Om het debat over nut en nadeel van zeppelins wat aan te zwengelen:
Een goede reeks BBC-gesprekken (waarin ik een en ander accentueer):
Up, up and away?
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine
Seven decades after a series of catastrophes ended the age of the airship, the zeppelin remains an evocative image, and these floating giants could be due to return.
It is among the most iconic images of the 20th Century. The Hindenburg, a monstrous zeppelin, is consumed by fire at Lakehurst, New Jersey. A technological Icarus that flew too close to the sun.
The demise of the Hindenburg marked both the beginning of modern broadcast news and the beginning of the end for the golden age of the airship.
Herbert Morrison's electrifying radio account of the disaster with its plaintive cry of "Oh the humanity" still resonates.
The length of three jumbo jets, the Hindenburg was a truly remarkable piece of engineering. It represented the towering aspiration of trying to tame physics and cross the globe in the air.
Today, nothing on its scale remains. The British-built Spirit of Dubai claims to be the world's largest commercial airship and yet it would fit inside the Hindenburg many times over.
Its pilot, Peter Buckley is heartily sick of the three or four times each day he is asked about its flammable predecessor. No, it is not full of hydrogen. No, it will not crash. Or burn.
For the airship virgin the most alarming thing is take-off. Instead of the long run-up of a fixed wing aircraft, an airship simply points upward at 45 degrees and goes.
Taking off from Fairoaks airport in Surrey, among the buzzing of the light aircraft and helicopters, it is a majestic bumble bee to a cloud of fruit flies.
Swanning around the sky
An airship is nothing like a plane. The turns involve no banking, the passengers are unstressed by excessive G-forces. Everything is calm and smooth. It's all rather like swanning around on a yacht.
Drifting low over the London Eye, the passengers wave furiously at the airship, which they surely would not do so readily for more mundane forms of air transport.
The ship is about to embark on a journey across Europe and the Middle East acting as a floating billboard for the Palm Jumeirah, Dubai's enormous development in the shape of a palm on land reclaimed from the sea.
The airship will pass over the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum, the Parthenon and the Great Pyramids on its way to the Palm. It seems appropriate that one great engineering project is represented by the successor of another, the Hindenburg.
Enduring image
Although the great German zeppelin is gone, its smooth lines remain imprinted on the popular consciousness.
In the recent film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the movie starts with a successor to the Hindenburg docking with the top of the Empire State Building.
While for mainstream commercial purposes, the disasters of the 1930s and the advances in aeroplane technology during World War II spelt the end for airships, their sleek cigar shapes live on in popular culture.
It is a staple of the genre known as "alternative history". Anybody wanting to conjure up the idea of technological cul-de-sacs reborn or to represent the ostentatious luxury of the 1930s goes straight for the airship.
From recent episodes of Doctor Who to Indiana Jones to the cover of Led Zeppelin's first album, the icon of the airship adds colour.
Author Philip Pullman populates his alternative universe in the His Dark Materials trilogy with airship travel, and CGI representations will feature heavily in the upcoming movie.
"I used it for scenery. It is picturesque. The curious notion of something that is lighter than air is fascinating to begin with.
"There are also associations with glamour and luxury, the idea of sipping champagne as you cross the Atlantic. And it ties into our feelings about the threat that conventional aviation poses to the environment."
But the rebirth of the airship is not just in fiction.
Projects in the UK, Germany, the wider EU and in California are looking at creating airships for a range of tasks from fighting forest fires, to hunting Kalahari diamonds to working as an air-borne cruise liner.
Return of the zeppelin?
But Dick Chadburn, chairman of the Airship Association, does not believe mass transportation or freight-carrying is on the cards for airships anytime soon.
He points to a previous failed project in Germany as evidence that the industry tends to attract visionaries but often suffers financial failure.
The former engineer and manager at Shell first encountered airships when a plan - ultimately doomed - was hatched within the company to avoid the vicissitudes of Middle Eastern pipeline politics and instead bring gas to Europe in giant blimps.
"The sheer scale of the thing. That attracted me. It appealed to me to think of something that would just float," says Mr Chadburn.
"They are more like ships than aeroplanes. A submarine is the closest thing to an airship.
