What Happened To Airships? | Answers With Joe 

More airships in the sky would make me feel like we’re living in Batman The Animated Series’ Gotham City, thus I’m all for airships.

"unlike in a cruise ship, all this luxury has to float" Joe would get along well with the folks who built the Titanic.

My Grandfather won a ticket for a ride in a Zeppelin for his 80th birthday and was SO happy and amazed. At the time of the Hindenburg Disaster he was 11 years old, so he remembered his Parents talking about it. My grandfather was an overall curious person, it always was fun to talk to him. =)

I found your channel last night. I can't explain my glee in sufficient words. Your topics are lofty, history oriented, slightly macabre at times, but always so entertaining with your twist of humor and sarcasm. Your education exudes through your videos and I am a HUGE FAN now.

The fact that the R101 scrap went into the Hindenburg is an amazing fact I never would have guessed. Brilliant.

“But don’t worry, it was lined with asbestos, so it was TOTALLY safe.” 😆 Also, it’s insane that the same metal was used in two huge disasters.

Iron Maiden's 18 minute song, Empire of the Clouds, tells the story of the R101 very well. Up the irons!

"A crash course in ballooning..." Thank you, Joe.

"An airship that uh... you might have heard of." Me: uh oh "The Hindenburg-" Me: UH OH

Igor Pasternak definitely **looks** like the kind of person that would say "Airships are the future!".

I lived in Albuquerque for a few years when I was in around 3rd through 5th grade or so. The balloon festival is amazing, even if you didn't actually go down to the festival grounds, you can see hundreds of balloons from all over the city. Also the balloon festival food was fantastic.

The story about Ox stomachs sounds like a load of tripe to me.

A smoking room, encapsulated in asbestos, on an airship held aloft with a *lot* of flammable gas. Aristocrats: *chuckles* I'm in danger

In the 2000's there was a company in Germany, called Cargolifter. They wanted to build huge airships to carry huge loads aroud the globe - didn't work out unfortunately. They build one of the largest buildings in Europe to construct the things, there is now a waterpark in it. Interesting topic, though...

My Great Uncle Kurt was an officer on the only Zeppelin shot down during The Great War. This occurred over Paris.

“Slightly German” made me laugh. Thank you

I always love airships. There are something really appealing in their retro futuristic feel and look. Thanks a lot Joe for this amazing video.

Small mistake in your German there: "Graf" Means "count", so you have that double. Thus, his German name would be: "Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin" or, traditionally: "Graf Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August von Zeppelin" Alternatively, the English version would most likely be: "Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August von Zeppelin" or (but I'm not sure if you can do this to a German name) "Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August of Zeppelin" Uhh yeah... you're welcome.

I just started learning to can my own fruits and vegetables, and the elevation of my house impacts the setting I have to use on my pressure canner. You talking about how water boils and evaporates differently with different amounts of air pressure provoked some thought for me about the science of that and how it affects how food can safely be canned. Neat :)

The Hindenburg disaster actually has lots of fascinating aspects to it, including the materials used (flammable coating of the whole airship) and the cause of the spark likely being static-related. I think these would have deserved a mention here (because I love your content, but it often makes me ask "why did that happen?"), but there's also a great episode of Seconds from Disaster about it including an interview with one of the survivors.

"Unlike on a cruise ship, all this luxury had to float" 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 Haha love your videos Joe!

"Basically a buncha of dudes pulling on ropes." - Even modern day sea-going ships and vessels, both civilian and military still do the exact same things to moor and dock pier-side. Even military replenish this ships while at sea, using a buncha dudes pulling on ropes.

The Hindenburg was coated with a Thermite coating on the fabric contained both iron oxide and aluminum-impregnated cellulose acetate butyrate (CAB) which remain potentially reactive even after fully setting. Iron oxide and aluminum can be used as components of solid rocket fuel or thermite. For example, the propellant for the Space Shuttle solid rocket booster included both "aluminum (fuel, 16%), (and) iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4%)". The coating applied to the Hindenburg's covering did not have a sufficient quantity of any material capable of acting as an oxidizer, which is a necessary component of rocket fuel, however, oxygen is also available from the air. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster#Incendiary_paint_hypothesis

Before watching this, all my zeppelin knowledge came from Monty Python. Seriously there are a lot of communities in the Canadian North that are only accessible by air for most of the year, and the same can be said for Alaska. I’ve always thought that cargo flights by airship would be easier, and might reduce the high cost of goods due to transportation.

"We can't make more of it" *laughs in nuclear fusion*

Incredible. For all his feats, I'm most impressed to learn that Benjamin Franklin was still alive in 1893 (@2:24). His death must have been a ruse to confound the Templars.

