Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know front House stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's with us, so
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff you should know. How you doing,
Speaker 1: I'm good man, this is I'm excited about this. Oh
Speaker 1: are you sure? Blimps? Yeah, because they have like eight names, blimp, dirigible, zeppelin, yeah,
Speaker 1: airship yeah. Uh well technically l t A I'm counting
Speaker 1: that lighter than airship, yeah, which I think is ultimately
Speaker 1: lighter than airship. L t A is the umbrella term
Speaker 1: for all of those things which are slightly different. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think an l t A and an airship is
Speaker 1: all of them. The dirigible is all of them, Zeppelin
Speaker 1: is rigid, and a blimp is non rigid. Nice and
Speaker 1: mostly we just said blimps. These days, not a lot
Speaker 1: of rigid airships, aren't there? But would they would they
Speaker 1: constitute Yeah? No, but there's they can be semi rigid
Speaker 1: or non rigid, right, yeah, and I think the future
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that obviously the end. But I think
Speaker 1: those are some of those are more the semi rigid style, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're made up some really lightweight but very strong
Speaker 1: composite materials. Yeah. Boom so Chuck. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: history of blimps because I think when anybody thinks of
Speaker 1: blimps they think Handenburg. They think they think the Handenburg
Speaker 1: and then maybe concurrently or right after the Good Year blimp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the two that really laid it on the
Speaker 1: line for blimp them. Uh. Yeah, you know what you
Speaker 1: want to talk about the early history, I guess, and
Speaker 1: then get to the tragedy. Yeah, because there wasn't that
Speaker 1: much time in between the two to tell you the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that all started, of course with hot air
Speaker 1: balloons because uh, they're not so different. In a cup
Speaker 1: of frenchees. Brothers Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michelle. They said
Speaker 1: they were brothers, but they have different Last night, I
Speaker 1: think Jacques Etienne is his first and middle name. Okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. They all had three names, uh, Mom, Golfier.
Speaker 1: They invented the hot air balloon, uh, an unmanned hot
Speaker 1: air balloon in three and then later that same year
Speaker 1: a French physicist last name de Rosier had the first
Speaker 1: manned balloon flight and they were just floating around because
Speaker 1: that's what our balloons do. You can go up and
Speaker 1: then if you're really good, you can come back down.
Speaker 1: But left and right that's up to mother nature right,
Speaker 1: which is a little scary, although I think these days
Speaker 1: can they steer them at all. We have a great
Speaker 1: article on this on hot air balloon. No, you're you're
Speaker 1: subject to the winds to the the um was the
Speaker 1: god of wind that you know he comes out of
Speaker 1: the cloud and blows wind. Yeah that guy. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're subject to his whim. So if if you're headed
Speaker 1: towards something, it's go over it or hit it. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you remember there's that terrible bloom hot air balloon
Speaker 1: accident and I think Virginia last year earlier this year
Speaker 1: at Yeah, like they hit a power line I think,
Speaker 1: and then the basket caught fire and like they had
Speaker 1: to jump. It was really bad. Um, But yeah, you
Speaker 1: can go up and over and I imagine it it's
Speaker 1: like a power line, yeah, or a tunnel if you're
Speaker 1: really good, or you're in a cartoon like the laugh Olympics,
Speaker 1: that's something they do in there totally. But the I
Speaker 1: think if you're really good, you could probably know where
Speaker 1: to steer into the wind to maybe use the wind.
Speaker 1: But no. With the blimp, the big distinction is, aside
Speaker 1: from its distinctive shape, is that you can maneuver like
Speaker 1: a pro That's right. And that's what Henry uh Jaffar
Speaker 1: did in eighteen fifty two when he finally someone said
Speaker 1: we should steer these things. He built the first powered
Speaker 1: airship and it was cigar fielled like the classic shape
Speaker 1: that we know and love now, had a propeller like
Speaker 1: they have now, and a little engine although it was
Speaker 1: a steam engine which they don't use now. Three horsepower
Speaker 1: steam engine. Yeah, they're not huge engines. Still didn't take
Speaker 1: a lot apparently, No, it really doesn't. Um And those
Speaker 1: were rigid airships. Uh, it's a it's a metal framework.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen hundred count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. That name
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, Zeppelin of Germany. Uh, and that's where they
Speaker 1: got the name, of course. Because but I never understood
Speaker 1: the Led the lead Well it was I think someone
Speaker 1: said as a joke, you guys are gonna go over
Speaker 1: like a led Zeppelin, or they did when they played
Speaker 1: on the BBC. Is that it? But why take the
Speaker 1: A out Because the same reason you take the A
Speaker 1: out of def Leppard. I've never understood that either in
Speaker 1: the same wings you put it um out over Motley Crue.
Speaker 1: This makes you cool, you know, different, different. You gotta
Speaker 1: mispel something in your band. I think I was just
Speaker 1: looking too deeply into it. It's the problem. Yeah. L
Speaker 1: E A d. Zeppelin would be weird. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think like our paradigm would have adjusted. We would think
Speaker 1: L E. D. Zeppelin would be weird if we were
Speaker 1: used to led Zeppelin with an A, or if the
Speaker 1: Beatles was spelled B E T L E S. Yeah,
Speaker 1: instead of their penny name very penny. All right, boy,
Speaker 1: we get sidetracks so easy with music stuff. Not really
Speaker 1: Zeppelin was I think people saw that coming before their
Speaker 1: press play. Uh So that was the rigid airship, the
Speaker 1: first one, and those have a metal framework, and it
Speaker 1: had tail fins and rudders, had combustion engines and could
Speaker 1: cruise at about feet with up to five people. Yes,
Speaker 1: not bad. You could bring the whole family as long
Speaker 1: as you encounter, as long as you total no more
Speaker 1: than five, as long as you paid off the captain.
