Can confirm, I went on a Zeppelin flight earlier this summer, can absolutely confirm that it was damn cool.

Lifting stuff with an airship is surprisingly terrible.

Why?

Our old arch nemesis, physics....

The problem is not that you can't build an airship that can lift say ten tons of cargo.

The problem is what you do when you remove the cargo from the airship.

Without the cargo, the airship will be ten tons light, you would need to make sure you could hold it down against a lifting power of ten tons.

Ok, so let's just fill it with water on the return journey, easy!

How would you do that in sync with removing cargo, the cargo which probably is a cargo container, and is just disconnected, you can't just suddenly move ten tonnes of water onboard the airship, it takes time to fill up.

Ok so you get another container with a dummy load to enable a simple connect disconnect at the loading dock, fine that would work, apart from what you would do when the next load arrives, do you just manufacture dummy loads and take them back to the start, how do these get back to the other side where they are needed, and why don't we use the same method to move the initial cargo?

Slap a camera and a bunch of batteries on a balloon and you can easily map large areas without recharging. Great for photogrammetry. You can also carry other instruments onboard.

A winch and cable, a balloon and a comfy basket, enough wine for a weekend. - Sales pitch for my floating AirBnB.

High altitude airostat balloons have also been considered as a superior alternative to satellites for some applications due to lower ping and greater resistance to solar activity. Unfortunately it turns out its also harder to make a long lasting high altitude balloon with consistent positioning than it is to launch something into space.

Whoa. Good for you.

And for radio relays. Although that's more of a balloon job.

There are still airships in operation? I thought it was blimps only

Wow, I'm envious!

you're right. i bet my cat would be less gassy if we lived at altitude, too

i'm not sure i would change that tho, she seems to enjoy farting on people.

For a short time, maybe. Until it is shred to pieces or dissolved by the atmosphere I would guess. But I'm not an aerospace engineer. :)

Airships are the most expensive, worst and most dangerous solution to any problem.

Mass transport (of rich people and military) before the invention of the jet engine.