WEBVTT - Quick! To the Zeppelin! 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:14.000 Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.440 podcast that looks in the future and says up, up 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.840 and away in my beautiful balloon. I'm Jonathan Strickland and 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.240 I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren voc Obaum 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:25.400 is not with us today. She is out of town 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.000 this week, but she will be back again soon. Yes. 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:33.600 So the reason for the choice of lyric today is 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:37.320 because we have a listener request, a listener request which 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.839 we love. By the way, continue sending those in listeners. 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:42.360 We love getting those. This one comes from Benjamin on 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:44.800 Facebook and he says, I was wondering if there is 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.000 a future of airships. I know there is active research 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.560 into solar powered airships. Was the potential of taking old 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.960 technology and bringing it back as new? Well, Benjamin, we're 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:58.520 going to answer that question today and it turns out 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.080 that it's not just potential, people are actively working on this. 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.360 What but to hold on a second, So you're not 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:09.760 just talking about people going to steampunk conventions, no, which 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.080 are awesome. Uh, You're not just talking about in fantasy 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:17.000 worlds like BioShock, Infinite or like the Red Alert games no, 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.760 which are awesome, although some you can argue do not 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.240 feature the most awesome of acting. Oh no, oh, the 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:25.480 Red Alert games certainly do have the most awesome of 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.280 acting from Tim Curry and Udo Kier and a cast 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:32.679 of wonderful actors. Full motion video games really did a 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:36.759 number on Human Curry. There's so many great ones, Okay, 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.440 but they do seem to figure largely in our imagination. 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.720 People love airships. They're they're great in this sort of 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:47.840 retro tech world that people like to occupy in fantasy 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:49.800 and science fiction. And if you've ever seen I mean, 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:52.680 we see blimps here in Atlanta occasionally when they're flying 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.320 over the various like when they're flying over Turner Field, 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:57.840 which I guess we won't be seeing in a couple 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.440 more years, but at any rate, we see occasionally flying 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.760 around near the near where our office is. And just 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.919 seeing something that huge hanging in the air is kind 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.600 of phenomenal, right. I mean, it's it's something that you know, 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.200 it's it's enormous, and it feels like it shouldn't be there. 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.640 It's kind of it makes me think of, um, the 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.359 Douglas Adams thing from Hitchecker's guys, the galaxy. It hung 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:25.359 in the air the same way that bricks don't. That's 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:30.840 a nice Yeah. So anyway, airships certainly do have a 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.600 potential place in the future, and we wanted to talk 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.120 all about what they are, their history, and what they 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:41.200 could be. Yeah, tell me about airships. So an airship 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.080 is uh, usually if we're just if we're defining just 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.440 a straight out airship the classic sense, it's a lighter 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.600 than air aircraft. So you might say, how the heck 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:53.840 do you build something that's lighter than air? Well, the 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:58.120 components themselves are not lighter than air, like the like 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.920 the the material that makes up the envelope that holds 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.440 whatever is giving you buoyancy, that's gonna be heavier than air. 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.480 The container that's going to hold passengers or cargo, assuming 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.880 there is one, that's going to be heavier than air. 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.280 So what you need is something that is lighter than 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.000 the surrounding air, so that the airship as a whole 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.840 ends up being lighter than the air it displaces. Okay, 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.079 in fact, it just dawned on me, now that we're 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.080 talking about it, where the name airship must come from. 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.600 It's like a ship in that it floats. It's fluid. 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.400 It's in a fluid and it's maintaining its buoyancy by 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.960 I guess by having a larger surface area than its mass. Really, 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:43.000 it's yeah, it really comes down to weight. I mean, 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:44.480 it really comes down to weight. If you think of 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:49.720 it as the weight of the overall aircraft is less 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:52.720 than the air that it displaces, and it's going to 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.280 have buoyancy, which means it's going to float on the 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:57.560 air around it. Uh. And then of course you know what, 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:01.240 air gets thinner as you go further up, at least 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.240 to a point, and then so you need to have 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:07.560 be able to counteract that make it more buoyant if 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:11.560 you want to fly at those altitudes. But the predecessors 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:13.840 to the airships that we think of in the past, 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.159 like the great Ones of the past, the precessors were 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.279 hot air balloons, and there are a lot of different 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.919 records of various people experimenting with hot air balloons in 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:29.320 the past. There's there was the brothers Montgolfier, who actually 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.680 did so many early experiments and a lot of their 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.200 work was so influential that Montgolfier till is still a 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.600 term used to describe hot air balloons. Uh, they did 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:41.400 their work back in seventeen eighty three. They demonstrated hot 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:44.800 air balloons to French royals, who, if you know your history, 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.120 three in a few years they had bigger things on 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.760 their on their minds, but not for long because their 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:54.000 minds ended up being separated from the rest of their bodies. Um. 