This was nowhere near the only deadly airship disaster, nor was it the last, but that’s not really what ended airship travel. With the advances in airplanes by the end of World War II, lighter-than-air ships just couldn’t compete. Even postwar piston aircraft were cruising at more than 3 times the speed of most airships with range to make nonstop transatlantic crossings, and once the jet age really started to take hold in the ’50s it was all over. I mean, by the ’60s multiple countries had started supersonic passenger aircraft programs. Not a lot of success there, but still there were nowhere near enough customers to support commercial service on airships when faster, cheaper options existed.
planes crash every day
in 2021 there were 21 commercial* plane crashes, zero fatal.
*couldn’t find data including non-commercial flights. i welcome corrections citing such data :)
edit: i think i am wrong, see roscoe’s comment below
This is what happens when your view of history is essentially the historical equivalent of pop culture. You end up saying idiot things on an idiot website for idiots.
Lots of people died in airships, the Hindenburg was the most exploding and dramatic, but it was not the first and only instance. In fact the Hindenburg was made up of parts from a previous airship that had also crashed.
It wasn't just one zeppelin. The US Navy experimented with airship aircraft carriers and both of them were lost in stormy weather. They're giant bags of gas, which means that turbulent air is a big problem.
The Empire State building had a airship mooring point at the top, but the constant updrafts meant the airship would be pointing nose-down while unloading.
They're just too unwieldy in all but the most calm conditions that there's not much use for them beyond writing "Ice Cube is a pimp" in the sky.
They kinda suck, and this isn't likely to change.
The Hindenburg was 245m long, carried around 50 crew plus 60 or so passengers. It needs all that length to have enough volume to lift that many people. The laws of physics are a limitation here; even figuring out a vaccum rigid air ship would only slightly improve this (it's a neat engineering problem, but not very practical for a variety of reasons). Maybe the crew size could shrink somewhat, but the fact is that you've got a giant thing for handling around 100 people.
An Airbus a380 is 72m long and carries over 500 passengers and crew.
The Hindenburg made the transatlantic journey in around 100 hours. You could consider it more like a cruise than a flight--you travel there in luxury and don't care that it takes longer. You would expect it to be priced accordingly. In fact, given the smaller passenger size compared to the crew size, I'd expect it to be priced like a river cruise rather than an ocean cruise. Those tend to be more exclusive and priced even higher.
Being ground crew for blimps was a dangerous job. You're holding onto a rope, and then the wind shifts and you get pulled with it. This could certainly be done more safely today with the right equipment. Don't expect the industry to actually do that without stiff regulations stepping in.
Overall, they suck and would only be a luxury travel option. Continental cargo is better done by trains. Trans continental cargo is better done by boats. There isn't much of a use case anywhere.
They are kind of impractical nowadays. Nobody wants to get somewhere slow.
For recreational "travel for the sake of travel" it'd be kind of cool. I'd wager that a zeppelin "sky cruise" would be more environmentally friendly than a traditional ocean cruise, and offer way more diverse views. That'd be a real sweet vacation, actually.
Some 15-minute explainer channel (maybe HAI) had a video about risk perception recently, and I think this would be a pretty good example.
Anon could ride a blimp. They're a thing.
https://zeppelinflug.de/de/zeppelin-fluege/rundfluege-ab-essen/muelheim
Zeppelins are just expensive and slow.
Never. They're just too impractical. Now solid-frame airships on the other hand? They'll probably never get off the drawing board.
There are companies trying to bring airships back. The Airlander 10 is expected to be flying flights over Spain in 2026.
One of the google guys is building a blimp company:
Zepplins were also the first major aerial recon device and they were experimental bombers in WW1 in the same way tractors were fitted with armor forming the first experimental tanks.
The USS Akron was a bigger (repeat) disaster, and was also the first zepplin aircraft carrier.
*edit: corrected like half a dozen fat finger typos I missed the first go. Eesh.
If you want to experience what modern zeppelining would be like hire a hot air balloon. That's all they'd exist as, a luxury curiosity like the horse drawn carriage that's been long since passed as a viable competitor in the transit market.
Jet aircraft basically destroyed every economical case you could possibly make for Zeppelins as anything but an alternative way to do balloon tours.
I just think they’re neat, a niche market of city sightseeing via rigid airship would make lots of money IMHO.
The Hindenburg was just a high-visibility hint that airships were not working out. Lighter-than-air craft, like jetpacks and flying cars, fall under the category of technically feasible inventions that are terrible for a wide variety of reasons we'd desperately like to ignore.
I mean they're probably fucking better than the unholy helicopter, to be honest. I'd probably like to see more research generally into hybrid airships, they're kinda sick. I dunno, I mean, on one hand, if we're all constantly complaining about jet fuel consumption being such a big issue, but still want air travel to be a thing, that seems like a pretty good method even if it's slower by some order of magnitude. I might be wrong on that, though, who knows, maybe the tradeoff is worth it, maybe big intercontinental ships are more efficient. Maybe there's some mass market hydrolysis rocket fuel jet idea, that someone might propose, and then it would get used as a way to greenwash basically what would be a normal jet that just runs on hydrogen derived from natural gas.
Somebody else said they could be a good alternative to cargo ships, which may or may not be the move over land, but I dunno, still probably trains beat them out on that 99 times outta 100.
I dunno, maybe if we get graphene, we'll be able to make the big vacuum bubble airships, and that would be really cool, but if we have graphene then we've kinda won a lot of other cool things too, so that's maybe one of the lesser theoretical technologies. Or maybe aluminum solves this?
I think what I've learned from the domestic train industry in america and from listening to podcasts about supersonic jets in the 50's is that none of this is so much a huge technological issue, as much as it is kind of just a political or purely cultural decision. We could have CRTs again, if we really wanted, or even plasma screens, right, but fuck that, you're getting LCD and LCD derivatives now and you're gonna like it. Maybe one thing or the other is "less efficient", right, but that doesn't actually mean anything. It's like freedom, it's a meta-value, it's a proxy for your actual values. If the thing you value most is like, disseminating durable displays all over the place, at a low cost, with low weight, then you're going to opt for LCDs. But if you were more into video quality or motion clarity or a more optimal contrast ratio, you might very well decide on another approach. If you want to read outside without taking a book, you go with e-ink, you don't go with LCD, you know? If that's your priority, if that's your value, if that's your value as shaped by the context. So just saying that zeppelins are "less efficient" than planes is kind of reliant on like, an unspoken definition of efficiency. It's just a simple matter of priorities.
Also, nearly everyone survived
The problem with internet is that peoples with believe this and not do some research by themself
Technically Zeppelin was a company that made passenger blimps or rigid airships, of which the last built was in 1959-1960 as the AEREON III. It was a helium filled design that failed to slow down in a crosswind and turn, leading to it's destruction during the testing phases.
it's a giant cock