Speaker 1: Well then you just have to be a family of four.
Speaker 1: That's right, because the captain's gotta sit somewhere, right, they
Speaker 1: got their little captain's chair. So everything was going quite swimmingly. Actually, Um,
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, there there was.
Speaker 1: It was just widely assumed that we would have a
Speaker 1: future where blimps that blinds were just a regular feature
Speaker 1: of the sky. Well they were up until the Hinderberg
Speaker 1: went down. There were more than two thousand flights carried um,
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of passengers over a million miles. Like
Speaker 1: that was air travel, we should say, ultra wealthy passengers
Speaker 1: at the time. Um. The Hinderberg in particular was it
Speaker 1: was high class. It was the pride of Nazi Germany. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was on its maiden voyage, wasn't it. It
Speaker 1: was almost called the Hitler by the way, was it really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But Hitler was like, I don't want my name on
Speaker 1: that thing. Really yet, not that he like foretold the future,
Speaker 1: He just didn't. I don't know. He just didn't want
Speaker 1: to him named after an airship. He didn't believe Freud's
Speaker 1: idea that sometimes the cigars just a cigar, yeah, or
Speaker 1: a cigar shaped airship is just a cigar shaped there
Speaker 1: and it crashed and burned too, So he was probably
Speaker 1: pretty stoked that he'd have his name on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he very famously went yeah when he heard the news exactly. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we should probably stopped making light of this nearly eighty
Speaker 1: year old tragedy because people did die, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, should we tell the story? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: it took off on May three seven, had thirty six
Speaker 1: passengers and officers and crew members and trainees, left Frankfort
Speaker 1: at about seven fifteen and then crossed out over the
Speaker 1: Atlantic at about two am the next day. It's not
Speaker 1: super fast travel. It was compared to the ship travel
Speaker 1: at the time. It was it took about half the
Speaker 1: time to cross the Atlantic as it did in a boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but compared to what we're used to Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: were just it was leisurely. Um And apparently after reading
Speaker 1: more about the Hindenburgh, it's not as um And I
Speaker 1: guess ship travels sort of the same way, like we're
Speaker 1: going to get there when we get there, like we're heading,
Speaker 1: we're trying to get there and then but you never
Speaker 1: know what gonna happen, right, That's why they called them
Speaker 1: the leisure class, that's right. Uh, it follows followed a
Speaker 1: northern track across the ocean. Um eventually crossed uh into
Speaker 1: North America, over the coast of Newfoundland and arrived in
Speaker 1: lake Hurst, New Jersey about twelve hours late. And um, Germans,
Speaker 1: they're always late, they're famous for it. And basically arrived
Speaker 1: there at the Naval air station, and because of poor weather,
Speaker 1: the captain and the commanding officer on the ground said,
Speaker 1: you know what, the weather is not so great. Let's
Speaker 1: wait a little bit, um, because they can fly around
Speaker 1: forever in those things. And he said, all right, well,
Speaker 1: the Jersey shore is nice. Let's just go fly about
Speaker 1: that and tell everyone to look around and look at
Speaker 1: all those old timey bathing suits and they're up to
Speaker 1: the ankles and water. Um. By six pm, UM conditions
Speaker 1: had improved and at six twelve he sent a message
Speaker 1: sand it's suitable for landing. Recommended landing now. About seven
Speaker 1: eight he finally UH pulled the blimp in. It was
Speaker 1: a bit of a dodgy approach, but he eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: got it down towards the ground pretty you know, uh skillfully, which,
Speaker 1: as we'll see, it's not as easy as you'd think,
Speaker 1: even though it's not in practice. No, they dropped the
Speaker 1: landing lines and then things went south like really fast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was filled with hydrogen, which is the lightest element, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh it's also probably the most flammable or one
Speaker 1: of them. Yes, inflammable was a big error at the time. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of blimps had caught on fire. This was
Speaker 1: not the first accident, and uh there was you know,
Speaker 1: people testified afterward, because not everyone died. We'll get to
Speaker 1: the numbers here at the end of the story. But um,
Speaker 1: there was testimony that, um, it appeared as if gas
Speaker 1: was pushing against the cover. Maybe it escaped from a
Speaker 1: gas cell. The first visible aimes appeared, and it varies,
Speaker 1: but most of witness to say that the first flames
Speaker 1: are either at the top of the hall uh, forward
Speaker 1: of the vertical fin or between the rear port engine
Speaker 1: in the port fin. And they described it as a
Speaker 1: mushroom shaped flower. And it pretty much engulfed the tail
Speaker 1: like right away, and it was able to remain steady
Speaker 1: for a little while. Like people could start jumping out
Speaker 1: at this point. Well, those are the people who died,
Speaker 1: correct Now, That's what I always heard, or that's what
Speaker 1: I have heard is that the people who stayed in
Speaker 1: the gondola lived and the people who jumped were the
Speaker 1: ones that died because the flames, because the hydrogen is light,
Speaker 1: they were burning upward. Well, it says here basically it
Speaker 1: was all depended on where you were. If you were
Speaker 1: close to a means of exit, you generally survived. Um,
Speaker 1: if you were deep inside the ship, like in the
Speaker 1: power room along the keel, or in the smoking room.
Speaker 1: Smoking room in the end, I'm supposed it wasn't all smoking,
Speaker 1: big blimpful of hydrogen. Oh yeah, yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: good yet. They had apparently a double um air locked door,
Speaker 1: one electric lighter and um you were allowed to smoke
Speaker 1: as long as you put it out before you left.
Speaker 1: And UM, so, like I said, if you were in
Speaker 1: the smoking room on B deck, you're in big trouble. Um.
