Comment by HPsquared
Comment by HPsquared 2 days ago
How about airship tours? Not massively different to a train car in terms of pace, but with much more space and good line of sight for sightseeing and internet connectivity.
Comment by HPsquared 2 days ago
How about airship tours? Not massively different to a train car in terms of pace, but with much more space and good line of sight for sightseeing and internet connectivity.
Hindenburg.
I know it's silly, but it was an instant mental blurt, and I can't be the only one.
Airship design has advanced since the Hindenburg. Notably, they don't use hydrogen anymore.
Actually it wasn't about the hydrogen that much. More like the hull painted with flammable stuff. With todays materials it couldn't have burned like that. So any airship design of today NOT using hydrogen is wasting buoyancy, and a rare (on earth) element, which could be put to use for more important things.
Out of irrational fear...
Also, remember that half the people on the Hindenburg walked away from the incident. Jetliner passengers do not usually fare so well in crashes.
FWIW it was about hydrogen - the Hindenburg was designed around Helium (and thus didn't have various safeties around hydrogen) but due to embargoes against Nazi Germany they couldn't get the necessarily helium, so they filled it up with hydrogen against the original spec.
Zeppelin is operating daily sightseeing flights in several areas of Germany https://zeppelinflug.de/en/zeppelin-flights