Hahaha love the “Ancient Aliens” reference. I’ve been binging on it the last few days...again 😳 I love that show. Giorgio’s spray tan and luscious hair always makes my day better when I’m feeling down 😂🤭 🖖🏿👽👾🐙🦑

As someone from Albuquerque, I can confirm that this is accurate. At the International Balloon Fiesta aside from having hundreds of balloons assend into the sky, we also have skill events, such as key grabs and target drops. The balloons will also often get caught in "boxes," which is when a balloon will be flying say, North, catch an updraft, and then catch another current which pushes them South. Then they catch a down draft, which brings them back to the original northern current, and repeat.

"OH THE HUMANITY!!!!!" Right up there with..... "These words shall live in Infamy!" ....in the pantheon of great historical quotes and words that will forever......um............live in infamy.

I remember playing Crimson Skies and was so bummed out airships werent a thing in the real world

I live at Lake Constance, where the original Zeppelins were built. And they still operate a few blimps (tourist attraction / billboard space). It fills me with quiet joy, every time one flies by my house. So yeah, I would love to see more of those behemoths traverse the skies!

19:56 You couldn't pay me enough to ride a giant butt in the sky.

I immediately thought of the tv show “Fringe” where the parallel universe in it had commonly used modern day airships all over.

“Crash course in ballooning” HA!

"Empire of the Clouds" 🤘

Fascinating history of airships! I'd like to see them come back and maybe even take a ride in one someday. Perhaps that's more likely than going into space!

"R 101 was the titanic of the Sky" Fun fact R101 was so big, the titanic would have able to actually fit inside the airship.... The thing was a Monster !

Thank you sooo much!!! I needed an actual distraction, in the last 7 days everything has fallen apart, we had a Nor'easter, lost Tom Brady, my truck broke down, my 80+ year step-dad fell and broke his ankle, I might be losing my job, and now my step-dad has a cough and sore throat from the hospital. Oh and I've been having daily panic attacks.... Or as I call them brief moments of clarity! UNCLE universe UNCLE!!!!!!!

“Kirov reporting” “Helium mix optimal”

I'm loving the idea. I remember seeing a bit of reporting about the mining corps that dominate my state (the second-largest country subdivision in the world which is mostly desert) using airships to deliver heavy mining equipment to their remote mining operations.

Blimps/Airships are exactly what I've been saying Canada needs to reach the Arctic regularly, where the land is difficult to ship supplies to.

The size of the Zeppelins is just incredible. I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been for the Brits in WW1 to see these gigantic monsters overhead dropping bombs all around!

I’ve loved airships ever since I read the book Airborn by Kenneth Oppel when I was a kid. There’s just something so romantic about cruise ships in the sky like you were saying.

Iv seen a blimp maybe 4 times in my life and I get ecstatic when I see them!! I love that it is possible that airships may still be useful! I would love seeing them more 😍

Airships looks so damn cool, we need them back cause aesthetics

I love the idea of lighter than air ships that were proposed in the book “The Diamond Age”. In it, humans use nanotechnology to create diamond-oid airships which would create internal vacuums to create buoyancy. It’s a great book if you haven’t read it. It’s by Neal Stephenson.

Thank you Joe Scott for all your entertaining, informative and educational videos. I love what you do and hope to see and learn much more. You're an excellent educator. Thx again.

The Zeppelin Aircraft Carrier reminds me of the videogame series "Crimson Skies" and I cleary see now where they got their inspiration from for the videogame.

Another good thing about airships is fuel efficiency. They need a lot less than planes to move the same amount of cargo.

"...unlike on a cruise ship, all this luxury had to float..." Say, what?!

Yes please! I would love to see airships in the sky! And for freight and environmentally it makes a lot of sense

I'm really glad I finally discovered your channel. Where have you been hiding during my online life??? Lol I'm currently binge watching your videos and really loving the content, wonderful content for distraction during the Covid19 lockdown. Your videos contain content that I often actually learn from so while it is a distraction it's definitely not a waste of time. Your statement about you being adorable is factal and your wife is a lucky woman. I hope she appreciates you and your uniquely adorable intelligence.

I was really surprised that you didn't mention the Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127) or its captain Hugo Eckener. The Graf was the far more successful predecessor to the Hindenburg and was really the one that people all over the world fell in love with. Eckener was a former journalist and held firm anti-fascist beliefs even as the zeppelin company was taken over by the Nazis. Even though it was eventually used by the Nazis for propaganda, the Graf was better known as a symbol of global unity - and it never blew up!!

