Zeppelin ho!

[Weirdo]

I am very sad. There is an honest-to-Dice Zeppelin in my area right now, but tours aboard the airship are $375 per person.

I'll try to get over to Alliance Airport sometime before it leaves, and snap some pictures.

[keisukekun]

In California?  Yeh I saw on teh news that a business started up and two airships run (only two in teh US) Id LOVE to go on one.  You can even open the windows and stick your head out!

[blackbrunswicker]

Man, I hope it comes to somewhere near my area. I might be able to scrounge up the cash for a tour. I could sell some miniatures, or maybe a few relatives I don't like...

[Worktroll]

GEnuine endoskeletal zeppelin, or "just" a mid-sized motorised blimp? (See "View to a Kill")

I was lucky enough to see a motorised blimp up close under unusual circumstances. It was at a local airfield, obviously testing its control surfaces as I was driving by - I pulled over, entranced, to watch. It was literally leaping & rolling like a dolphin, albeit slower. Truly wonderful to watch.

W.

[keisukekun]

http://www.airshipventures.com/

Says Zeppelin on teh site.  From what Ive read they are state of the art made in germany and are the largest things in the air in the US.  Bigger than those goodyear blimps

[Weirdo]

...and I missed it. Stupid Alliance airport being at the other end of the county...

Worktroll: I had heard of this ship before. It is indeed a true endoskeletal zeppelin, though it doesn't look like you can leave the gondola and enter the airbag section like the old zeps.

Also, I did see some months back what until then I had only seen in near-future sci-fi: A blimp with powered advertising on the sides, using presumably LED arrays to produce scrolling messages across the airbag's surface. Never seemed far-fetched, but I squeed anyway because until that moment, I had only seen it in sci-fi anime, and not read any articles or heard anything about such blimps existing.

[Worktroll]

About ten years ago we had a number of blimps (2-3) in Australia ... a (now failed) entrepreneur of the time invested in them. They were great to watch while hovering over sporting events, or (as mentioned) close up.

The first time I saw one I was driving, and came over a hill, and there was this elliptical silver object just hanging in the sky ... for a second or two it was CE3K, then the brain finally made sense of what it was seeing.

W.

[Nigel St.John Smythe]

I know for a while on the Abney Park website they were offering a zepellin vacation. The price was a bit outragous and it could have been a joke but what was in the package looked fun

[glitterboy2098]

GEnuine endoskeletal zeppelin, or "just" a mid-sized motorised blimp? (See "View to a Kill")

a Zeppelin NT, according to my google search. semi-rigid airship. basically a blimp with a backbone.

they can be called zeppelin's because they're produced by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company of germany. the company created by "that" Zeppelin..