"Oh, the humanity!"
When those words were spoken by announcer Herbert Morrison to a radio audience in 1937, it signaled the death knell for the development of blimp technology.
The Hindenburg airship disaster happened on a rainy day in front of a throng of waiting journalists and photographers. On May 6, 1937, airship LZ 129 Hindenburg burst into flames while trying to dock at NAS Lakehurst after a routine trans-Atlantic flight, killing 35 people aboard and one member of the ground crew.
Photographer Sam Shere, who documented the disaster, assured that only Goodyear would be interested in highly public airship flying for the next 80-plus years. But Foreign Policy's Justin Ling is making the case that the airborne dirigible might be the perfect technology for an increasingly global and climate-conscious world.
Good Times
Canada's Quebec province is investing millions in new blimp technology because it can reach remote areas of the country while emitting far less greenhouse gases than other modes of transportation. This technological investment promises the movement of up to 60 tons of cargo per ship at speeds of up to 60-plus miles per hour.
Trains can move more cargo but are limited in scope by the availability of tracks and still require secondary shipping. Meanwhile trucks can move upward of 40 tons and can traverse areas unreachable by train -- but they still require roads.
A major problem with the revitalization of airship technology is that Flying Whales, the company developing the airships, is using helium gas to lift its ships, and there is very little helium left.
When released, helium is so buoyant, it simply floats away out of Earth's atmosphere. And finding helium has never been easy.
Historically, helium supplies have been accidentally discovered in underground natural gas deposits, a byproduct of searching for fossil fuels. The search for oil and natural gas in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas revealed a huge helium reserve in the early 20th century, hence the U.S.' near-monopoly on the element.
But that source is scheduled to be shut down in 2021, and a replacement has yet to be found. Hydrogen is still considered an alternative to helium in airships, but the Time Magazine photo of the Hindenburg disaster casts a long shadow.
Bad Times
There are many theories as to why Hindenburg caught fire and burned so suddenly. The United States wouldn't export helium for fears that it would be used to weaponize airships, so other countries used flammable hydrogen. The chief theory is that Hindenburg's hydrogen cells began to leak and mix with oxygen or that an electrical spark caught the hydrogen inside on fire.
Hydrogen is much more plentiful than helium, and can be created by running an electrical current through water and separating oxygen from the hydrogen. Balloons themselves were created to store hydrogen during this process.
For 30 years, airships were a relatively safe means of crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It just took a few terrible incidents to kill their use in the eyes of the public. Hindenburg wasn't the only ship that went down in that time.
But the German airship was the one that was immortalized by Time Magazine. Airships in general began to develop a questionable record of success among military and civilian leaders. Ling notes that, as they retired from service either by crashes or long-term use, they weren't replaced with new ones.
A full two-thirds of those aboard Hindenburg actually survived, but the damage was done. Now, helium is the main source of lift. The U.S. still produces a majority of the world's helium, but the concern over its use as a weapon of war has dissipated.
Your Time Is Gonna Come
It's the airship's ability to move supplies easily to and from remote places with little infrastructure that is driving commercial development of updated technologies. But it's interest in Arctic development and space-oriented technologies that could spark a renewed interest from governments -- China invested heavily in the balloon project with the Quebec government.
The U.S. military actually did contract airship prototypes from Northrop-Grumman and Raytheon. Readers might remember the airship prototype that escaped from Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground in 2015 to float around Eastern Pennsylvania. The United States even uses a surveillance blimp in the skies over Afghanistan and has since 2009.
Lockheed's Skunk Works developed a hybrid airship that burns a tenth of the fuel a helicopter does on a per ton basis. In development for the last 10 years, this latest dirigible has advanced sensors to detect gas leaks, as well as a high-tech cushioned landing system and new propulsion technology.
All this, it says, is to help reach people -- and resources -- cut off from the rest of the world. The defense firm says it's now ready to build the first commercial model of its new P-791 hybrid airship.
We just can't quit you, airships.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com.
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