Speaker 1: If you were one of the nine men closest to
Speaker 1: the front of the ship, you definitely didn't survive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So out of the ninety seven people on board sixty
Speaker 1: two survived. I think when you see the footage, I
Speaker 1: mean you can watch it on YouTube, it looks like
Speaker 1: how in the world could anyone survive it? Because it
Speaker 1: goes I mean it's fully burned in less than a
Speaker 1: minute and on the ground went up fast. But sixty
Speaker 1: two to survive, thirteen of the thirty six passengers and
Speaker 1: twenty two of the sixty one crew. And there's still
Speaker 1: two guys alive today. Yeah, we checked two years ago,
Speaker 1: but they don't like to talk about it. I can
Speaker 1: imagine there's one kinetic experience. They're both named Verner, Verner
Speaker 1: Franz and wernerd Doner. The two Verner and one was
Speaker 1: a little cabin boy and one was a passenger with
Speaker 1: his family. And uh, they were contacted for like the
Speaker 1: you know, the ceremony. I guess you don't call it
Speaker 1: an anniversary. I guess, uh memorial. Yeah, it just sounds
Speaker 1: like a party, you know. But they said, no, we're
Speaker 1: not coming. We don't like to talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's been a long standing mystery exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: And I found an article in the UK Independent from
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen about a study from that year that
Speaker 1: found they said they they figured it out. They built
Speaker 1: like scale models of the Hindenburg, which was like two
Speaker 1: and a half football fields long. By the way, they
Speaker 1: were building scale models that were like like sixty ft long,
Speaker 1: so good sized ones, and they tried to blow them
Speaker 1: up because there was a rumor that it was sabotage.
Speaker 1: You know that everybody hated the Nazis even then. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, they tried all all manners stuff, and what
Speaker 1: they finally figured out was that probably what happened was
Speaker 1: from being in that stormy weather, that exterior the envelope
Speaker 1: of the blimp became um electrified, and when the ground
Speaker 1: crew ran up and grabbed the cables, they completed the
Speaker 1: current from the blimp to the ground, which caused a
Speaker 1: spark which actually um ignited a hydrogen leak that fire
Speaker 1: caused out. Yeah. Yeah. One thing they say it definitely
Speaker 1: isn't which they long thought it was, was the actual
Speaker 1: fabric was like painted in this flammable stuff, and that's
Speaker 1: not true. It was the standard fabric. It was just
Speaker 1: a big balloon fill of hydrogen. Yeah. So when that happened, Um,
Speaker 1: the future of blimps were just pretty much like that
Speaker 1: was it for blimps. That wasn't the immediate end. But
Speaker 1: as far as like commercial blimp travel, that's tough for
Speaker 1: an industry to get over. So it kind of fell
Speaker 1: on the wayside, although they did continue on UM in
Speaker 1: a couple of forms. Up until the sixties, the US government,
Speaker 1: especially the Navy, maintained blimps. One of the UM I
Speaker 1: think that I guess the Air Force. I don't know
Speaker 1: is the Navy, but one of the branches of the
Speaker 1: U s military use blimps as UM giant aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: of the air, not not the sea, the air, which
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. And apparently they had them so you
Speaker 1: could connect like a light plane to what's called like
Speaker 1: a trapeeze mechanism coming out of the bottom of the
Speaker 1: blimps and just like hook your plane on, climb up
Speaker 1: and say, hey, guys, where are we going? Or you
Speaker 1: can take off from there too. What yes, how do
Speaker 1: you take off? You just drop I think you just
Speaker 1: released the hook from the trapeez and starting of free
Speaker 1: fall and then you just go often to the distance
Speaker 1: and go thanks for the ride, lady. That sounds really weird. UM.
Speaker 1: And they had even bigger plans that were never realized
Speaker 1: because the Navy scrapped the program, and I think nineteen
Speaker 1: two UM to have like a landing strip on top
Speaker 1: of the blimp so you could have just like planes
Speaker 1: takeoff and land and then be stored like in the blimp,
Speaker 1: which would have been pretty awesome. Well, cargo airships are
Speaker 1: the wave of the future, perhaps, so we'll see. So,
Speaker 1: but that was the military was involved in blimps for
Speaker 1: most of the first half of the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: then um, our friends a good Year came up with
Speaker 1: a blimp that has really served them well. Like they
Speaker 1: were making blimps for the military, and then um they
Speaker 1: started using them for commercial purposes and everybody knows about
Speaker 1: good Year thanks to those blimps. Yeah, and they're going
Speaker 1: to figure in here, of course, because you can't talk
Speaker 1: about blimps a lot without a ton of buzz marketing
Speaker 1: for good Year. Um. But you know that's where they
Speaker 1: make their name. In fact, my in laws almost wrote
Speaker 1: on the one based out of Akron because that's where
Speaker 1: they're from. And they think he was going to put
Speaker 1: in a bid on a like an auction bid to
Speaker 1: win a trip Nate, And I think it never happened.
Speaker 1: The trip never happened. I think he either lost the bid.
Speaker 1: I'll have to ask him, but I don't think they
Speaker 1: ever wrote on the blimp. Okay, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: if the trip never happened. That doesn't sound like the
Speaker 1: good Year I know. No, No, they're very uh, they're
Speaker 1: like the Germans. So they've got there's three, um good
Speaker 1: Year blimps. Actually there's one and I believe Texas, there's
Speaker 1: one in California. There's one in Ohio orres A, Florida, California,
Speaker 1: and Ohio is what it is. I'm sorry. Um, the
Speaker 1: spirit of good Year, the spirit of America, the spirit
Speaker 1: of innovation, and chuck. About the time this episode comes out,
Speaker 1: Robin Roberts, the TV personality, is going to be christening
Speaker 1: the newest member of the fleet, the wing foot one. Nice.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna have four, Yeah, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of sporting events there. Sure, and you can't watch a
Speaker 1: big sporting event without hearing the words uh aerial coverage
Speaker 1: provided by good Year. Yeah. And those shots, man, they're
Speaker 1: pretty great, they really are. We haven't been around forever.
