22 ms·

When the Hindenburg Was the Height of Luxe In-Flight Dining

126 points by js2 9y ago

ant6n 9y ago
http://www.airships.net http://www.airships.net is a great resource to learn about the airships, both the technical aspects and the life on board. It seems every article's comments is a discussion about whether and that we should ot could start building Zeppelins again. Makes one wish to be in a position like Elon Musk.
tyingq 9y ago
Dining on a Boeing Business Jet (converted 737): https://corporatejetinvestor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Dining_Area_BBJ1_9HBBJ.jpg https://corporatejetinvestor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/...
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  There are privately-owned A380s and 747s that are essentially mobile palaces.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Found a picture of the dining room on Air Force One: https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/the-new-air-force-one-has-some-serious-potential-20-hq-photos-2.jpg?quality=85&strip=info&w=920 https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/the-new-air-for...
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  Probably similar on the Trump 757
  - drdeadringer 9y ago
    Do we have pictures of Air Force 1 dining?
    - positr0n 9y ago
      Not Air Force 1, but here is his private jet: https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/760299757206208512 https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/7602997572...
madaxe_again 9y ago
I think there's room for an airship renaissance, for a number of reasons. Firstly, speed doesn't matter as much as it did, particularly for tourists - if I can take two days crossing the Atlantic in luxury rather than crammed into a tiny seat, at a not-huge price differential, I'm game. Secondly, communications. Easy enough (albeit still pricey) to use the likes of iridium for internet everywhere. No longer so important to reach your destination fast. Thirdly, technology. No longer does the thing need to be stuffed with hydrogen - rather helium. Give it a little while and we can stuff it with vacuum in spun carbon vessels. In place of the fossil driven air-screws, make the entire thing a fat flying wing, cover the top in PV, use electric propulsion. Finally, given the ever increasing popularity of cruises, I can see people paying serious money for an inland cruise over the alps etc. Additionally, even the Hindenburg was arguably safer than a modern airliner. If the latter catches fire or crashes, the likelihood is 100% mortality for the souls aboard - whereas an airship allows for slow ditching or even emergency parachute pods. Please, somebody, tell me why this is a bad idea.
- jfries 9y ago
  One advantage of getting to the destination quickly is that the vessel can get new paying customers onboard. If the trip takes 48 rather than 6 hours, operation needs to be eight times cheaper to keep the same ticket price.
  - madaxe_again 9y ago
    Sure - or you aim principally for the cruise market and charge a commensurately premium price. I was recently on a trip to the Antarctic that some folks had paid $30,000 a head for the experience - so the market certainly exists.
  - psadri 9y ago
    You could have more of them in flight (8x) to get the same volume of passengers.
    - avar 9y ago
gumby 9y ago
I hope airships return -- for freight. In Africa it's difficult to build rail, so landlocked countries suffer. Airships would be perfect.
- jamiek88 9y ago
  All you need is basic weapons to bring a fully laden ship down. Security of the airspace the whole way is very hard to guarantee as those same countries are often places of severe civil unrest.
  - gumby 9y ago
    Going by the press that's the case, but actually most people in Africa live pretty peaceful lives. And nobody's bringing down aircraft with missiles, so an airship would be pretty safe.
    - goldenkey 9y ago
      All it takes is a gunshot. Thats what he meant.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        A gunshot would not take an airship down. It would be like a pinhole compared to the overall volume, and the gas envelope is compartmentalized so at most you would lose the gas in one compartment. At the very worst it would have to make an unplanned landing but could likely stay aloft for hours even with multiple bullet holes.
      - wongarsu 9y ago
        Airships were used during WWI, and they evidently can withstand quite a few gunshots. Winds pushing crafts into the ocean were a bigger problem than gunshots.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    Tell that to the RAF. When Zeppelins came to bomb London in WWI the RAF went up to meet them. Other than the fact that it's a daunting prospect to take a single little biplane up against a hulking sky mountain armed with maybe a dozen individually manned machine guns the biggest problem is that shooting a dirigible basically does very little. When you shoot a Hydrogen filled Zeppelin nothing happens. The Hydrogen slowly leaks out, decreasing lift, but that can be compensated for with dropping ballast. Remember that fire requires those three key ingredients: fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source. An ordinary bullet does not provide an ignition source, and it only just barely helps fuel and oxygen mix. The RAF developed incendiary rounds and, far more importantly, explosive rounds to take down Zeppelins. Having a round explode on the surface of the gas envelope opens up a large hole, causes prompt mixing of hydrogen and oxygen, and provides an ignition source. Most folks aren't going to have such weapons, it would be just as easy for them to acquire an RPG or MANPAD which could take down any aircraft, so the threat isn't exactly increased. More importantly, Africa is a huge place, and at any given time most of it does not experience ongoing warfare.
_h_o_d_ 9y ago
There are rumours that Sergei Brin is making a dirigible https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/sergey-brins-zeppelin/524568/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/serge... And David Brin (no relation) talks about using them in his books Earth (1989) and Existence (2012)
rubyn00bie 9y ago
I for one would love to live on an Airship. It's the one fantasy/sci-fi thing I don't think I've seen any work on but that I personally want more than anything else. I read, somewhere, about theoretical floating cities being possible on Venus I believe due to the denser atmosphere and I thought it was brilliant. I just wish we could do it somewhere, where the surface was hospitable instead of instant death (not that either is much closer to being reality right now than the other).
WalterBright 9y ago
The fear of hydrogen lifting gas is overblown. The Hindenburg burned largely because the canvas was painted with highly flammable paint that was chemically similar to rocket fuel. We regularly fly in airplanes full of fuel, and if they catch fire in flight the odds of any survivors is extremely poor. Hot air balloons, with no hydrogen, catch fire now and then and everyone dies.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  The incendiary paint hypothesis is a debated alternative to the more widely-accepted hydrogen hypothesis [1]. This bears mentioning since the issue is far from settled. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
- theGimp 9y ago
  That's a disingenuous claim. Planes have big engines and can generate a great deal of lift. That means their fuel can be housed inside safe tanks of metal. An airship needs to have thin lining around its lifting gas in order to fly. One can make the argument that recent progress in materials engineering makes it possible to have material that is thin but strong -- and I know next to nothing about the state of materials engineering -- but that does not change the fact that for the past few decades, a hydrogen airship would have introduced a great deal of risk for no good reason.
  - yongjik 9y ago
    > That means their fuel can be housed inside safe tanks of metal. I think the point is moot: at a typical speed where airline accidents happen, these metal tanks will be punctured and catch fire.
    - jonas21 9y ago
      But the point is that the Hindenberg suffered a catastrophic fire without colliding with anything.

