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Zeppelin Flies Again 317

Posted by Hemos from the taking-to-the-air dept.
rakerman writes "The Globe and Mail reports Japanese firm buys first new-look Zeppelin. "Makers of the revived Zeppelin airship delivered their first helium-filled craft to a commercial user Saturday, a Japanese company that plans to use the 12-seat craft for sightseeing trips and advertising." They call themselves Zeppelin-NT, or as the Germans say "Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH"."
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Zeppelin Flies Again More

Zeppelin Flies Again

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  • Oh the humanity! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:05AM (#9419439)
    This is a terrible day! What a tragedy! Oh, my God! Those poor people!

    • Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:08AM (#9419478)
      Thankfully, this time the outer surface isn't coated in ROCKET FUEL with a nice HYDROGEN supply beneath.

    • Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:5, Funny)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:13AM (#9419532) Homepage Journal
      Damn, when I first read the headline, I thought they finally were going to hae a Led Zeppelin reunion concert tour.....

      Oh well........

      :-(

      • Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Paulrothrock ( 685079 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:24AM (#9419646) Homepage Journal
        The japanese must have some technology to bring Bonham back from the dead!

        (There's a really great classical work called "Bonham" that all LZ fans should check out.)

      • I guess it was just... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Art Tatum ( 6890 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:50PM (#9421782)
        A communication breakdown.
    • Only in the sense of the Hindenburg going up in flames.

      What are they teaching moderators these days? The reference is not *that* obscure, is it? Or was the moderator trying to be funny?

    • Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:5, Funny)

      by karait ( 711632 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:35AM (#9419748)
      Zeppelin-NT A product composed of TWO items famous for crashes!

      • Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by einhverfr ( 238914 )
        Would YOU fly in an airship product named NT? If only they had chosen a better name! But, I beat you to it by a few years (that was my first comment when I heard about the project back in 2000).

        Actually I have been following the Zeppelin NT for a few years and have wanted to take the Lake Constance tours which have been offered for at least the last 2 years.

        The Zeppelin is actually quite interesting, being very slightly heavier than air so that it coast down without any power. I hope someday to ride in
        • There's no way I'd fly in it. With a name like that, it can't go more than a few days without crashing. Plus, any time the pilot changed any control, you'd have to land and take off again, so even if it didn't crash, it would take forever to get anywhere.
    • Depends on if it is Zeppelin NT3.x ,Zeppelin NT4 or Zeppelin 2000 professional and whether patches have been applied.

  • It is over me currently (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:05AM (#9419447)
    Zeppelin NT came to Istanbul for a private BMW meeting I guess. Thing looks damn cool and huge :)

  • Old news... (Score:4, Informative)

    by ArbiterOne ( 715233 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:06AM (#9419452) Homepage
    The Zeppelin NT has been around for at least 10 years! I've seen photos of it in Popular Science, Discover, et al.

    • Re:Old news... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BeeRockxs ( 782462 )
      It may be around for at least 10 years, but this is the first time they actually sold one.

    • I've seen it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by OmniGeek ( 72743 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:18AM (#9419574)
      I've seen it fly out of Friedricshafen, Germany, and I even managed to buy a plastic model kit for it (made by Revell, curiously) in a hobby shop in Friedrichshafen. It's a neat looking machine, and I hope the firm succeeds in doing interesting things with them. There's certainly room for zeppelins in the world of aviation.

      BTW, I also visited the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen; they have a 1:1 mockup of the boarding gangway, some passenger cabins and a dining area from the Hindenburg. That was an awesome experience, and I recommend it if you ever go to the Bodensee region of Germany.

    • Re:Old news... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tunabomber ( 259585 )
      On top of that, I looked at their website and it appears that the new blimps they're selling aren't even Zeppelins: they aren't rigid airships and they aren't filled with hydrogen.

      I was hoping that somebody had gotten over the bad rap that hydrogen got after the Hindenburg accident, considering it really was the highly flammable skin of the Hindenburg that ignited [about.com].
      If they used hydrogen, the blimp would be able to carry more than just 12 people.

      If I wanted a soft, helium-filled airship that could only hold

  • Zep2k (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:07AM (#9419466)
    They should upgrade to Zep 2000 (based on NT technology.)

  • 12 Passengers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slusich ( 684826 ) <slusich@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:07AM (#9419469)
    Sounds like those are going to have to be some very pricey tickets. They'd have to be with only 12 passengers for each flight.

    • *Smugly hurls slusich through zeppelin window.*

      No ticket.

