Internal structure of the LZ 129 Hindenberg revealed as it burns on May 6, 1937.
All aeronautical aesthetes long for the return of the dirigible. What a magnificent creation: 245m long, and capable of 135km/h, ‘the duralumin frame was covered by cotton varnished with iron oxide and cellulose acetate butyrate impregnated with aluminium powder’. Incredibly, given that it contained seven million cubic feet of hydrogen, it had a smoking lounge.
If peak oil and global warming have an upside, it is that the grounding of those nasty sardine-tin airliners, for enviromental and cost reasons, will allow the dirigible, the apogee of humanity’s flying aspirations, to take its rightful place once more as the preferred mode of intercontinental transport.
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Interestingly enough, the Hindenberg-era dirigibles used hydrogen instead of much safer helium because the United States had an essential monopoly on helium at the time. Airships thus failed as a mode of transportation because of the structure of geopolitics at the time.
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