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> A one-way fare between Germany and the United States was US$400 (equivalent to $7,811 in 2021); Hindenburg passengers were affluent I feel like seeing such a

> A one-way fare between Germany and the United States was US$400 (equivalent to $7,811 in 2021); Hindenburg passengers were affluent I feel like seeing such an affliction happen to so many of the richest people at once is what killed interest in the zeppelin I always felt that was too reductive, one crash killed public interest? No more like it killed that tiny market’s interest I think it could be done better, safer, and cheaper now

jerezzprime 2y ago
This isn't too far off from the cost of a first-class trans-continental flight.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  Yeah, it would probably have been economically viable if zeppelins had a pleb and business class too
  - throwup238 2y ago
    The cabins were already tiny. Can you imagine sitting in the economy seats with 20" of legroom and airline quality food for a week?
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Yeah. It's hard to justify premium and much more time-consuming transatlantic travel even when I can afford it. I've done it for various reasons. But generally I'd prefer to spend my money and and time on other things.
  - lallysingh 2y ago
    They'd look different than airlines, Zepplins were primarily weight constrained instead of volume. Dumping the cabins can save a lot of weight.
WalterBright 2y ago
What killed public interest was not necessarily the crash, but the happenstance that it was filmed and shown over and over and over, along with the famous live radio broadcast of it. Heck, my dad even saved 1937 newspaper clippings of the fireball.
- Tarsul 2y ago
  Yes. I mean one just has to look at the last picture of the article with the Hindenburg burning. Not even the best propagandist could save this disaster.
WalterBright 2y ago
> better, safer, and cheaper now I'm not so sure. What killed most Zeppelins was bad weather.
tomatotomato37 2y ago
Germany's war preparations starting to divert resources away from civilian enterprises during the time probably didn't help either. Those zeppelins were massive investments in terms of material and industry after all
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The Zeppelins were funded by the government for their massive propaganda value.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  I was thinking that too A lot of trends were cut short by the world wars A lot of things I like from the 1890s and 1900 early aughts just stopped being made or were never explored fully, and then I remembered “oh yeah, everybody died” and its like the first time in hundreds of years that something so broadly affected so many socioeconomic classes in so many places at once happened again in the late 1930s
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  That's also why they were using hydrogen gas in the first place. Helium was too expensive.
graycat 2y ago
> US$400, .... $7,811 Ah, peanuts! Chump change! Somewhere recently saw a review of the Titanic, lots of pictures (taken BEFORE leaving England!) with the mention that the 1st class fare was $100,000. And that the ship cost $1.5 million to build.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  So 15 first-class passengers on one trip would pay for the whole ship? I assume a 16th would pay all the costs of making a trip. That's a ridiculous cost structure. What was going on?
  - organsnyder 2y ago
    Assuming those numbers are accurate, that $100k surely bought a lot of amenities (not just food and beverage, but also dedicated staff people) that weren't free.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      You think the running cost of a trip was over $100,000? I mentioned this specifically in my first comment. A quick check suggests the passenger manifest has, OK, 8 first-class passengers. It sounds like the ship is expected to turn a profit by the time it makes its second voyage. Really?
      - organsnyder 2y ago
        Of course not. That high ticket cost certainly had a healthy profit margin.
  - trhway 2y ago
    They didn't have to do multi-hundred-million dollars certification (and i think their safety record wasn't good). The lower speed also lowers the costs of making it. They are really less a plane and more like a ship, only floating in the air, and the ships are significantly cheaper.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I think it's more a case of things moving on. The Hindenburg crashed only shortly before cross atlantic passenger flight by much faster planes took off (around 1939). The Hindenburg was already a bit obsolete by the time the accident happened. And of course WW II then happened which made passenger travel by plane a bit impractical. Even so there was plenty of it happening. Post WW II we had transatlantic flights taking over and creating the modern aviation industry. With iconic planes like the Lockheed Constellation (which first flew in 1943). Initially those would have been similarly luxurious. And this is also not that different from what a Concorde ticket would have cost later on. And of course Concorde flights were also discontinued after a crash. Not unlike the Hindenburg. These days, there's a business and first class section servicing the rich with similar pricing. This never really went away.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Similarly, the Concorde crash also featured horrifying film of it flying trailing a gigantic fireball, shown over and over on TV. It would give anyone pause thinking of flying in it.
- ianburrell 2y ago
  Another factor is that Germany was the expert in airships. The Zeppelin company scrapped their airships, made fixed-wing aircraft during the war, and was nearly destroyed at end of war. After the war, planes were better and faster.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Concorde just became a poor value for everyone involved. It was noisy, it sucked fuel, it required three crew on the flight deck to operate it, demand was dropping because for their money, people were preferring the more oppulent, spacious, and comfortable first class of a modern wide-body than the cigar-tube regional jet experience of sitting in the Concorde, even if it was faster. The crash just sealed its fate.
krisoft 2y ago
> one crash killed public interest It was not really one crash, but a series of crashes. R38 broke up in the air over the UK. Roma crashed and burned in Virginia. Dixmude exploded mid-air over Sicily. R101 crashed and burnt in France. R100 was declared a failure and broken up. USS Akron crashed, and so did the USS Shenandoah.
- Animats 2y ago
  Yes. That generation of airships was terrible at maneuvering. An airship has huge sail area, isn't very strong, and is not high powered. Crosswinds are a big problem. The modern Zeppelin NT handles better. Remember Airship Ventures, which used to have an airship touring over Silicon Valley? They had one. Unfortunately, they launched the service in 2008, during the recession. Then the price of helium doubled. So that operation shut down. The NT was fly by wire with steerable fans, which gave it enough maneuverability that it could be landed without a big ground crew. Here's the Airship Ventures craft landing at Moffett Field.[1] DARPA funded Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works to build a more maneuverable airship. The result was the P-791.[2] This could be taxied out of a hangar, flown, landed, and taxied back in, all under its own power. All the propellers are on two-axis gimbals, and the flight control systems is constantly adjusting them to keep it level. It has hovercraft-type air bags as landing gear, so it can suck itself onto the ground when needed under windy conditions. All the propellers are on two-axis gimbals. Worked fine, but no military need at the time. I'm surprised that no billionaire has an airship yacht yet. You need an airship-sized hangar anywhere you want to go, though, so there are not many destinations possible. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5zO1ZzTws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5zO1ZzTws [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > I'm surprised that no billionaire has an airship yacht yet. When people ask me what would I do if i won the lottery i tell them that I would build a liveaboard airship. Would need to win multiple lotteries probably, and also the liveaboardness would need to be very minimalistic but still it would be awesome just even the journey to get there.