126 points by js2 9y ago

http://www.airships.net http://www.airships.net is a great resource to learn about the airships, both the technical aspects and the life on board. It seems every article's comments is a discussion about whether and that we should ot could start building Zeppelins again. Makes one wish to be in a position like Elon Musk.

tyingq 9y ago

Dining on a Boeing Business Jet (converted 737): https://corporatejetinvestor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Dining_Area_BBJ1_9HBBJ.jpg https://corporatejetinvestor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/...

ceejayoz 9y ago
There are privately-owned A380s and 747s that are essentially mobile palaces.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Found a picture of the dining room on Air Force One: https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/the-new-air-force-one-has-some-serious-potential-20-hq-photos-2.jpg?quality=85&strip=info&w=920 https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/the-new-air-for...
akhilcacharya 9y ago
Probably similar on the Trump 757
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  Do we have pictures of Air Force 1 dining?
  - positr0n 9y ago
    Not Air Force 1, but here is his private jet: https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/760299757206208512 https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/7602997572...

madaxe_again 9y ago

I think there's room for an airship renaissance, for a number of reasons. Firstly, speed doesn't matter as much as it did, particularly for tourists - if I can take two days crossing the Atlantic in luxury rather than crammed into a tiny seat, at a not-huge price differential, I'm game. Secondly, communications. Easy enough (albeit still pricey) to use the likes of iridium for internet everywhere. No longer so important to reach your destination fast. Thirdly, technology. No longer does the thing need to be stuffed with hydrogen - rather helium. Give it a little while and we can stuff it with vacuum in spun carbon vessels. In place of the fossil driven air-screws, make the entire thing a fat flying wing, cover the top in PV, use electric propulsion. Finally, given the ever increasing popularity of cruises, I can see people paying serious money for an inland cruise over the alps etc. Additionally, even the Hindenburg was arguably safer than a modern airliner. If the latter catches fire or crashes, the likelihood is 100% mortality for the souls aboard - whereas an airship allows for slow ditching or even emergency parachute pods. Please, somebody, tell me why this is a bad idea.