Speaker 1: It was I think an Orange Bowl in Miami where
Speaker 1: the first one was broadcast and what like the sixties
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, something like that, and it changed America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it um certainly gives them a lot of press
Speaker 1: and saves well, I don't know about saves some money.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen their balance sheet, but it's they don't
Speaker 1: have to spend money on that thirty second spot. They
Speaker 1: still do to tie into the blimp, but it's great
Speaker 1: advertising for them. Yeah. Um. They also were good Sports
Speaker 1: in a movie called Black Sunday. Did you ever see
Speaker 1: that movie? Of course I never saw it. Um, but
Speaker 1: apparently they provided Um, they provided some of the footage
Speaker 1: for the movie, and UM let their blimps be used. Uh,
Speaker 1: and let their name be used even like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like the the Good Wire blimp. You know, they didn't
Speaker 1: try to have to change it just enough. They used Goodyear,
Speaker 1: which made the whole thing even more terrifying and realistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they wanted to kill everyone at the super Bowl. That
Speaker 1: was the plot. Uh, with a blimp right that shot darts,
Speaker 1: which is weird. But it was written by the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote Silence of the Lambs. Oh. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: good writer. Have you ever read any of his books?
Speaker 1: Oh he was the book writer. Oh no, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. No, I haven't read any of Silence at
Speaker 1: the way. He does very good research. Interesting guy. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so good Year good Year in the military. After the Hindenburg.
Speaker 1: That was the two cases of blimps. But like you said,
Speaker 1: there is potentially a future for blimps, which we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: But first let's talk about how blimps work in general.
Speaker 1: After these messages, you want to know how blimps work, buddy,
Speaker 1: I do it pretty simple. This was the delight to
Speaker 1: learn because it was like, oh, I thought would be
Speaker 1: just that little to it. And that's really kind of
Speaker 1: the case, right, Yeah, yeah, there's not like oh and
Speaker 1: here's where it gets really hard. They're like the pontoon
Speaker 1: boats of the sky. Yeah. Like the most complicated thing
Speaker 1: on the blimp is probably the gyroscopic camera on the
Speaker 1: front of it to film the football stadium. I think
Speaker 1: you're right. Uh So, let's talk about the anatomy of
Speaker 1: a blamp you have. You mentioned the envelope earlier. That
Speaker 1: is the thing that you're looking at. That is key
Speaker 1: big cigar shaped balloon. It's filled nowadays with helium. It
Speaker 1: is that shape because of aerodynamics, of course, and they
Speaker 1: are super lightweight and super strong. Like you were saying,
Speaker 1: neoprene to ply neoprene polyester generally, is that what the
Speaker 1: envelopes made of. There's a company um called the i
Speaker 1: LC Dover Corporation. They make a lot of skins UM
Speaker 1: and they use the same material that they make UM
Speaker 1: space suits out of for NASA for blimps. Too good
Speaker 1: enough for Neil Armstrong, Buddy, good enough for my blimp.
Speaker 1: This is like all about Ohio. This one. Oh was here, Ohio? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I let have done it. So it was good here. No,
Speaker 1: No I knew that. Um, there were your in laws.
Speaker 1: That's right. The envelopes they hold UM. And it depends
Speaker 1: on the blimps for all of these statistics, of course.
Speaker 1: But between sixty seven thousand and two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand cubic feet of helium and um, it's not super
Speaker 1: The pressure is really low inside point zero seven pounds
Speaker 1: per square inch. So that's why if you shot a
Speaker 1: blimp it wouldn't like fall. No, I just leak very
Speaker 1: slowly and you just land it and patch it up.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, very slowly. Yeah. British Ministry of Defense
Speaker 1: fired hundreds of bullets into an airship just for fun, well,
Speaker 1: not to see what if it would could be shot
Speaker 1: down in battle basically, and uh it took many hours
Speaker 1: to deflate and land. So and they don't even deflate them.
Speaker 1: They just leave them that way, so they're they're natural
Speaker 1: structure will not natural, but their original structure UM events
Speaker 1: them from being shot down. That's one big benefit. Because
Speaker 1: I was wondering about that. I was like, you're just
Speaker 1: providing a target for every teenager with a gun in
Speaker 1: any country that you hover a blimp over. UM. Now
Speaker 1: I understand. But secondly, as we'll see, it also has
Speaker 1: to do with the dynamics of the flight of UM
Speaker 1: hovering in the atmosphere. UM. So you've got the envelope,
Speaker 1: and the envelope also has something called nose cone battons,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a support structure for the nose
Speaker 1: the front of it just the very very tip, and
Speaker 1: it keeps the the the the blimps front from being
Speaker 1: mashed in as it moves forward, which is pretty smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I misspoke. The nose cone is on just
Speaker 1: the very tip, and then the batons are like the
Speaker 1: fingers that distribute the stress over the front of the cone. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they're like the the the structure that comes out
Speaker 1: of the nose, right, and then also on the nose
Speaker 1: as the mooring um hook. Because you've got to hook
Speaker 1: a blimp up to something. Yeah, it's got a little
Speaker 1: spindle there, and it's got a little wheel under the
Speaker 1: tail rudder, and that's basically how it sits. You just
Speaker 1: tie it down. Yeah, very simple. Um, just like a balloon.
Speaker 1: That's right. So there's here's where it gets a little craftier,
Speaker 1: like nineteen century crafty, but still neat nonetheless. Um, there's
Speaker 1: something called balonetts, right, and these are basically air bladders
Speaker 1: that are located within the envelope, and you inflate or
Speaker 1: deflate them depending on whether you want the blimp to
Speaker 1: go up or down. If you wanted to go up,
Speaker 1: you deflate these balonets. You wanted to go down, you
Speaker 1: inflate them. And the reason that works is because you're
Speaker 1: inflating or you're inflating these balonettes with air and helium,
Speaker 1: which blimps fly using now is lighter than air. So
Speaker 1: more air means the blimps heavier, so it goes down.