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:57.919 But you know French Revolution, it was. It was a 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.320 rough time for everybody. Okay, what they end up in 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.440 their balloons? So they sent up well, first of all, 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:04.880 their balloons were made out of taffada, but it was 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.280 varnished with alum. And they launched a sheet a duct 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:10.800 and I don't know what either of those things are. 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:15.600 What tafada? An album? You don't know taffada? Okay, tafada. Look, 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:17.880 you've lived in the South for how long and you've 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:22.000 never seen like a taffada dress my whole life. It's 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:26.760 a fabric. And then album was what allowed it to 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:30.880 remain gas tight, essentially hot air tight. That sounds like 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:35.040 some British slang for aluminium. No, did you ever did 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:38.760 you ever watching the Warner Brothers cartoons where they had 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.120 the album and a character would end up and countering 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:43.039 it and then their mouth would shrivel up into a 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.360 teeny tiny spot like it was the sourst thing they 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.840 had ever put in their mouths. Wow you have I've 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.480 got to educate you on cartoons, buddy. So anyway, it 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:55.480 was essentially to treat the material so it would keep 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.000 the hot air in. Okay, so they heat it up 0:05:58.040 --> 0:05:59.760 the air and the hot air balloon. That's what allowed 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.479 it to have a buoyancy. And again the sheep, duck 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:06.360 and rooster went on a little fun trip across the lake. 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.840 As I recall from from reading, I wasn't there. I 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:14.520 don't want to get that indication. Meanwhile, over in gay Paris, Jacques, 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:18.400 Charles and and the brothers Robert demonstrated a balloon that 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.720 used hydrogen rather than hot air to achieve buoyancy. So 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:26.480 hydrogen weighs less than than air. It's lighter than air, right, um, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.960 also helium same thing, so not not the helium and 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:32.359 hydrogen or the same thing. They're not, but it's also 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.679 lighter than air. There are some fundamental differences between helium 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.400 and hydrogen that we'll talk about in this podcast, but 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.320 at any rate, uh, that ended up being kind of 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:45.600 the three main options for achieving buoyancy with a lighter 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.520 than air aircraft. Either you use hot air, or you 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:53.479 use helium, or you use hydrogen two create that that 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.039 bulliant nature that you need in order for you to 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.520 fly now. Flying in those early days what pretty much 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:01.800 meant outing that you didn't have a whole lot of 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.680 control over where you went. In fact, there were some 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.040 people in the early early days of hot air balloons 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.160 who said steering was going to be impossible and only 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:14.600 adult would pursue any attempt to steer. Could you just 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.920 flap your arms? I mean, well, no, that wouldn't really 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.560 help you too much. But that was the thing was 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.200 that there were there were cynics who said, there's no 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.360 way that will ever discover any means that this is 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.520 a curiosity at best, because there's no practical application. You 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:31.240 will only go where the wind blows. You like if 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:33.120 you want to mail something but you don't care who 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:35.520 your mary exactly, you put it in the bottle and 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.080 you throw it in the ocean. That kind of thing. Um, yeah, 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:40.680 it's there were people who said that. But then we 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.520 got into some developments with actual airships beyond just the 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.600 hot air balloon approach. Back in four, which was shortly 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:52.880 after those hot air balloon demonstrations, you had Jean Baptiste 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:57.080 mate Musner, who are muse, I should say, proposed a 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:00.920 new shape for an aircraft with an oblong gas bag, 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:03.880 which is that sort of cigar shape that we think 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.840 of as blimp, the blimp shape. He was the one 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.600 who proposed that first, which would then be adopted by 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.480 future builders, and that was the birth of the dirigible. 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:17.480 So in eighteen fifty two, Henri Giffard builds an airship 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.200 that uses a steam engine to drive a propeller for propulsion. 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.080 So you've got the steam engine that's turning a propeller. 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.440 All that sounds like you're kind of set. Well, here's 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:34.040 the thing. Steam engines pretty heavy, okay, so you needed 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.480 to really counteract a lot of weight to get bulliant, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:42.319 and so those early early ones were not very good airships. 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:45.640 They couldn't go very high. Also, there's always a danger 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:47.880 with something like steam. You know, you gotta you gotta 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.840 make a fire to generate the heat to create the steam, 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:56.920 right fire, and these aircraft are not always great. There's 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.640 not good to necessarily have them together, especially if they 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.880 have is to be made using hydrogen as its method 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:07.520 of attaining bulliancy, because hydrogen in the right proportion mixed 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.760 with oxygen, it's not just flammable, it's explosive. Right. And 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.200 we'll talk a bit about the famous Hindenburg disaster because 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:17.439 that's when everyone thinks about what these airships. We will 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.480 get to that um at any rate, it was not. 