Air travel would look very different today if it weren’t for one country’s decision. In the 1930s, the U.S. had a monopoly on the world’s helium supply, all of it located in a small area of Texas. What isn’t very well known is that the U.S. refused to supply Nazi Germany with the helium needed to safely fly the airships they were manufacturing.
Most of the world’s airships at the time were being manufactured by the Germans. With their respective resources, the two countries could have mutually benefited from each other as trade partners, possibly leading to less embitterment in the war to come.
That’s beside the point though. What I’m saying is that if the U.S. hadn’t kept helium from the Nazis, it’s likely the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 would have never occurred. Helium would have been used as fuel instead of hydrogen, which is much less flammable. Fittingly, this airship manufactured by Germany- at the time the largest in the world- crashed on our own territory, in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Some might infer that it was subtle revenge, or that we had it coming. But I think it was just a coincidence.
The disaster all but ended airship travel around the world. Too many zeppelins had gone up in flames, crashed, or gotten lost in unknown territory. They were expensive to build, took a long time to manufacture, and were slow.
Yet in our time, with the pandemic wreaking havoc on the airline industry, it might be beneficial to have a few airships around. They'd be more comfortable and have much more space, similar to a cruise line. The modern airlines are too obsessed with buying airplanes that squeeze people into tight spaces. That just won’t cut in a pandemic-ridden world- a major adjustment might need to be made.
Airships would have room for isolated cabins, making them more available to social distancing. Other advantages are that they have more endurance due to their higher buoyancy; they are lighter and more maneuverable; they can stay in one place for long periods of time; they can carry larger payloads; and they have less turbulence due to their uniform surface area.
Disadvantages obviously include their slow speed, their higher expenses, and the greater risk of crashing; but in our modern age we should be “up to speed” on the technology for building safe airships. We must have faith in our brilliant engineers, who I believe can reproduce those big dirigibles of yesteryear at safer and less expensive standards. Otherwise, air travel may become as elitist as space travel.
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