    • Re:12 Passengers? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by markball ( 21447 )
      I was in Friedrichshafen last year. (also visited the Zeppelin museum. Pretty cool.) We watched the Zepplins fly back and forth over the Bodensee with tourists.

      I seem to recall that it was 200-300 euros for a few hours aloft. The flight attendents would take a vote asking the passengers which direction over the lake they wanted to fly.

    • It doesn't cost as much to run as a helicopter (Score:4, Informative)

      by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:42AM (#9419833)
      The engines are flat 4 piston engines rather than turbines which reduces servicing costs and it doesn't have to burn fuel to sit stationary in the air. The Zeppelin is also designed specifically to require a minimal ground crew.

      At the moment, the development costs still have to be paid and pilots earn a bundle because there aren't very many certified but in the long term the running costs should be lower than a helicopter with a similar carrying capacity. The thing cost around $9 million including ground infrastructure items like mast and refuelling vehicle.

  • Article has errors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BeeRockxs ( 782462 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:07AM (#9419475)
    " The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik -- named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" -- is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fuelled the earlier generation of airships. " The earlier generation of airships was also designed to be filled with Helium, not Hydrogen. Short supply forced them to use Hydrogen.

    • Re:Article has errors (Score:3, Informative)

      by nelsonal ( 549144 )
      From what I've heard the short supply was due to export restrictions on Helium (a strategic material) exports to Germany. Also, as it seems I was the last /.er to learn last time, the Hindenburg was caused by the doping material which was rocket fuel (and photo's of the time exaggerated the look of the explosion). Presumably, the new technology includes a new doping material.

      • Iron oxide, cellulose acetate, and aluminum powder (Score:5, Informative)

        by dogfart ( 601976 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:36AM (#9419771) Homepage Journal
        was used for the doping material.

        "the total mixture might well serve as a respectable rocket propellant"

        The direction and color of the flame supports this theory. Hydrogen burns with a colorless flame and would burn upwards (being lighter than air). The actual flame burned downwards and looked like a "fireworks display".

        See: http://engineer.ea.ucla.edu/releases/blimp.htm [ucla.edu]

        • Iron oxide and powdered aluminum? Holy crap, there's some brilliant engineering for you.

          "Hmmm... this hydrogen-filled airship is flammable... but couldn't we make it MORE flammable?"

          "I know! Let's dope it with thermite!"

        • Thermite. (Score:3, Informative)

          by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 )
          Iron oxide, cellulose acetate, and aluminum powder was used for the doping material.

          "the total mixture might well serve as a respectable rocket propellant"

          Lots of energy but not much outgassing - and that mostly from the cellulose acetate binder. Rotten rocket fuel. But a GREAT source of heat and hot particles.

          Iron oxide and aluminum, once you finally get it lit (which is hard), burns to aluminum oxide and quite pure white-hot molten iron.

          It has been used for such things as welding railroad rails (an

      • Re:Article has errors (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hanssprudel ( 323035 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:41AM (#9419824)
        Also, as it seems I was the last /.er to learn last time, the Hindenburg was caused by the doping material which was rocket fuel (and photo's of the time exaggerated the look of the explosion).

        The thing is though, you are never actually the last person here to learn something. In fact, I think one needs to formulate some sort of law that no matter how many times something is pointed out, only a minority of the people here will know it, and one of them will get a +5 for explaining it next time.

        Thus every X-Prize story has to have somebody explain that to actually orbit the earth, it isn't enough to get above the atmosphere, you also need a shitload of speed to keep you from falling straight down. And every story about airships, starting from God knows when, has to contain somebody explaining that it wasn't the hydrogen that ignited on the Hindeberg. You are welcome to your +5...
    • The earlier generation of airships was also designed to be filled with Helium, not Hydrogen.

      There are trade-offs. Hydrogen gives you significantly greater lift. The Zeppelin company seemed to be comfortable with it, and the "Graf" performed suberbly.

      I think you have to look more at materials technology and basic engineering to explain the abandonment of the big dirigibles. Most, like Shenandoah, broke up in bad weather.

  • I'm not sure naming it Zeppelin NT is such a wise move. Would you get on an aircraft with a namesake that's prone to crash? Oh, the humanity!

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:08AM (#9419480) Journal
    Mirror here [google.com]. This would seem like a no-brainer for the editors. But they couldn't care less, it seems.
    • I think they could care less [slashdot.org], actually, but shouldn't. Linking directly to sites is the right thing to do. The Globe and Mail can handle a few hits from Slashdot -- and they probably actually want them.
  • You'd think that they would have learned their lesson from Lynyrd Skynyrd...

