this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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What airships need to do is become like cruise ships. Put an amusement park and a casino up there, I'm sure nothing bad will happen.
The problem is weight. The heavier the load the bigger the gas bag needs to be to carry that load. The whole thing very quickly gets out of proportion and considering they were using hydrogen the heavier the load the riskier it was.
Modern airships are helium-based, but helium is way too expensive to ever be commercially viable on a large scale.
Just go back to using hydrogen. It'll be a blast!
Some solar panels on top of the balloon, nowadays you can even create your H on the go from the H2O in the air!
You don't use up the hydrogen in operation, so you don't need to create it on the vehicle. Attempting to do so would just add weight and probably wouldn't work anyway as I suspect the amount of energy you would require to convert water into hydrogen is a lot more than a few solar panels could ever provide.
The issue is hydrogen is just inherently dangerous. Compounded by the fact that no one really cares anyway because airships don't have a purpose to exist in the modern world outside of a very few niche scenarios.
As far as I know they were somewhat like cruise ships in their luxury.
The (enormous) problem is weight. Everything needs to be as light as possible, it's a balloon after all.