lesser.
Stupidity is an aspect of humanity, not an archetype. It cannot be bred nor murdered out. We are slaves to loveless, callous, ignorant [evil] slavers - not love.
I agree there is a lot of r&d to do, but that’s exciting! Solar power might be a good way to go, even something as simple as simple as changing the color of the craft skin to absorb or deflect sunlight affecting buoyancy to rise or fall (gently).
Getting stuck in the age of sail was a thing. Waiting on the wind while you’re stranded and your supplies dwindling flat out sucks and can spell death if you’re not well supplied or rescued. Sailboats are still a thing albeit not popular anymore due to their drawbacks. Unpowered transoceanic flights are more of a niche than a desire of the average Joe.
Lessening the maintenance of a flying craft is something I won’t budge on and neither will any regulating body. Breaking down on the side of the road is terrible in extreme weather condtions(too hot or too cold) but at least you’re not falling out of the sky. A breakdown on an airship may be a gentle decent or it may be uncontrolled and slam the airship into a crowded freeway or a park or a school. If you’re leaving the ground, your maintenance MUST be a high priority, it can’t be lessened. Too much at stake for innocent people who had nothing to do with someone else scrimping on needed repairs.
Honestly I would love absolute freedom for all with its corresponding responsibility. But we have bad drivers, illegal drivers, hit and runs, risk takers and speeders(guilty). The airways are already fairly busy as is, adding millions more craft can be a nightmare for logistics. Right now any flying craft had to file a flight plan. A pain in the ass general drivers don’t need to do. Private pilot licenses already exist and could be expanded to include air ships if they were to increase in popularity but under no circumstances could an unlicensed party fly their airship. I would LOVE flying cars and VTOL anywhere, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds thought to see accidents and drawbacks associated with such a system.
As for the lower speed collisions being less of an issue, no sadly. It’s not the 1950’s with 5mph bumpers where it’s expected you’ll touch another vehicle. If your airship basket collides with my airships propeller, damage can be huge if not fatal for one or both crafts. You don’t see hot air balloons playing bumper cars for a reason. A casual bump to a high voltage power line can be instantly fatal. Bumping into a building could destroy your airship and everyone onboard could perish without much chance to escape safely.
I love flying. I wish I could do more of it. I’d own my own small plane if I had the means and the money to build my own landing strip on my ranch. But allowing every Tom Dick and Harry to have an airship and fly however they want is a recipe for disaster. When the world was younger and the sky was less busy im sure it would have been great for a time. But the world we live in doesn’t make it very easy to pull off now. The road has rules, the ocean has rules and the sky has rules. Once we reach the stars, there will still be shipping lanes and again more rules. I would much rather the rules be simple and fair to everybody but they haven’t put me in charge yet.
All true. Waiting on the wind with a craft that can rise or fall easily shouldn’t be nearly as problematic, but wind power is certainly slower and more unpredictable no matter how you slice it.
The “regulating bodies” are the ones that prevent such individual autonomy and access to the skies - it’s core to their purpose/existence. This isn’t about maintenance schedules, or adherence to them - and that wasn’t the reason or method the dream of the “average joe’s” access to the skies was crushed. In any case, the maintenance on a neutrally buoyant sailing vessel will unquestionably be much lesser on such vessels - though that is not to say less important! No one wants anybody falling out of the skies - especially not over our heads!
No one is saying you should! The chances for such a thing are far lesser is all, and design can play a huge role in that (as it could in cars too if we didn’t live in a malthusian and industrialized nightmare)
There would undoubtedly be growing pains, but i am not envisioning giving anyone jet engines. Such needed safety margins and techniques to achieve them will never exist with that attitude, and are the purpose of its popularization. Almost nothing would be as dangerous or suicidal as “ford’s nightmare” we are currently living anyway.
But not rules we would or did choose for ourselves. They are certainly to our detriment as result. There is a reason for such authoritarian militarization of the skies, and it is the same reason we can’t just humbly request the stolen airspace back. If we really want to take to the skies safely (and slower, in my view) it is on us to do it and do so with new techniques! Sitting around for our enemy to “do the right thing” and return what they stole is not a good or effective plan. Dirigibles don’t need runways and are vastly more “green”/efficient even when equipped with giant diesel engines.
And what if i told you that such rhetoric was only ever scifi (fiction) pushed by mass media? Would you still be content to “wait for the enemy to return what they stole from us”? Even if such a place existed, does it sound like a good plan in that case?