Seeing all these beautiful machines getting destroyed made me think of a quote from Giovanni Caproni after his own weird plane with 18 wings crashed. _"So the fruit of years of work, an aircraft that was to form the basis of future aviation, all is lost in a moment. But one must not be shocked if one wants to progress. The path of progress is strewn with suffering."_

I learn so much from you Joe. And am highly entertained

I love airships, and even more the idea that they could come back! Great, majestic entities of the skies. Amazon airship with hundreds of drones, Police airship with hundreds of drones, Army airships with... I'm gonna get one myself !

Seems to me like all they needed to do to avoid disasters was to avoid New Jersey So basically like everything else ever

I've been wanting airships to make a comeback since I was 7 😂

15:49 idk why but him saying it was a gorgeous airship whilst showing the swastica on it just cracks me up

Joe, I grew up in Jackson,NJ on a farm. We were there from 1944 to 1960 Only a few miles from Lakehurst Naval Air Station . As a little boy I would wave to the blimps flying over our farm and we also visited Lakehurst in the fifties and later. When we moved to Lakewood,N J my neighbor was John Iannacone.He was the last surviving Air sailor from the 20's and 30's He was 94 years old when he died He had been a hero of the Hindenburg crash,he was one of the sailors pulling it in to secure it. .. I asked him once what he did when the airship caught fire, He said, I ran like hell. Actually he did what he could to help dazed passengers who had survived the crash and fire. As a letter carrier in Lakewood from 1961- to 1968, one of my delivery people was Moody Erwin 201 east 7th street, who lived with his permanent girlfriend Mae Roos. He was one of the three people who has survived the crash of the Akron airship. Admiral Rosendahl who was an advocate of lighter than air craft,became after retirement the Dean of the Admiral Farragut Academy in Toms River,NJ. He never gave up his belief in lighter than air travel. It was a very interesting time for me as a young man and your show brought back a lot of memories Thank you. Cheers, Frederick"Rik" Spector

Nicely done, it’s great to watch a normal video , you know one where the “C” word is not the main topic

"Is that a dirigible in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?..."

Very interesting...Good reseash and excellent presentation. Thank You

Your personality is truly amazing.

i would love to see airships in the sky, it would be sick

7:55 Helium "molecule" has twice the atomic weight of hydrogen molecule (the atom is 4x time heavier, but helium flight as single atoms, while hydrogen makes two atoms molecules) but this do not mean hydrogen is two times better. Hydrogen weights 2g/mol, helium 4g/mol (mol of decent gas in decent conditions have the same volume), but the air these gases displace weight 29g/mol. So the difference in lift force is rather 27:25. A bit more since these gases are compressed a bit, and the difference is more important since there is a mass of the structure, but still not two times. Especially since the Hinderburg was designed to be helium airship, they use hydrogen because they can't buy helium (the US, the main producer, ban helium export to Germany).

I loved hearing your shout out to Bill Hammack saying he reads “with a voice like velvet.”

Joe, thank you for the info! This helped me with my engineering assignment.

18:03 Okay, as soon as this guy came on screen I busted out laughing so hard I cried. Of *course* this guy is the CEO of an "airship revival" company! The only way he could look any more the part of the rich eccentric with a hair-brained idea "just crazy enough to work" is if he were wearing a monocle and holding a cane, the head of which was a dirigible!

Where are all my fellow Fringe fans?! I thought it was really cool how they slightly tweaked a few things like having airships or the statue of liberty actually being cleaned so it isnt green their parallel earth.

Great episode!

Great vid ! Thanks sharing

The Albuquerque Balloon Festival is amazing. That weather effect is called "The Albuquerque Box," and apparently it comes and goes. I lived there for a while and worked UNM trauma center. Took care of a balloon crash victim that didn't get the northerly wind he was hoping for when the box effect stopped and had to set down in emergency conditions. He hit some structure (I think it was a power pole, can't remember) and ended up with some serious arm burns.

Have you covered what’s going on with the helium reserves? That might make a good topic to cover.

The ideas at the end are fantastic ideas!

An airship docking on the Empire State Building would have been insane. I love that they built it with that in mind though. Humans are incredible.

I love the idea of looking up to see if my Amazon package is on the way...

Hydrogen is of course flammable but it’s so light that any gas escape literally escapes very quickly. The Hindenburg fire is thought to be the paint used on the external skin. Evidenced by its continuing buoyancy even while it burnt.

Besides really enjoying your Channel I find it so interesting the way you shoot yourself on screen. You actually have to move around to different positions on the screen to avoid jump cuts quite brilliant actually

Just fascinating. Thanks.

