Comments on: Airship Ventures grounded by lack of funds

By: zeppelinrider

zeppelinrider — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Oh no! I rode on their zeppelin a couple of years ago and really, really enjoyed it. I wished I could have afforded a longer ride, but it was quite expensive. That said, for me anyway it was worth every penny. I hope they get this figured out.

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 16:13:00 +0000

Elon Musk? the Elon Musk who is trying to bring back the 100 year old electric car idea?

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:27:00 +0000

Yeah. I was out bicycling in the marshland behind Shoreline one day, and turned around and saw the Zeppelin taking off, probably about a week after it first started service, and I’ve frequently seen it flying around when I’m on my way to or from work or driving up to San Francisco. I stopped and watched a landing just a couple of weeks ago.

And in spite of all the economic chaos we’ve had the last few years, it’s been cheerful to know that things can’t have gone totally down the tubes if we can still afford to have something as silly and wonderful as Zeppelins flying around. I’ll miss it.

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:20:00 +0000

Cory traditionally uses hot air balloons. Plenty of them around, and balloon festivals in places like Albuquerque and Dresden.

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:18:00 +0000

“Paint it Steampunk”? You do know that their first non-employee customers were Abney Park?

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:17:00 +0000

San Francisco is a world destination. But there’s only so much market here. They also took it to LA, and a few other places.

By: Gerald Mander

Gerald Mander — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Coincidentally, a ten-fold increase in helium prices after Red Bull used 30 million cubic feet of it for a publicity stunt that the media fell all over themselves covering, with very little discussion about the wisdom of using so much of an irreplaceable element mostly to break an existing free-fall record.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:30:00 +0000

The flight itself was very smooth and slow… I spent a lot of time with my head hanging out the window as I knew I could never look a dog in the eye again if I missed this opportunity!

Particularly if it was one of those dogs from Up.

By: mzed

mzed — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:24:00 +0000

I hope Cory can still get around.

By: Matthew Petty

Matthew Petty — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:16:00 +0000

The airships used that movie were made by a company in my home town of Bedford. They were based in the Cardington hangars, and used to come up over the town, over our garden.

By: Matthew Petty

Matthew Petty — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:01:00 +0000

I thought the same thing. Elon Musk’s recent comments about high-speed rail were the same. “Why don’t we use an evacuated tube with pods travelling at 500 miles an hour?” Because the idea is 100 years old, and it hasn’t worked yet. Same goes for maglev. Fine, keep trying as tech and materials evolve, but don’t claim that current (as in state of the art) tech is “sooo 20th century”.

By: Otis Farnapple

Otis Farnapple — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:50:00 +0000

My father and I took a flight a year ago over San Francisco and it was incredible.

When the guide mentioned that Amelia Earhart had taken off from the terminal on her final flight the woman in front of us said that she was there that day and that she had also seen Lindbergh there as well (Oakland Airport), she was a fan of flight from way back and as we flew over Treasure Island she talked about remembering the Worlds Fair being built and the China Clippers flying!

The flight itself was very smooth and slow… I spent a lot of time with my head hanging out the window as I knew I could never look a dog in the eye again if I missed this opportunity!

As we landed a YAK 11 took off underneath us – it was a day of juxtapositions – flying in a German airship over what was a WWII US airbase watching a Soviet aircraft taking off while talking with a fellow passenger who had been around since Lindbergh was making history.

I hope they can find the funding to keep going – it would be a great place to watch the America’s Cup.

By: Liam Finley

Liam Finley — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:52:00 +0000

Living in the Bay Area years ago, I wish I had a nickle for every time someone noticed the big hangars at Moffett field and had the brilliant idea of starting luxury Zepplin tours. Well, give these people credit for actually trying it instead of talking about it.

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:44:00 +0000

There is a video somewhere from a Melbourne news crew who were filming from an airship when the weather suddenly got bad. It goes for an hour and basically shows the vehicle being tossed around like a coke bottle in white water rapids. I have my doubts about attaching myself to a huge body of buoyant air. Sometimes the air really moves around.

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:39:00 +0000

Larry Ellison's already settled on his preferred supervillain transport.

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:31:00 +0000

http://www.airshipvictoria.org/

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:30:00 +0000

I know: airplane transport looked so promising until that first crash.

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:29:00 +0000

This wasn’t going to be a savior of modern transportation — just a luxury sight-seeing vessel. But the costs are brutal. Hydrogen already!

I didn’t hold out much hope of ever getting a ride, but I did love to look out my window and watch it lazily tooling around the bay. It made me feel like I really was living in the 21st Century.

By: Brianna Rickman

Brianna Rickman — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:47:00 +0000

There are more than three working Zeppelins in the world .. ever been to Friedrichshafen Germany?

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:43:00 +0000

If you can’t find a supervillain with cash to burn in Silicon Valley then you’re probably just not looking hard enough. (View to a Kill, anyone?)

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:35:00 +0000

(Also see: Concorde.)

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:29:00 +0000

People tend to forget that the Hindenburg's predecessor, the Graf Zeppelin, flew over a million miles without mishap.

"Oh, the mundanity!!"

By: atteSmythe

atteSmythe — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Actually, you can!

By: acerplatanoides

acerplatanoides — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Do you have a film of that? because i have this film of the Hindenburg that will curl your eyebrows.

By: wirrbeltier

wirrbeltier — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:08:00 +0000

VC-funded airships seem to have trouble more often than not, unfortunately. A decade ago, a german company that wanted to build a heavy-lift airship, called Cargolifter, folded. With them they took 300 million euros (~400 million today’s $) and left nothing but a giant hangar in eastern germany. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter . I especially like the sentence:
“Despite the setback, an agreement was reached with Boeing in 2002 for the joint study of a lighter-than-air stratospheric platform.”
Lighter. Than. Air. Stratospheric. Platform.

By: acerplatanoides

acerplatanoides — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:07:00 +0000

airship tours of wine country, hello!

By: Pag

Pag — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:55:00 +0000

And that most passengers on the Hindernburg survived the accident — you can’t say that of most airplane crash.

By: CraigDanger

CraigDanger — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:44:00 +0000

Helium! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwh07fYNdCY

By: CraigDanger

CraigDanger — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Going to post all of these I can find http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxk0ZcFG8Go

By: Mackay Bell

Mackay Bell — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Actually, that’s a pretty brilliant idea. Why not start a kickstarter campaign to turn it into a Steampunk toy for the next Burning Man? How much would it cost to buy the thing?