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Zepplins were also the first major aerial recon device and they were experimental bombers in WW1 in the same way tractors were fitted with armor forming the first experimental tanks.
The USS Akron was a bigger (repeat) disaster, and was also the first zepplin aircraft carrier.
*edit: corrected like half a dozen fat finger typos I missed the first go. Eesh.
One of the google guys is building a blimp company:
I just think they’re neat, a niche market of city sightseeing via rigid airship would make lots of money IMHO.
If you want to experience what modern zeppelining would be like hire a hot air balloon. That's all they'd exist as, a luxury curiosity like the horse drawn carriage that's been long since passed as a viable competitor in the transit market.
Jet aircraft basically destroyed every economical case you could possibly make for Zeppelins as anything but an alternative way to do balloon tours.
zeppelins, specifically rigid air ships, most blimps are soft body airships.
Have a problem where when even the slightest of winds shows up. All hell breaks loose, because these ships are literally a metaphorical leaf in a tornado in comparison to like, idk, a plane.
I mean they're probably fucking better than the unholy helicopter, to be honest. I'd probably like to see more research generally into hybrid airships, they're kinda sick. I dunno, I mean, on one hand, if we're all constantly complaining about jet fuel consumption being such a big issue, but still want air travel to be a thing, that seems like a pretty good method even if it's slower by some order of magnitude. I might be wrong on that, though, who knows, maybe the tradeoff is worth it, maybe big intercontinental ships are more efficient. Maybe there's some mass market hydrolysis rocket fuel jet idea, that someone might propose, and then it would get used as a way to greenwash basically what would be a normal jet that just runs on hydrogen derived from natural gas.
Somebody else said they could be a good alternative to cargo ships, which may or may not be the move over land, but I dunno, still probably trains beat them out on that 99 times outta 100.
I dunno, maybe if we get graphene, we'll be able to make the big vacuum bubble airships, and that would be really cool, but if we have graphene then we've kinda won a lot of other cool things too, so that's maybe one of the lesser theoretical technologies. Or maybe aluminum solves this?
I think what I've learned from the domestic train industry in america and from listening to podcasts about supersonic jets in the 50's is that none of this is so much a huge technological issue, as much as it is kind of just a political or purely cultural decision. We could have CRTs again, if we really wanted, or even plasma screens, right, but fuck that, you're getting LCD and LCD derivatives now and you're gonna like it. Maybe one thing or the other is "less efficient", right, but that doesn't actually mean anything. It's like freedom, it's a meta-value, it's a proxy for your actual values. If the thing you value most is like, disseminating durable displays all over the place, at a low cost, with low weight, then you're going to opt for LCDs. But if you were more into video quality or motion clarity or a more optimal contrast ratio, you might very well decide on another approach. If you want to read outside without taking a book, you go with e-ink, you don't go with LCD, you know? If that's your priority, if that's your value, if that's your value as shaped by the context. So just saying that zeppelins are "less efficient" than planes is kind of reliant on like, an unspoken definition of efficiency. It's just a simple matter of priorities.
The Hindenburg was just a high-visibility hint that airships were not working out. Lighter-than-air craft, like jetpacks and flying cars, fall under the category of technically feasible inventions that are terrible for a wide variety of reasons we'd desperately like to ignore.