jfries 9y ago
One advantage of getting to the destination quickly is that the vessel can get new paying customers onboard. If the trip takes 48 rather than 6 hours, operation needs to be eight times cheaper to keep the same ticket price.
- madaxe_again 9y ago
  Sure - or you aim principally for the cruise market and charge a commensurately premium price. I was recently on a trip to the Antarctic that some folks had paid $30,000 a head for the experience - so the market certainly exists.
- psadri 9y ago
  You could have more of them in flight (8x) to get the same volume of passengers.
  - avar 9y ago

gumby 9y ago

I hope airships return -- for freight. In Africa it's difficult to build rail, so landlocked countries suffer. Airships would be perfect.

jamiek88 9y ago
All you need is basic weapons to bring a fully laden ship down. Security of the airspace the whole way is very hard to guarantee as those same countries are often places of severe civil unrest.
- gumby 9y ago
  Going by the press that's the case, but actually most people in Africa live pretty peaceful lives. And nobody's bringing down aircraft with missiles, so an airship would be pretty safe.
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    All it takes is a gunshot. Thats what he meant.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      A gunshot would not take an airship down. It would be like a pinhole compared to the overall volume, and the gas envelope is compartmentalized so at most you would lose the gas in one compartment. At the very worst it would have to make an unplanned landing but could likely stay aloft for hours even with multiple bullet holes.
    - wongarsu 9y ago
      Airships were used during WWI, and they evidently can withstand quite a few gunshots. Winds pushing crafts into the ocean were a bigger problem than gunshots.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  Tell that to the RAF. When Zeppelins came to bomb London in WWI the RAF went up to meet them. Other than the fact that it's a daunting prospect to take a single little biplane up against a hulking sky mountain armed with maybe a dozen individually manned machine guns the biggest problem is that shooting a dirigible basically does very little. When you shoot a Hydrogen filled Zeppelin nothing happens. The Hydrogen slowly leaks out, decreasing lift, but that can be compensated for with dropping ballast. Remember that fire requires those three key ingredients: fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source. An ordinary bullet does not provide an ignition source, and it only just barely helps fuel and oxygen mix. The RAF developed incendiary rounds and, far more importantly, explosive rounds to take down Zeppelins. Having a round explode on the surface of the gas envelope opens up a large hole, causes prompt mixing of hydrogen and oxygen, and provides an ignition source. Most folks aren't going to have such weapons, it would be just as easy for them to acquire an RPG or MANPAD which could take down any aircraft, so the threat isn't exactly increased. More importantly, Africa is a huge place, and at any given time most of it does not experience ongoing warfare.

_h_o_d_ 9y ago

There are rumours that Sergei Brin is making a dirigible https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/sergey-brins-zeppelin/524568/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/serge... And David Brin (no relation) talks about using them in his books Earth (1989) and Existence (2012)

rubyn00bie 9y ago

I for one would love to live on an Airship. It's the one fantasy/sci-fi thing I don't think I've seen any work on but that I personally want more than anything else. I read, somewhere, about theoretical floating cities being possible on Venus I believe due to the denser atmosphere and I thought it was brilliant. I just wish we could do it somewhere, where the surface was hospitable instead of instant death (not that either is much closer to being reality right now than the other).

WalterBright 9y ago

The fear of hydrogen lifting gas is overblown. The Hindenburg burned largely because the canvas was painted with highly flammable paint that was chemically similar to rocket fuel. We regularly fly in airplanes full of fuel, and if they catch fire in flight the odds of any survivors is extremely poor. Hot air balloons, with no hydrogen, catch fire now and then and everyone dies.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
The incendiary paint hypothesis is a debated alternative to the more widely-accepted hydrogen hypothesis [1]. This bears mentioning since the issue is far from settled. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
theGimp 9y ago
That's a disingenuous claim. Planes have big engines and can generate a great deal of lift. That means their fuel can be housed inside safe tanks of metal. An airship needs to have thin lining around its lifting gas in order to fly. One can make the argument that recent progress in materials engineering makes it possible to have material that is thin but strong -- and I know next to nothing about the state of materials engineering -- but that does not change the fact that for the past few decades, a hydrogen airship would have introduced a great deal of risk for no good reason.
- yongjik 9y ago
  > That means their fuel can be housed inside safe tanks of metal. I think the point is moot: at a typical speed where airline accidents happen, these metal tanks will be punctured and catch fire.
  - jonas21 9y ago
    But the point is that the Hindenberg suffered a catastrophic fire without colliding with anything.