Speaker 1: Less air means it's lighter, so it goes up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy. It's sort of like how a submarine
Speaker 1: opera rates. Um. And there's one in the four and
Speaker 1: one in the aft, so that's how you control your trim.
Speaker 1: You can just knows it up or knows it down,
Speaker 1: filling up or deflating. That's the pitch axis, that's right,
Speaker 1: or trim Okay, well, the trim is the levelness okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the axis where the nose and the back go
Speaker 1: up and down, that's the trim axis. You know, the
Speaker 1: pitch axis, right, yeah, okay, no one can see not
Speaker 1: in agreement, okay, um chuck. Then there's the caternary curtain
Speaker 1: and the suspension cables, which I didn't get the caternary
Speaker 1: curtain really I understood. The suspension cable is just fine. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's on the on the inside about off center. Um.
Speaker 1: And it basically if you look, it sort of looks
Speaker 1: like the where you attach the basket to the hot
Speaker 1: air balloon. They all, um, you know, there's a number
Speaker 1: of these lines that run down and I'll meet at
Speaker 1: a single point, um near the gondola, right, and that's
Speaker 1: what you attach the gondola to the blimp using right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So basically, if if you if the blimp envelope wasn't there,
Speaker 1: it would sort of look like a hot air balloon.
Speaker 1: It would have these lines that run up from the
Speaker 1: gondola a k A basket up to the top, so
Speaker 1: they would be like the um vertical lines are the
Speaker 1: horizontal lines. Okay, I understand exact amundo. Um. Then you've
Speaker 1: got the really technical stuff, the flight control surfaces. So
Speaker 1: everything we've just described as basically balloons and then the
Speaker 1: structure that gives the balloon it's shape, right and then um,
Speaker 1: the flight control surfaces are basically a rudder and elevators
Speaker 1: and they're the things that you can control to make
Speaker 1: the balloon till upward or side to side. That's pretty
Speaker 1: much it. Yeah, there's that one rudder on the top
Speaker 1: and bottom and that controls your yaw and you do
Speaker 1: it with little If you look at the captain's sherry,
Speaker 1: he's got a little little foot pedals. It's like a
Speaker 1: clutch pedal you would put in, push in and um.
Speaker 1: On the bottom very bottom back of the rudder, there's
Speaker 1: something called a boost tab and that's just a little additional, uh,
Speaker 1: sectioned off piece of the rudder that's also controllable. It's
Speaker 1: like a little mini rudder and um it assists with
Speaker 1: the rudder I think to make an even tighter turn.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine just the smaller rudder as part
Speaker 1: of the main rudder, just to give you that extra boost,
Speaker 1: I guess when you need to turn. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: there's two elevators and they um. If you are sitting
Speaker 1: in your little captain's chair, imagine a car steering wheel
Speaker 1: placed vertically like by your side. And that's just a
Speaker 1: wheel that you turn up and turn down. It's really
Speaker 1: very basic. It sounds like the Wizard of Oz. The curtain,
Speaker 1: like all the machineries messing with it looks very steampunky
Speaker 1: when you look at it. Uh. So you steer up
Speaker 1: or down with that wheel, and uh, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Don't forget the engines. Oh well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean as far as like driving this puppy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The flight control Yeah, this is what separates it from
Speaker 1: hot air balloons. Don't forget the engines. Know the hot
Speaker 1: the well, yeah, the engines, but also the flight control services.
Speaker 1: But the engines are turbo prop engines. Right. There's twin ones,
Speaker 1: which means there's two one on each side of the
Speaker 1: gondola at the rear, and they're pretty cool because they
Speaker 1: propeled the thing forward but very cleverly. There's also something
Speaker 1: called air scoops that are basically these funnels that face
Speaker 1: the back of the turbo prop and they catch the
Speaker 1: vented air out of the props and they use those
Speaker 1: to inflate the balonetts. Yeah, that's called prop wash. This
Speaker 1: is all the lingo I've learned. That's good stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the engines are just six cylinder engines. Like I
Speaker 1: said that, you don't need a ton of power to
Speaker 1: power these things. And you can go at about thirty
Speaker 1: the seventy This says miles per hour, not knots. So
Speaker 1: how about that? And seventies cruising apparently, like fifty is
Speaker 1: where you want to be get this. I did the calculations.
Speaker 1: So one of the um one of the great advantages
Speaker 1: blimps have, which is the reason we've been talking about
Speaker 1: these things, or anybody's talking about still making blimps, is
Speaker 1: that they can stay aloft for days, weeks, even um,
Speaker 1: which gives them a huge advantage of our airplanes, which
Speaker 1: have to stop and refuel and stop and refuel. But
Speaker 1: going seventy miles per hour chuck, a blimp NonStop at
Speaker 1: that rate could travel the circumference of the Earth around
Speaker 1: the equator in fourteen days. That in the fuel, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think is not very hard. No, they at
Speaker 1: thirty knots. The sky ship, which is this one example.
Speaker 1: UM consumes about eight gallons of fuel per hour, so
Speaker 1: apparently during an entire week of operations, it consumes less
Speaker 1: fuel than a seven sixties seven commercial jet uses to
Speaker 1: move away from the gate. So it's super green, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. You can understand why cargo companies
Speaker 1: are looking at them too. Yeah, and that's it runs
Speaker 1: on av gas, of course, not just regular old gas.
