this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 154 points 6 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 40 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yup, no one is going to hop an airship when they can get somewhere in a fraction of the time. The only difference might be cost, but spinning up a zeppelin industry likely couldn't compete in terms of ticket price compared to jets.

[–] Garbanzo@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

If they have a future it'll be moving stuff, not people. If it's faster than a container ship and can carry more than a plane then it could have a valuable niche.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

They also have a potential advantage in moving large things.

For instance wind turbine blades, which are quite difficult to move by trucks. Airships don't require infrastructure for the transport or delivery and could rope it down to sites with difficult terrain.

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[–] elmicha@feddit.de 18 points 6 months ago

There are a handful of Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airships flying around nowadays. If you want to see a landing and start, I recorded this a few years ago.

[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago (3 children)

What airships need to do is become like cruise ships. Put an amusement park and a casino up there, I'm sure nothing bad will happen.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

The problem is weight. The heavier the load the bigger the gas bag needs to be to carry that load. The whole thing very quickly gets out of proportion and considering they were using hydrogen the heavier the load the riskier it was.

Modern airships are helium-based, but helium is way too expensive to ever be commercially viable on a large scale.

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[–] lud@lemm.ee 14 points 6 months ago

As far as I know they were somewhat like cruise ships in their luxury.

The (enormous) problem is weight. Everything needs to be as light as possible, it's a balloon after all.

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[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 104 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

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

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 79 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Boeing working hard to fix this

[–] DogWater@lemmy.world 26 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (10 children)

Commercial plane crashes /=/ plane crashes.

358 deaths due to plane crashes in 2022 in the US. Anon included cars so this "commercial" distinction doesn't necessarily hold weight since the crux of the comparison is that other industries have been allowed to operate despite fatal accidents. And cars are included which are individually operated machines and not mass transit.

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 88 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (15 children)

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.

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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 48 points 6 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 16 points 6 months ago

It wasn’t just one zeppelin.

It's more the case that back then, nearly every airship ever made ended up crashing in bad weather. Nowadays they're sort of safe since we have much more powerful engines and weather services that can help them avoid the rough stuff, but even then they still can't lift very useful loads.

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 36 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (14 children)

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.

[–] Chef@sh.itjust.works 23 points 6 months ago (3 children)

So what you’re saying is we should expect Elon Musk to start a zeppelin company at some point in the near future.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 10 points 6 months ago

Yes, that's correct.

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[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 34 points 6 months ago (31 children)

Same logic applies to nuclear energy. More people fall off of hydroelectric power plants or drown or something, or fall off of wind turbines, than get poisoned by radiation from a nuclear power plant

[–] Ibaudia@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Nuclear just isn't a good short-term value proposition so most people are dismissive of it. Plants take along time to create and are generally expensive. Not to mention the NIMBYs who would rather dump tons of chemicals into local riverways, air, and land with coal than have a clean-burning nuclear plant within 10 miles of their city.

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[–] vox@sopuli.xyz 25 points 6 months ago (4 children)

planes crash every day

what?!

[–] authorinthedark@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 6 months ago (4 children)

only if you count general aviation, commercial airlines crash less than once a month. OP is clearly just an agent of Big Blimp trying to destroy the reputation of the honorable aviation industry

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[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

Zeppelins are just expensive and slow.

[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)
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[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago (7 children)

That particular one exploded because the US had an embargo against Nazi Germany for the much safer helium rather than famously combustible hydrogen

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It also had an aluminium skin, protected by an iron oxide paint. Those 2 are also the main ingredients in thermite. The skin burnt even faster and more impressively than the hydrogen.

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wonder when hydrogen filled thermite balloon is going to make a comeback as a mode of transportation.

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[–] MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure trains derail every day.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This one caught me off guard:

As of October, the FRA has recorded 742 incident reports for train derailments in 2023. Additionally, railroads reported 59 collisions, 12 fires, and 138 highway-rail-crossing incidents, which could include cars or any other vehicles or people at the crossing site.

Since 1975, an average of 2,808 trains have derailed each year, with a peak of 9,400 derailments in 1978.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've got to assume most of those are things like single cars falling off the track in the switching yard or something, not major service-interrupting, cargo-damaging, or injury-causing incidents.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That’s a fair assumption as a non industry expert. Nevertheless OOP was technically correct there. 😅

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[–] arymandias@feddit.de 11 points 6 months ago
[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Never. They're just too impractical. Now solid-frame airships on the other hand? They'll probably never get off the drawing board.