Step 1: Invent fusion reactor that also makes helium Step 2: Crimson Sky’s can finally happen!

5:36 am. Learning about airship trapped in the house. Does it get any better than this? :))

“I know! I’m adorable.” Hahahahaha hahahahaha THAT was adorable

Some good news: A lot of new helium sources have been found recently. Google "Help for helium users is on the way," and "Tanzanian Helium Discovery May Be Double Initial Estimate." Geopolitics and supply chain infrastructure are still problematic (google "Qatar helium blockade"), but prices will be going down soon. I'm not crazy about the idea of helium being used in airships, much as I love the idea; it's an endangered and relatively finite resource (on Earth). It has too many other applications that are much more important, including medical imaging and electronics manufacturing-for example, MRI machines. Google "10 helium uses." Neal Stephenson describes a fantastic (but currently, and I doubt ever likely to be possible) idea for replacing helium in airships in his AWESOME sci-fi novel, The Diamond Age: Impossibly strong thin-walled balloons with all of the air pumped out. A vacuum is lighter than air.

Ah yes, giant ominous ships flying over my head, Exactly what i needed for my sci-fi most certainly distopian future

Fun fact: Dirigible means "Steerable" in Spanish. I have 0 idea if that´s the origin, but its probably has Latin language roots at least

Great video Joe! Thumbs up to more airships!!

Another very knowledgeable and entertaining video

I only learnt of the R101 from the Iron Maiden song 'Empire of The Clouds'

One of the GoodYear hangers (still active) is right in my back yard. We get to see them all the time around here. When the new one came out they sailed it along with an older one and WOW that things was so much faster and more manuverable! That was just summer before last if I remember right.

"Dirigible" means "steerable," from "ballon dirigeable," French for "steerable balloon." There are non-rigid dirigibles ("blimps"), rigid dirigibles (Zeppelins are the best known rigids, but not the only such), semi-rigid dirigibles, similar to blimps, but with a rigid keel attached to the bottom to help with structural strength and to attach loads to, and metal-clad dirigibles, (only 2 actually flew) wherein the envelope is made of what amounts to thickish aluminum foil. And then there have been hot-air blimps. Although He is twice as heavy as H, the difference in lift is really quite small, as the lift comes, not from the difference between He and H, but the difference between the lifting gas (He or H, or methane, or any gas lighter than air). H has an atomic weight of 1, but H pairs up into diatomic molecules, so the molecular weight is 2. He has an atomic weight of 4, but doesn't molecule up. Air is A LOT heavier. N (78% of the air) has an atomic weight of 14, and is diatomic, for a molecular weight of 28. O (21% of the air) has an atomic weight of 16, and is diatomic, molecular weight of 32. So air has a molecular weight of about 28.8. H has a mass difference from air of about 26.8 g per mole (6.023x10 to the 23 atoms or molecules), while for He the mass difference is 24.8. By the way, wet air is lighter than dry air, as water has a molecular weight of 18, so steam has been tried as a lifting gas. And two more things, the z in Zeppelin is pronounced like ts, and the accent is on the lin. Say TseppeLEEN. Oh, and Graf is a title, being equivalent to Count. Calling von Zeppelin both Count and Graf is redundant. "...the final nail in the coffin of airships." Well, not quite. During the Second World War, K and M-class blimps were used for anti-submarine patrol, which continued (with N-class) into the 1950s. Also, there were early-warning blimps (modified N-class) in the '50s, equipped with radar to detect incoming bombers, part of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line.

Great stuff Joe. Oh the humanity!!!

Not so very relevant but fun anyway: in the tv series "Fringe" - we all watched that right? - in the alternate universe airships were flying around and docking on skycrapers in New York.

I've always wondered if there is a mixture ratio of Hydrogen to Helium where the danger of explosion is reduced or eliminated. Excellent video as usual *Joe Scott*

Yes, Joe, you ARE adorable. In addition to bringing us fascinating topics that you explain accurately in accessible terms (often with a hint of humor that doesn't detract from the factual content) you have a fine, friendly smile. And yo are enthusiastic without gushing.

Having been inside the hangar built to house the Hindenburg in Lakehurst NJ really puts into perspective just how huge the airship was

Hindenburg: *crashes* Hindenburg's frame: Aw shit. Here we go again.

I love the interesting facts that I learn from this channel.

That pun at 3:32 was so good, it took the wink for me to even get it

"So hey, quick math." HAHA I nearly spit my drink out. Good, good, stuff. Cheers.