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:23.600 It was the basic elements were there. Yes, the engine 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:28.400 to provide propulsion, the method to get buoyancy, but it 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:32.240 still hadn't been perfected to a point where it was practical. Uh. 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.720 Then you had the area on airship of eighteen sixty, 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:38.320 which was made up of three cylindrical gas bags that 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:40.600 were tethered together, side by side, so instead of one 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:46.920 massive envelope, it had three of them. In Evo, a 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:50.480 fellow by the name Paul Heinlein or hend Line flew 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.520 ad dirigible powered by an internal combustion engine, also an 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:58.760 issue the same as the steam engine. Very heavy, dangerous, 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.400 but so it was not very effective, made it really 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:07.560 hard to achieve buoyancy. Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs designed 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.160 and built La France, which was an airship that used 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:14.160 electricity for propulsion. Now you're onto something, because you can 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:18.160 make a much lighter propulsion system using an electrical motor 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:22.760 than you could with a gasoline powered engine or steam engine. Jonathan, 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.480 when did we get the famous, uh, the sort of 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:29.800 name brand example of the dirigible, the Zeppelin. I thought 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.240 it was the Ferdinand because it's named after Count Ferdinand 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.480 von Zeppelin, Right, this is like the Zeppelin? Is it 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.920 sort of like the Xerox or the Google or the 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:46.199 Frisbee of dirigibles sort of zeppelin or is it was 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:49.640 a Zeppelin actually a specific type of dirigible. It's specific, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.080 but it also is because the design that Count Ferdinand 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.839 von Zeppelin came up with was so effective. Now now 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.840 the earliest one, the l z one or elz Inns 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:06.880 if you prefer um, not that effective. It had some problems. 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.240 It was four feet long, which is about hundred twenty 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.160 eight It was thirty eight and a half feet in diameter, 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.760 which is nearly twelve meters in diameter, and it used 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:19.880 hydrogen for bullyiancy. Uh. It required a little less than 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.439 four hundred thousand cubic feet of hydrogen that's about eleven thousand, 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:27.959 three hundred cubic meters, and that first flight wasn't until 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.120 nineteen hundred he started designing it in he had built 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.120 it by waited for nineteen hundred because you know, it 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.000 kind of seemed like a significant sort of mark of 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.160 the turn of the century, um, depending upon your view 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.320 of when the century turns and uh. And he used 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.280 to get two gasoline engines to steer it actually had 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.040 two different compartments on the base of it. So it's 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:52.720 again this oblong shape, that cigard like shape, with two 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.559 compartments on the underside, each of them with a gasolene 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.760 engine that would dry propellers. But some things that didn't have, 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:06.560 which later models totally would have, included um stability fins, 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.040 Like there were no fins or wings to provide any 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:13.520 source stability, and so it wasn't an incredible success right 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:15.640 out of the gate. One of the engines failed right 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:20.480 away when they launched for the test flight, and without 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:22.880 those fins for stability, it made it very difficult to 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:28.880 maneuver this particular zeppelin. But what happened was Fernan did 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.000 what scientists do. You look at your experiment, you see 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:34.600 where you failed, you go and you refine it, and 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:37.400 then you try again. And so he did and he 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.360 began to make Zeppelin's that were incredibly effective. And uh, 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:44.560 and we still call them Zeppelin's, not not Ferdinand's. As 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.880 I put in my note. Um, now, the most famous, 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.760 I would argue would be the l Z one nine. 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:56.360 That's the Hindenburgh. Now it was actually the the sort 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.079 of the flagship of a class of Zeppelin's that all 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:01.840 were called hinden Burg class. I mean we forget that 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.480 for a while. Zeppelin's were big. Yeah, I mean I'm 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:09.160 not physically big, but like they were doing business and 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.080 they were. They were how very wealthy people were able 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:16.960 to get across massive distances in much less time than 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:18.440 it would take if you were to say, take it 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:23.600 a ship, right, you could get there faster. It's really expensive. Um. 