[–] birbs@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago (3 children)

There are companies trying to bring airships back. The Airlander 10 is expected to be flying flights over Spain in 2026.

[–] GenosseFlosse@lemmy.nz 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

While i would love to travel by airship, I dont think there would be a commercial success in airship passenger travel in the near future:

  • travel times of multiple days means you probably need 2-3x the crew, compared with a plane on a 8h flight
  • this also means a plane that is 4x as fast can make the same trip 4x more often, bringing in more money for the airline in the same amount of time
  • you probably can't land on existing airports, because an airship the size of a large building would be crawling accross your airspace blocking all flight traffic, or shaken by the turbulences behind a large jet powered airliner
  • new technology without any existing infrastructure is much more expensive than building on top of existing things
  • tickets would be much more expensive than a commercial plane because of the reasons above, the lower passenger capacity and the fact that you have to carry more supplies (water + food for days multiplied by people on board) for a longer trip. Each passenger with cabin and supplies was calculated as 300kg weight on a transatlantic flight on the hindenburg
  • Hindenburg could not fly in a direct straight line, because it travels at a height of only 400-600m. This means you had to go around high mountain ranges, because people and the combustion engines need oxygen which you dont have much above 4000m. However i dont know if this is still a problem with modern pressurized cabins, or if there is another limitation from the lifting gas...
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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 10 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Why not use helium instead of hydrogen, and also maybe don't coat the skin in thermite? 🤷‍♂️

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 33 points 6 months ago (9 children)

because helium is f'ing expensive an valuable. Once used, it's basically gone. There's a reason that countries have strategic helium reserves.

Also on the topic, modern day companies that try to resurrect airships exist. Just every single one of them goes bust, as it's just not really a viable solution for modern transport

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[–] Subverb@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You may know this, but the Nazis were forced into using hydrogen instead of helium because the only commercial sources at the time were in he USA and we wouldn't sell it to them. But also, since the ship was built for German propaganda they would have wanted it to be a fully German endeavor.

The Hindenburg was painted with silvery powdered aluminium, to better show off the giant Nazi swastikas on the tail section. When it flew over cities, the on-board loudspeakers broadcast Nazi propaganda announcements, and the crew dropped thousands of small Nazi flags for the school children below. This is not surprising, because the Nazi Minister of Propaganda funded the Hindenburg.

At that time, the US government controlled the only significant supplies of helium (a non-flammable lifting gas), and refused to supply it to the Nazi government. So the Hindenburg had to use flammable hydrogen.

As the Hindenburg came in to Lakehurst on May 6, 1937, there was a storm brewing, and so there was much static electricity in the air - which charged up the aircraft. When the crew dropped the mooring ropes down to the ground, the static electricity was earthed, which set off sparks on the Hindenburg.

The Hindenburg was covered with cotton fabric, that had to be waterproof. So it had been swabbed with cellulose acetate (which happened to be very inflammable) that was then covered with aluminium powder (which is used as rocket fuel to propel the Space Shuttle into orbit). Indeed, the aluminium powder was in tiny flakes, which made them very susceptible to sparking. It was inevitable that a charged atmosphere would ignite the flammable skin.

In all of this, the hydrogen was innocent. In the terrible disaster, the Hindenburg burnt with a red flame. But hydrogen burns with an almost invisible bluish flame. In the Hindenburg disaster, as soon as the hydrogen bladders were opened by the flames, the hydrogen inside would have escaped up and away from the burning airship - and it would not have not contributed to the ensuing fire. The hydrogen was totally innocent. In fact, in 1935, a helium-filled airship with an acetate-aluminium skin burned near Point Sur in California with equal ferocity. The Hindenberg disaster was not caused by the hydrogen.

The lesson is obvious - the next time you build an airship, don't paint the inflammable acetate skin with aluminium rocket fuel.

https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/02/26/1052864.htm

[–] Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

To add on the point of helium being expensive and valuable, it's also extremely important for supercooling MRI's and supercomputers.

I'd rather have more MRI's than zeppelins.

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