"They remind you of a benign creature, rather like a slower dolphin or a whale the way they move through the atmosphere. They have a rather mystical appearance, the sort of thing that magicians or fairies might operate."
But one thing might just come to the rescue of the airship concept, the former oil-man believes.
"In a world with very limited fossil fuels or restricted use of fossil fuels you have got to go back to the technology of your great grandfather - no cars, but bicycles. The airships could form part of that."
The Spirit of Dubai boasts that during a week of operations it uses less fuel than a Boeing 767 uses to get from gate to runway.
But the real, glittering possibility for the airship aficionados is that future advances in solar panel technology could render them light enough to plaster over the airship's large surface area and make it an effective means of mass transport.
Until then, the zeppelins of fiction will have to do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6135598.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ne...n_wup_sl.shtml
Is it time for an airship revival?
A Zeppelin NT about to take off on its maiden voyage
Modern airships are filled with Helium rather than Hydrogen
Every few years the idea of people flying around in a Zeppelin makes something of a comeback.
Now, with the cost of aviation fuel soaring and air and noise pollution becoming increasingly big issues, has their day finally come?
One manufacturer in Germany believes so and it is producing a new generation of hybrid airships: the Zeppelin NT.
One of the biggest problems is that of public relations.
Can airships ever avoid being associated with the Hindenburg disaster, when the world's largest ever airship came crashing to earth in flames?
Herb Morrison reported for the Chicago radio station in WLS as the Hindenburg came in to land in New Jersey in 1937.
Listen Listen to his commentary (27 secs)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/c...-ws&bgc=003399
Thomas Brandt is the chief executive of Zeppelin NT.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/c...-ws&bgc=003399
What exactly is the difference between his new Zeppelin and the old Zeppelin of the 1930s?
Listen Listen to Thomas Brandt (3 mins 25 secs)
First broadcast 9 June 2008
A passenger airship service is being proposed between Cambridge and Oxfordshire.
5 Oct 2007
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/c...&bbram=1&asb=1
The Lockheed-Martin:
Coole video van een nieuw type schip dat echt mooi zelfstandig kan landen zonder grondpersonee - P-791 Hybrid Airship with Air Cushion Landing System:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3n5cUaG5fg
!!!!
Voor groot, groen transport:
De cargo-lifter:
Bier en zeppelins: STELLA ARTOIS KOMMT NACH LONDON!!
‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’ is comming!
Friedrichshafen, 09. June 2008, - This Summer - Londons first commercial Airshipmission. ‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’ will give you a unique birds eye view of London for six weeks.
InBev, the brewery of Stella Artois, Englands most favorite Premium Lager-Beer, has announced today, that they will be the sole Sponsor of this first commercial usage of a passenger airship, which will offer flights over London for 6 weeks this summer. People will have the possibility to experience the unique view on board the ‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’ for the first time since the invention of the airship.
Stuart MacFarlane, president of InBev UK notes: „Stella Artois is a synonym for quality, tradition, pioneering spirit and the art of brewing. These are the qualities that we want to highlight with this project. We are happy to offer Londoners and toursist the opportunity to enjoy such an unforgettable unique experience on board the ‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’.“
„This mission is a premiere and the first possibility for toursim roundtrips above London in a Zeppelin airship. We are proud that our Zeppelin NT can celebrate his debut for passenger flights over this one-of-a-kind metropolis in Europe and we hope for regular missions in London in the future“ says Thomas Brandt, CEO of the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei GmbH.
Discover the metropolis of London from above - starting 10th of July 2008. The ‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’ will be stationed in Damyns Hall near Upminster in the northeast of London until August 21st. From there it will start it's roundtrip flights across the Skyline of London. There will be an average of 5 flying hours per day with a maximum of 12 passengers on board the ‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’ on 3 different routes above Londons most famous sights.
Flights with ‚Stella Artois: Star Over London’ cost ₤185 for 30 minutest, ₤295 for the 45 minutes and ₤360 for the one hour flight. Tickets can only be booked through the hotline – individual bookings call: +44 (0)20 7183 3911/ 3912/ 3913, companies or groups of 10 and more people call: +44 (0) 207 1833 024.
The event is conducted through The LZC, Ltd. in London. The airship is operated by the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei GmbH, a subcompany of ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH & CO KG.