jerezzprime 2y ago

This isn't too far off from the cost of a first-class trans-continental flight.

yieldcrv 2y ago
Yeah, it would probably have been economically viable if zeppelins had a pleb and business class too
- throwup238 2y ago
  The cabins were already tiny. Can you imagine sitting in the economy seats with 20" of legroom and airline quality food for a week?
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Yeah. It's hard to justify premium and much more time-consuming transatlantic travel even when I can afford it. I've done it for various reasons. But generally I'd prefer to spend my money and and time on other things.
- lallysingh 2y ago
  They'd look different than airlines, Zepplins were primarily weight constrained instead of volume. Dumping the cabins can save a lot of weight.

WalterBright 2y ago

What killed public interest was not necessarily the crash, but the happenstance that it was filmed and shown over and over and over, along with the famous live radio broadcast of it. Heck, my dad even saved 1937 newspaper clippings of the fireball.

Tarsul 2y ago
Yes. I mean one just has to look at the last picture of the article with the Hindenburg burning. Not even the best propagandist could save this disaster.

WalterBright 2y ago

> better, safer, and cheaper now I'm not so sure. What killed most Zeppelins was bad weather.

tomatotomato37 2y ago

Germany's war preparations starting to divert resources away from civilian enterprises during the time probably didn't help either. Those zeppelins were massive investments in terms of material and industry after all

WalterBright 2y ago
The Zeppelins were funded by the government for their massive propaganda value.
yieldcrv 2y ago
I was thinking that too A lot of trends were cut short by the world wars A lot of things I like from the 1890s and 1900 early aughts just stopped being made or were never explored fully, and then I remembered “oh yeah, everybody died” and its like the first time in hundreds of years that something so broadly affected so many socioeconomic classes in so many places at once happened again in the late 1930s
SoftTalker 2y ago
That's also why they were using hydrogen gas in the first place. Helium was too expensive.