Speaker 1: You couldn't pull it up to a gas station like
Speaker 1: your car because I think av gas is still leaded
Speaker 1: or a lot of it is. Oh and that's the
Speaker 1: diff that's not that cream. Yeah, true, but they're not
Speaker 1: burning much of it. Uh. So let's see what else
Speaker 1: is there. The valves. You've got to be able to
Speaker 1: let air in and out. You also want to be
Speaker 1: able to let air in and out of the envelope
Speaker 1: itself in case things become too pressurized. You don't want
Speaker 1: to pop. Yeah, that's true. So you've got your air
Speaker 1: valves for the UM for the bladders inside, and they're underneath.
Speaker 1: Uh to tow up front, two in the back, and
Speaker 1: then you have your helium valve and you can either
Speaker 1: vent it and you don't have to do this much
Speaker 1: because you should have it pretty like the pressure set um.
Speaker 1: But if something does happen, you can either manually do
Speaker 1: it or it's set to automatically release. And if you
Speaker 1: look at the good Year blimp, it's sort of been
Speaker 1: the y of a Year, just looks like a little
Speaker 1: gas cap. You really know you're blimps man. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I went to the good Year site. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: You can like there's all sorts of animated jifts and
Speaker 1: or is it gifts? I never could yeah, yeah, graphic interface. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there is a correct way. I just don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. Well, the guy who created gifts says
Speaker 1: he pronounces it Jeff oh wrench in the works, but
Speaker 1: I disagree with him. Morgellons give the good Year Blimp gondola,
Speaker 1: which is where we are now, is twenty two point
Speaker 1: seven five ft long. It is aluminum on welded steel
Speaker 1: frame and that's where everyone rides. Um. Depending on your blimp,
Speaker 1: it's gonna hold up to well. It depends on how
Speaker 1: big the blimp, but usually you don't see a blimp
Speaker 1: with more than twelve passengers or so. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: not even necessarily passengers. The gondola can also be the
Speaker 1: place where it holds all of the surveillance equipment to
Speaker 1: depending on what you use it for, or it can
Speaker 1: also be the massive cargo hold. Yeah, you've got your
Speaker 1: communications up there, your flight surface controls, any KNAB equipment,
Speaker 1: UM propeller controls. That's where all the there's there's not
Speaker 1: much else to it besides what what you got there
Speaker 1: in the gondola. What's funny is um I always thought
Speaker 1: blimps were basically like, you know, you you get the
Speaker 1: blimp in the air and it takes off and then
Speaker 1: that's it. But it's it's at least with good Year.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like UM got helicopter parents almost because
Speaker 1: when the blimp. When you see the blimp, if you
Speaker 1: look around, you'll also find a ground crew with a bus,
Speaker 1: uh eighteen wheeler and a bunch of vans that follow
Speaker 1: it everywhere because I guess those things break down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently the pilots to their f A certified and
Speaker 1: Goodyear pilots also have another training program. But the pilots
Speaker 1: are even it's all sort of everyone is cross trained.
Speaker 1: It sounds like to work on the ground or make
Speaker 1: repairs and um, yeah, it's like a little self contained unit,
Speaker 1: all just traveling around together like a like h tornado chasers.
Speaker 1: Oh and you talked about um the end. You know,
Speaker 1: if they just took off and floated around, if the
Speaker 1: engines did stop, that's exactly what you're doing. You're basically
Speaker 1: a hot air balloon at that point, so you lose
Speaker 1: control of the flight service controls. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: if it's they call it a free balloon, so it's
Speaker 1: buoyant um, and it's kept aloft obviously, But if they
Speaker 1: lose all the power, then all you can do is
Speaker 1: ascend and descend. Because I think I guess the rudders
Speaker 1: and the elevators are also powered mechanisms, just not just
Speaker 1: attached to a cable attached to a pedal attached to
Speaker 1: a wheel of the ne's It sounds like it is though,
Speaker 1: And as far as weather goes, they compare it to
Speaker 1: roughly operating is about as similar as a helicopter. Like
Speaker 1: we can fly in bad weather, um, but we try
Speaker 1: to avoid super bad weather. Yeah. I don't blame them
Speaker 1: because I mean, that's not fun you want to be
Speaker 1: above the rose bowl in like seventy degree weather. So
Speaker 1: coming up, we're gonna talk about how blimps fly, and
Speaker 1: then also the future of blimps and if there is
Speaker 1: such a thing after this. So chuck. The way blimps
Speaker 1: flies pretty simple and beautiful and elegant if you ask me, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you have helium, right, yeah, which is they used
Speaker 1: to use hydrogen. Helium slightly heavier than um hydrogen, but
Speaker 1: not that much more. You don't notice the difference, I
Speaker 1: would guess, Yeah, I mean you get why they use hydrogen.
Speaker 1: They weren't dummies. It was lighter than air, the lightest
Speaker 1: of all the gas of all the elements from what
Speaker 1: I understand um. And when hydrogen blew up, they said, okay,
Speaker 1: not hydrogen. What else do we have? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: helium works, and so they started using helium. And helium
Speaker 1: has a lift of lift capacity of point seventy pounds
Speaker 1: per square foot, right, which is one point one kilograms
Speaker 1: per square meter um, which means it can lift a
Speaker 1: pretty decent amount of wait for just a little bit amount.
Speaker 1: And since they're filling these balloons with hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of cubic feet or cubic meters of these um of helium.
Speaker 1: They can look tons and tons of weight, and they
Speaker 1: do it by just simple physics, since helium is lighter
Speaker 1: than air. As long as the helium has enough lifting
Speaker 1: power to lift whatever the envelope and the gondola and
Speaker 1: all of the mechanisms way, and it will rise more
Speaker 1: than the air. It will rise into the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called positive buoyancy, and what you want as a
Speaker 1: blimp pilot is neutral buoyancy. So that's why you're gonna control,
Speaker 1: like we talked about your air bladders to uh get
Speaker 1: that thing where it's Once you've got your cruising altitude,
Speaker 1: you just want to be at the same level you
Speaker 1: want and you want to fill it up by blowing
Speaker 1: exhausted into your air scoops which fill up your balonets.
