Also blimps are genuinely useful. Like how else could you float in place in the air long term? Helicopters will run out of fuel. Planes can't be motionless like that. It's just that we are very fossil fuel coded so we use helicopters for everything and shrug at the fuel use. Is it used for mass passenger movement? No. But weather balloons are kind of the same thing for example. The tech does still get used. Just not exactly as a blimp/zeppelin. Using them as motherships for drone swarms is something that's been explored recently I think.

Yes exactly, when i was in a aviation university i was heavily interested in experimental aircrafts, most of them where used/invented during ww2 by the nazis and the soviets, after ww2 nasa continued to research some stuff but nowadays its mostly dead as far as i know. I was mostly interested in aerospike engines for planes or rocket engines even for planes or some really ridiculous ideas like a pivot wing, which nasa successfully researched and has a potential to be very efficient, but everytime i brought those ideas up to my lecturers or even to other students they always said that it wouldnt be possible because its not profitable. Tbf i think that was the starting point of me getting radicalized, tbf to them it is unrealistic in todays world and it isnt possible right now because of capitalism, but at the time i would just get mad at them lol. It is very interesting tho, that whole world of aviation its so vast and its so diverse its crazy.