graycat 2y ago

> US$400, .... $7,811 Ah, peanuts! Chump change! Somewhere recently saw a review of the Titanic, lots of pictures (taken BEFORE leaving England!) with the mention that the 1st class fare was $100,000. And that the ship cost $1.5 million to build.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
So 15 first-class passengers on one trip would pay for the whole ship? I assume a 16th would pay all the costs of making a trip. That's a ridiculous cost structure. What was going on?
- organsnyder 2y ago
  Assuming those numbers are accurate, that $100k surely bought a lot of amenities (not just food and beverage, but also dedicated staff people) that weren't free.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    You think the running cost of a trip was over $100,000? I mentioned this specifically in my first comment. A quick check suggests the passenger manifest has, OK, 8 first-class passengers. It sounds like the ship is expected to turn a profit by the time it makes its second voyage. Really?
    - organsnyder 2y ago
      Of course not. That high ticket cost certainly had a healthy profit margin.
- trhway 2y ago
  They didn't have to do multi-hundred-million dollars certification (and i think their safety record wasn't good). The lower speed also lowers the costs of making it. They are really less a plane and more like a ship, only floating in the air, and the ships are significantly cheaper.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I think it's more a case of things moving on. The Hindenburg crashed only shortly before cross atlantic passenger flight by much faster planes took off (around 1939). The Hindenburg was already a bit obsolete by the time the accident happened. And of course WW II then happened which made passenger travel by plane a bit impractical. Even so there was plenty of it happening. Post WW II we had transatlantic flights taking over and creating the modern aviation industry. With iconic planes like the Lockheed Constellation (which first flew in 1943). Initially those would have been similarly luxurious. And this is also not that different from what a Concorde ticket would have cost later on. And of course Concorde flights were also discontinued after a crash. Not unlike the Hindenburg. These days, there's a business and first class section servicing the rich with similar pricing. This never really went away.

WalterBright 2y ago
Similarly, the Concorde crash also featured horrifying film of it flying trailing a gigantic fireball, shown over and over on TV. It would give anyone pause thinking of flying in it.
ianburrell 2y ago
Another factor is that Germany was the expert in airships. The Zeppelin company scrapped their airships, made fixed-wing aircraft during the war, and was nearly destroyed at end of war. After the war, planes were better and faster.
SoftTalker 2y ago
Concorde just became a poor value for everyone involved. It was noisy, it sucked fuel, it required three crew on the flight deck to operate it, demand was dropping because for their money, people were preferring the more oppulent, spacious, and comfortable first class of a modern wide-body than the cigar-tube regional jet experience of sitting in the Concorde, even if it was faster. The crash just sealed its fate.

krisoft 2y ago

> one crash killed public interest It was not really one crash, but a series of crashes. R38 broke up in the air over the UK. Roma crashed and burned in Virginia. Dixmude exploded mid-air over Sicily. R101 crashed and burnt in France. R100 was declared a failure and broken up. USS Akron crashed, and so did the USS Shenandoah.

Animats 2y ago
Yes. That generation of airships was terrible at maneuvering. An airship has huge sail area, isn't very strong, and is not high powered. Crosswinds are a big problem. The modern Zeppelin NT handles better. Remember Airship Ventures, which used to have an airship touring over Silicon Valley? They had one. Unfortunately, they launched the service in 2008, during the recession. Then the price of helium doubled. So that operation shut down. The NT was fly by wire with steerable fans, which gave it enough maneuverability that it could be landed without a big ground crew. Here's the Airship Ventures craft landing at Moffett Field.[1] DARPA funded Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works to build a more maneuverable airship. The result was the P-791.[2] This could be taxied out of a hangar, flown, landed, and taxied back in, all under its own power. All the propellers are on two-axis gimbals, and the flight control systems is constantly adjusting them to keep it level. It has hovercraft-type air bags as landing gear, so it can suck itself onto the ground when needed under windy conditions. All the propellers are on two-axis gimbals. Worked fine, but no military need at the time. I'm surprised that no billionaire has an airship yacht yet. You need an airship-sized hangar anywhere you want to go, though, so there are not many destinations possible. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5zO1ZzTws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5zO1ZzTws [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791
- krisoft 2y ago
  > I'm surprised that no billionaire has an airship yacht yet. When people ask me what would I do if i won the lottery i tell them that I would build a liveaboard airship. Would need to win multiple lotteries probably, and also the liveaboardness would need to be very minimalistic but still it would be awesome just even the journey to get there.