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.920 And they were also useful for things like surveillance, reconnaissance, 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.800 that kind of stuff. But um, the Hindenburg is famous 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.599 for the disaster on May six seven, that's when the 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.360 Hindenburg burst into flame. It was it was reaching the 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:40.880 end of a transatlantic flight. So it was coming into 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.000 New Jersey, wasn't it. Yeah, it was coming in and 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.680 there was actually a ground crew active trying to bring 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.080 the the Zeppelin in. That's One of the things about 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.360 these lighter than air aircraft is that in order for 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:54.560 them to land, they usually need to have some sort 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.360 of either docking station that they can latch onto or 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.920 a ground crew that ends up grabbing tethers to help 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.200 guide it into its final position. So you see those 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.280 like people with the ropes and everything, And usually that 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.800 also involves venting some hydrogen gas and replacing it with air, 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.120 which makes the zeppelin heavier. Uh. Your goal is to 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.160 do that very gradually so that you can come in 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.040 for a nice smooth landing. Obviously, if you did that 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:23.240 too quickly, then you would plummet. So it's a very 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:27.600 delicate procedure. Now, in this case, the Hindenburg caught fire. 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:33.360 Like we said, hydrogen extremely flammable, as was potentially as 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.400 was the covering. There's some disagreement about whether or not 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:40.160 the covering itself was what caused the real problem. Yeah, 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.200 I think people don't really know for sure what caused 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:47.040 the problem. Now there's there's there are debates. Uh. I 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.640 tend to side more with the hydrogen hypothesis than the 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.480 covering hypothesis, but but either could be correct and in 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.440 any case, tragically thirty six people died in this disaster. 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:00.760 One of them was a member the ground crew. The 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.280 others were either passengers or crew members of the Hindenburg. 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.360 And not everyone died. There were survivors, So it wasn't 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:11.440 it wasn't you know, it wasn't at all. Aboard died um. 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:15.640 But at any rate, that definitely raised the concern about 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.720 how hydrogen. This was not the first disaster, by the way, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.080 not even the first disaster with the Zeppelin UM. In fact, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.560 one of the early Zeppelin's crashed in Germany, and the 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:29.600 response in Germany was that people contributed money so that 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.320 a new, better one could be built. That was the 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.000 response to the disaster in Germany. But that was that 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:37.000 was not the Hindenberg, it was an earlier one. In fact, 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:42.720 there their stories, although it could be folklore that around 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:47.120 the crash site Germans gathered and sang songs together, uh 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.320 as sort of a kind of show of support for 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.760 the endeavor because they believed so strongly in the Um 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:56.200 the promise of the future that was the Zeppelin at 0:15:56.200 --> 0:16:02.120 the time. Anyway, Yeah, anyway, the it really kind of 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:07.360 drove home the dangers of hydrogen. Hendinburg disaster did, and 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.320 of course it got live coverage, Yeah it was. It 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:11.840 was filmed. The whole thing was filmed. And you have 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:14.960 Herbert Morrison who did the commentary. That's where the oh 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:19.160 humanity comes from. Uh, we're you know, the stress in 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.640 his voice is clear. I mean it's it's not not in, 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:27.360 not in any way and an emotionless kind of coverage. Um. 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:33.160 And so that really kind of pushed back, uh, the 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.360 role of the Zeppelin in the world. I mean, that 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.200 disaster was so well publicized that it really started to 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.840 slow down. Plus you have the literal rise of the 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.320 the airplane around the same time. I mean, you know, 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:49.920 the the Brother's right had been working since since the 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.440 early nineteen hundreds building the first airplanes and they were 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.480 starting to come into prominence. The aircraft in general, we're 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.360 starting to really rise in prominence, and the air ship 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:05.400 began to kind of fade away. But now we are 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:07.280 hearing about them coming back. And of course, you know, 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:08.959 some of them have been around, like blimps have been 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.479 around for ages. We've seen them in things like at 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.399 sporting events like Goodyear Blimp, the Big One. Blimps are 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.280 they're a novelty. Yeah, they're they're meant mainly as either 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:23.800 a way to uh to create like a tourism attraction, 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:28.120 or it's an advertising thing, you know, or it's sometimes 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.399 a means of getting some sort of unique angle on 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:35.440 a large event. But it tends to be for what 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.280 you might think of as kind of entertainment or or 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.440 commercial purposes in that sense, rather than a true way 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.480 of moving around cargo or people. So we'll I have 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:48.520 some questions then about why airships would really be coming back. 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:51.679 I mean, now that we've sunk so much money and 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:56.960 research and time into perfecting heavier than air aircraft like 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:01.359 airplanes and helicopters, why why go back to airships? What 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:05.560 advantages do they provide? Well, a true airship, the biggest 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.600 advantage is that it doesn't take a whole lot of 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:12.120 energy to get them aloft, right, because they're using they're 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:14.440 using they're using some sort of lighter than air gas 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.640 already to get aloft. They don't have to use thrust. 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.679 So an airplane in order to fly requires thrust, so 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.359 they can generate lift, right, the wings get the lift 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:27.679 and that's what counteracts the weight of the plane and 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:29.200 you can get up into the air. Yeah, there's a 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.280 there's a reason, you have to get going really fast 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:34.800 on the runway in order to take off in an airplane. 