    If you don't get it, you need to stop listening to Top 40.

  • old news? (Score:2, Informative)

    by najt ( 178981 )
    Maybe I got something wrong but,

    "Today, the Zeppelins have returned. In 1997, the Zepplin Luftschifftechnik built a new airship -- the LZ NT. The ship is certified. Commercial passenger flights began 15 August 2001."

    http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/introducti on .htm

  • Zeppelin NT? (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Ultimate Fartkno ( 756456 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:11AM (#9419508)

    Does that mean BSOD = Blimp Screen of Death?

    (and as long as I have you here...)

    I know a Zeppelin has to have a Captain, but will it have a Kernel as well?

    ba-dum-DUM!

    Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!

  • It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jesrad ( 716567 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:13AM (#9419533) Journal
    Ever since the Hindenburg accident the technology has been nearly dead, just as if we had stopped building ships after the Titanic sank.

    • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by banzai51 ( 140396 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:29AM (#9419689) Journal
      Plus there was this thing called the airplane that came along and did all the same things that blimps did, but better.

    • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Informative)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:42AM (#9419828)
      The Hindenberg accident was just the most memorable. However, most of the major dirigibles of the era were destroyed in mishaps. A lot of them got twisted to bits in thunderstorms; flying in those storm magnets was kind of like hanging out in a floating trailer park.

      The most famous exception to this, the Graf Zeppelin, was memorable mainly because it was able to operate so long without being lost in an accident.

      The Hindenburg was really just the last straw. Not to mention that even in the 1930s airplanes could transport a similar number of passengers faster, with fewer crew, and without needing a vessel comparable in size to the Titanic.

    • Ever since the Hindenburg accident the technology has been nearly dead, just as if we had stopped building ships after the Titanic sank.

      Airships are incredibly cool things, as Indiana Jones proved.

      Some people do seem to have great ambitions for lighter-than-air technology, though: these maniacs [jpaerospace.com] want to fly them to orbit...

  • Touting the Canadian Horn here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:14AM (#9419546)
    Check out www.21stcenturyairships.com

    This guy made spherical airships despite everyone telling him it would never work.

    Personally, I find this much more interesting than the Zeppelin "comeback".
  • When traveling west on I90 (NY state thruway) towards Rochester I saw a giant white blimp that looked a lot like this. It was south of the interstate and seemed to be moving with a nice amount of speed. I think they were playing with it because the nose kept dipping then going back up. This was on June 4th. I don't remember but I think it was before Syracuse. Did anyone in the area see this? Was it just a regular blimp? I remember it looking like these photos.

  • damn you slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)

    by wwest4 ( 183559 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:18AM (#9419576)
    I though maybe John Bonham (deceased Zeppelin drummer) had been cloned or something.

  • Hopefully these come to the US! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:20AM (#9419603)
    These would be excellent (and much safer) for small regional transportation instead of the puddle jumpers and small jets that exist now. Since the US is never going to adopt high speed rail this looks like a good alternative.
    • I also think it would be good for those sight-seeing flights over national parks.

      It moves more slowly than a helicopter or airplane, so it would be over the park longer; but it's also quieter than both of the others.

      I, for one, would also not mind multi-day trips to farther destinations aboard an airship. Some people find romance in riding the rails; but I think waking up in the morning to a view from above the clouds would be spectacular. Imagine the sunsets and sunrises.

    • Safety? I'd much rather be in a turboprop during a thunderstorm than a rigid-frame airship. The US Navy's fleet of airships (Macon, Akron, Shenandoah) had a number of problems that involved squalls, crashing, and death. I don't know that there is a solution other than stringently avoiding gusty winds.

  • Flying near Frankfurt.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by hughk ( 248126 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:21AM (#9419621) Journal
    The Zeppelin NT was flying near Frankfurt in Germany last year using a base in a field on the edge of a small town called Bad Homburg situated about 15Km outside Frankfurt. They ran short tours around the centre of the city. Being rather larger than the average blimp it is impressive to watch and relatively slow and quiet compared to conventional aircraft.
  • This should be extremely useful for the various governmental and private groups needing to monitor Godzilla.

    Watch out for Rodan and Jet Jaguar, though. Their jetwash can do some serious damage!

  • GmbH?? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Bruha ( 412869 )
    I know it's like INC but in german but everytime I see it I think it's some slang name for a street drug.