Speaker 1: And the higher you get into the atmosphere, the less
Speaker 1: pressure there is, which means the higher up you could
Speaker 1: float conceivably, So you want to make sure you get
Speaker 1: that air in so you don't just float away and
Speaker 1: you achieve is it negative buoyancy or neutral buoyancy? You said,
Speaker 1: that's what you want, and then when you want to land,
Speaker 1: you do just the opposite. Um, you fill it up
Speaker 1: with even more air and then you make the blimp
Speaker 1: heavier than the helium inside can lift and it just
Speaker 1: slowly comes down to the ground. And I mean that's it.
Speaker 1: That's how blimps rise and fall. Yeah, it is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: And when they're on the ground, they just tie it
Speaker 1: to that little spindle. You've got your little wheel under
Speaker 1: the rear. You got a little tractor to tow it around,
Speaker 1: maybe a hanger. And uh, that's the life of a blimp.
Speaker 1: And it's like I said, they don't inflate and deflate these.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a time and expense. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think they're running out of helium too. Didn't we learn that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you know much about that? Well, we we covered
Speaker 1: it and uh, the probably the Mars turbine up Mars turbine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was it. But I read a really interesting article
Speaker 1: and I think the New Republic, I can't remember. I
Speaker 1: found it online last night, and um, it's about the
Speaker 1: helium shortage and why we have a helium shortage and
Speaker 1: apparently the US has had a reserve, a strategic helium
Speaker 1: reserve since in a cave in Texas and Apparently during
Speaker 1: the Clinton era, the government said, let's make some money
Speaker 1: off of this, or let's make our money back off
Speaker 1: of it, so they passed it all that said start
Speaker 1: selling the stuff off Bureau of Land Management, but only
Speaker 1: make enough money off of it to recoup whatever we've
Speaker 1: put into it over the years, which is like one
Speaker 1: billion dollars. So they started selling it, and by setting
Speaker 1: the price artificially, they created an artificial market. Because this
Speaker 1: is like of the world's helium reserves in this cave
Speaker 1: in Texas. So whatever the BLM was selling it for,
Speaker 1: that's how much the market value was. But it was artificial,
Speaker 1: so you had artificially cheap helium flooding the market, which
Speaker 1: had a two pronged effect. One, it led to these
Speaker 1: scarcities that we're running into now because they just started
Speaker 1: selling it off in a fire sale the private industry.
Speaker 1: But the other more positive effect it had was that
Speaker 1: it spurred all of this technological innovation because nuclear magnetic resonance,
Speaker 1: the technology behind m ri I superconductivity UM molecular analysis,
Speaker 1: uses helium two super cool magnets to turn them into superconductors, right,
Speaker 1: so you need helium for that. So all these industries
Speaker 1: were using this helium from the Beer of land management
Speaker 1: to like advanced technology by leaps and bounds, which is
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons why we are where we
Speaker 1: are right now technologically speaking because of helium. But now
Speaker 1: we're starting to run out. There's I think nine billion
Speaker 1: cubic feet of helium left in the reserve in Texas,
Speaker 1: which is about a third of what they had when
Speaker 1: they started selling it off in the nineties, which would
Speaker 1: be fine if we just clamped it out and said, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a reserve again. But instead, for some reason,
Speaker 1: the government just doubled down and issued another decree to
Speaker 1: the beer of land management is like, keep selling this stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's just get rid of all of it for no
Speaker 1: good reason. I don't understand why. Like it made sense
Speaker 1: in the nineties maybe, and it had all these great effects,
Speaker 1: but now it's like, okay, we understand that helium is
Speaker 1: literally irreplaceable, as the article put it, like there's once
Speaker 1: there's no helium. There's no helium, Like we can't go
Speaker 1: get it anywhere else for manufacturer, and we have no
Speaker 1: technology to recycle it. I wonder what the reason is.
Speaker 1: I guess money private industry has a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in it, and there's good interest too, like using it
Speaker 1: for m R S or pharmaceutical researcher that kind of parties. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. So med, the med and pharma sectors
Speaker 1: use tent of helium worldwide welding used. The seventeen percent
Speaker 1: because they use helium to weld party balloons equals eight
Speaker 1: percent of worldwide helium use. I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: party balloons are going to go the way of the
Speaker 1: dinosaur very soon, if they haven't already. And half of
Speaker 1: that is the stoner kid who operates the helium tank, right,
Speaker 1: just talking funny. Yeah, So that's the helium shortage. That's
Speaker 1: the skinny on it. So that I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: any other gas they could use for blimps. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like a giant waste. Or I wonder if
Speaker 1: they could, Like, do you like a hybrid so it's
Speaker 1: fueled by hot air like a balloon? Huh? Probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess we are at the future then in the future,
Speaker 1: and depending on who you ask, the future of airships
Speaker 1: is either super exciting and awesome and when you look
Speaker 1: at these they are or it's not going to be
Speaker 1: funded enough to really Um, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: money being pumped into it. Well, the government was for
Speaker 1: a little while with the Afghanistan war. The Department of
Speaker 1: Defense was like, give us new blimps. We want these
Speaker 1: things now. And all these companies ran in and we're like,
Speaker 1: here's your blimps, here's your blimps, give us some money.