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.240 You can't just kind of hop up. You've got to 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:39.800 get that force going in the at the front of 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:42.920 the plane to slam that air down below the wings 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:45.919 and lift the aircraft up right. Yeah, you're beating the 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:50.400 air into submission. Yeah, that's that's what helicopter pilots describe 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.639 flying a helicopter. That sounds accurate. So with a with 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:58.520 a lighter than air aircraft, you don't need to do that. 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:02.119 The energy you expend just to steer, to navigate, to 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.679 propel yourself to wherever you're going, but you don't have 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.720 to expend energy to stay in the air. Because of that, 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.119 they are very energy efficient. They require far less energy. 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:15.199 And if you need to do something that requires you 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.560 to be in the air for a long time, for example, 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.760 to hover in a spot and to do something uh 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.919 you know that's related to being in a specific geographic location, 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.000 then lighter than air aircraft is the way to go. 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:31.840 Because we've discussed this with flying drones. One of the 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.520 problems with them is that they run off energy and 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.000 then you've got to recharge them. And if they run 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.639 out of energy relatively quickly, like within the span of 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:43.879 an of less than an hour, then their their usability 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.200 is limited by that right. But an airship can remain 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.040 there for as long as it needs to be there, 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.159 depending upon whether it's manned or unmanned. Obviously, if it's 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.280 a manned airship, then eventually you're going to have demands 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:58.040 that are going to require it to land just for 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:01.520 the people aboard. But unmanned airships are also a possibility, 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:05.400 and those could stay in a location for as long 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.440 as their energy would allow them to maintain that position, 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.600 keeping in mind that if they encounter truly severe weather 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.320 then they need to clear out, because most of them 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.919 are rated for pretty serious winds because they need to be. 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.119 But even at that those serious winds, that's like an 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.080 extreme case, and anything beyond that they are they would 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.639 be in serious jeopardy of damage. Would there be any 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:33.400 advantage to using an airship in lieu of something like 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:37.000 a weather balloon, Well, it depends on the the uh. 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:40.400 First of all, yes, because you can steer it's that's 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.480 a big one um. And also depend upon what the 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:45.920 use is. So if you were using it to study weather, 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:50.320 you could do that although weather balloons are pretty well, uh, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.919 pretty well suited for that kind of use. But if 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:56.239 you want to do something like surveillance, whether that's uh, 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:58.360 you know, it doesn't have to be military surveillance. That's 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.800 what everyone immediately goes to. You know, I think, oh, 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.680 like military surveillance, that could be one use of it. 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.240 But security surveillance. Let's say that you have an enormous 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.199 event like the Olympics or the World Cup, and you 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:14.359 want to have a overhead view of what's going on 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:18.320 in order to provide better security. Then something that can 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.800 hover without expending a lot of energy would be really useful. 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.880 So surveillance is a big one, whether again it's security 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:30.119 or wartime or whatever. Environmental monitoring is another one. You 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:32.840 would probably have an unmanned craft for this, although you 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.960 could do a manned craft as well to uh in 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:39.920 monitor any kind of region for any sort of environmental changes, 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:44.200 to study uh subtle changes in in a climate, or 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.919 just other types of environmental changes like like a fire, 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:51.119 that sort of stuff. Again, that hovering ability comes in 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:53.600 really handy um and you can stay there for as 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.320 long as you need it to stay. Or near space operations, 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:02.159 so airships today can really high. You remember, you know 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:06.520 Felix who jumped out of his his balloon to jump 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.359 from space. Um, it's kind of the same sort of thing. 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.480 You can get airships that can get too near space conditions, 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:15.919 which means you can do research at that level or 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:17.639 if there any other kind of operations you need to 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.679 do at that altitude. It's a good Um, it's a 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:23.040 good choice because again, you don't have to expend that 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:26.160 much energy to get them up there. The buoyancy does 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:29.720 all the work, so you're not spinning tons of energy 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:32.960 just to get to the right altitude. Uh. Also, you 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:35.520 can use it to move cargo, and it's kind of 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:38.320 crazy how much cargo you can move with the right 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.480 size of airship. Well, yeah, that especially seems like that 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.399 be a big help because with an airship, the amount 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:48.640 of fuel you're using, it seems like it wouldn't nearly 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.520 have as much to do with the weight of the aircraft. 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:54.520