Speaker 1: The problem is is the whole program got scrapped because
Speaker 1: nobody could fulfill the enormous orders. The d D was
Speaker 1: placing four helium Well that makes sense. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: military is interested because they basically, um could be uh
Speaker 1: a satellite function as a satellite like a ten ft satellite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. Um. There are people doing it though. Lockheed
Speaker 1: Martin has a P seven ninety one UM that is
Speaker 1: super cool looking. It is a try hall. If you
Speaker 1: look at it from the front, it looks sort of
Speaker 1: like three blimps squashed together. Um. And it has four
Speaker 1: big it looks like feet these disc shaped cushions that
Speaker 1: apparently for landing and these are also cool. There's um
Speaker 1: another one in California from Worldwide Aeroscorp. Called the dragon
Speaker 1: Dream and it's different look and it sort of looks
Speaker 1: like a whale shark. Did you see it. It's a
Speaker 1: single hall, I guess, but it's sort of kind of
Speaker 1: flattened out. Um, yeah, it looks like a whale shark.
Speaker 1: They they actually submitted that design to the d o
Speaker 1: D and when the d D scrapped the program. Um,
Speaker 1: they bought their design back because they want to go
Speaker 1: commercial like cargo carrier with it. Yeah. Well they're in
Speaker 1: trouble though, because the dragon died well, it had a
Speaker 1: roof collapse and a hangarya and they don't know if
Speaker 1: they have the money to even fix it and then continue. Well,
Speaker 1: they have another model called the mL eight sixties six
Speaker 1: that it sounds like they're putting their energy into. It's
Speaker 1: supposedly can carry two and fifty tons, which is more
Speaker 1: than twice the cargo payload of a cargo seven seventy twice.
Speaker 1: And again you mentioned how little fuel it takes to
Speaker 1: power these things. So it'll take a little while for
Speaker 1: you to get your package, but the company shipping it
Speaker 1: isn't going to spend too much money delivering it. I
Speaker 1: still say, if it's a military like to use as
Speaker 1: a cargo plane. I know you can't shoot a hole
Speaker 1: in it, but what if you launched the surface to
Speaker 1: air missile at it. You know it's still full of helium.
Speaker 1: That's doesn't sound like I don't know. They're so high
Speaker 1: up there you can't the fact that we have satellites
Speaker 1: and drones. It seems to me like the surveillance uses
Speaker 1: of blimps or preposterous, especially considering that we could be
Speaker 1: using that helium for medical purposes instead. You know, I agree,
Speaker 1: you got anything else on blimps? We got nothing else. Um,
Speaker 1: I got one other thing. If you were fascinated by
Speaker 1: the um the way blimps float, I think it's cool
Speaker 1: for some reason. I did a brain stuff video about that.
Speaker 1: You can calculate how many balloons it would take, like
Speaker 1: regular party balloons to lift yourself into the sky, and
Speaker 1: I made a video about it. So you go to
Speaker 1: a brain stuff show dot com and check it out. Uh,
Speaker 1: And if you want to read this article, you can
Speaker 1: go to how stuff works dot com type in how
Speaker 1: blimps work and it will bring it up. And I said,
Speaker 1: how stuff works. I think So that means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this, uh, sterilizing addicts.
Speaker 1: Remember that Old One did a show on whether or
Speaker 1: not it's legal to sterilize addicts. It turns out it is, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. Uh. And this is from someone
Speaker 1: who had a personal uh stake in it. Um. It's long,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna edit it in my head as I go. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just recently listen to your podcasts and sterilation sterilization of
Speaker 1: addicts had a personal story to share. Um. Until my
Speaker 1: mother is a fully recovered heroin addict and I'm grateful
Speaker 1: just to be alive. Until I was six, she was
Speaker 1: only an alcoholic. However, a drug addiction set in fast.
Speaker 1: My mother, brother, and myself, along with whatever scumbag boyfriend
Speaker 1: she had at the time, were constantly on the run
Speaker 1: from the police, looking for shelter and searching for food.
Speaker 1: My father is an upper middle class blue collar worker
Speaker 1: who always had a sound home environment. When my mother
Speaker 1: was sent to prison when I was ten, I was
Speaker 1: sent to live with my father. Always had food, a shower,
Speaker 1: and clean clothes. Was never in fear for being homeless. Uh.
Speaker 1: I live with my father for three years until I
Speaker 1: finally ran away. Once I regained contact with my mother.
Speaker 1: My father, even with his financial support, instability was never there,
Speaker 1: even though he was only a few feet away. My mother,
Speaker 1: even while on drugs, always listened and always cared about
Speaker 1: my thoughts and feelings, and that was what was important
Speaker 1: as a child. My mother eventually overcame her adictions cold
Speaker 1: Turkey because she could see it was damaging to me
Speaker 1: and my brother. And she's been cleaned for eleven years
Speaker 1: now and it's an amazing mother, an amazing grandmother to
Speaker 1: my nephew. I like to believe that seeing the harder
Speaker 1: side of life made me appreciate, uh, such things and
Speaker 1: be more humble and responsible, uh and fearful of what
Speaker 1: could happen if I slipped or did not take care
Speaker 1: of myself. I don't want to be the poster child
Speaker 1: for children of addicts. Whoever, I do believe that we
Speaker 1: are all in control of our own lives. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that is anonymized as Cornelius Jacobs, the seventh Corney Jake seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, you can read it. And I said,
Speaker 1: all anonymous anonymous size it is there some sort of
Speaker 1: name anonymizer on the internet. Now? He said, please do
Speaker 1: just make it something awesome, like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh,
Speaker 1: that's great and that's a cool ps. I've been secretly
Speaker 1: wanting Jerry to be the Tyler Dirden of your podcast.
Speaker 1: That even means like made up, but like we think
Speaker 1: she's real, but she's not. Okay, are you real, Jerry?
Speaker 1: Jerry says no, Nope, that answers that. Cornelius Jacobs the
Speaker 1: seventh and you read the Roman numerals correctly. Chuck this time?
Speaker 1: Good going? I I yeah. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with me and Chuck to tell us
Speaker 1: any story like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, um, please do.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
Speaker 1: go to our cool home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com