  • Advertising? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:27AM (#9419668)
    "a Japanese company that plans to use the 12-seat craft for (...) advertising."

    If they put light-emitting diodes on the sides for an electronic billboard, would that make it a LED Zeppelin?

  • Zeppelin NT ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by p4ul13 ( 560810 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:32AM (#9419723) Homepage
    From the article: We named it "ZeppelinNT because we want people to know that it will be patched regularly to keep it from crashing".

    Personally I'll never understand marketing folks. =)

  • bah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by kin_korn_karn ( 466864 )
    that'll go over like a lead.. uh, um, nevermind
  • ...actually comes from a previous version of the Zepplin developed by a competitor, called AMS (a is for Airship in this case).

    See, they hired the guy who was the chief architect for the AMS, and they just changed the letters to ZNT, and came up with the 'New Technology' thing to cover themselves from lawsuits.

    Hmmmm... this all sounds vaguely familiar.
  • ...advertising air ships just like in Blade Runner [imdb.com]. Bio-manufactured organs are comming next.
    • I remember when I was a kid in Fresno (its ok I moved) there was a blimp with some sort of lighted advertizing sign on it, of course this would have been in the late '70s. So light up ad blimps are hardly new
  • Why not get maximum lift and just use a vacuum rather than a lighter-than-air gas?

    • Re:Why still use gas? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Xenkar ( 580240 )
      I'm sure the weight of the structure we'd need to contain the vacuum would far exceed the air it would displace. Maybe it could be possible with some radical design made out of carbon fibre, but for today it isn't practical.

    • Re:Why still use gas? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nf1nk ( 443791 ) <nf1nk@NOSpAM.yahoo.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @11:22AM (#9420206) Homepage
      Two big reasons.
      first using a gas gives you a tension structure. Tension structures are easy to build light wieght and strong. Using vacume gives you a compression structure and compression structures are much harder to build light.
      second Vacum isn't that much lighter than helium.
      follow me on this. At STP (standard temperature and pressure) air has a weight of about 26g/mole while helium has a weight of about 4g/mole blimps run low pressure so this is about right. 1 mole is about 23 L of gas. so for 23L of heium I get 22g of lift for the same amount of vacume I get 26g of lift. So by using helium instead of vacume you only lose about 15% of te lifting capacity, but you greatly simplify construction and maintainance.

  • Other German Zeppelin Startup.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by matt4077 ( 581118 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:57AM (#9419967) Homepage
    There was another German Zeppelin Startup called the Cargolifter. Their business plan sounded a lot more exiting. They were going to develop a Zeppelin for Heavy Duty lifting, like bringing Turbine Parts to remote areas in India. Basically all the stuff thats too big for normal trucks.

    Unfortunately, the managers were rather low on some vital brain functions and they had a few hundred engineers working on rather useless side-projects before their burn rate caught up with their Venture Capital

    They did, however, built the biggest self-supported manufacturing hall worldwide. Some Japanese investors are planting a rainforest in it now.
    • wich is beeing transformed into some kind of crazy tropical themepark [thetropical-islands.com] as I write this. Wich will, no doubt, go down like the Hindeburg. ;-)
    • Actually, I know a little about Cargolifter. The company had two parts, one ran the finance and was based in Frankfurt whilst the other did the manufacturing and was based in Brand (business development grants in the former DDR). They had a lot of private investors.

      They were running slow, that was true, but as far back as 2000 they had plans for profit by 2005 but they needed more capital. Their own investors were a bit tired of the delays and 9/11 effectively put the dampeners on any other capital.

      The

  • Helium Supply (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lcars1701z ( 681889 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @11:03AM (#9420022)
    Even though it's the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, helium is fairly scarce on earth. The majority that we get comes from extraction from natural gas. Ambient air extraction is not economically feasible due to the low concentration (1 part per 200,000). I've heard that demand will outstrip supply by 2010 and the $19.95 Party Balloon kits at Costco will be a bit more costly. What is the future of lighter-than air transport with the "lighter" part being costly in the near future?

    • Re:Helium Supply (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stud9920 ( 236753 )
      By then, nuclear fusion should be in production, we will produce our own helium.
    • Even though it's the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, helium is fairly scarce on earth. The majority that we get comes from extraction from natural gas.

      And (at one point) from a set of wells in texas that produced nearly pure Helium. Helium concentration varies from deposit to deposit.

      In the period between WW I and WW II, essentially the only sources of bulk helium were wells in the US south, plus a little in Russia. Due to its usefulness in barrage balloons during WW I, the

  • Poorly Written Article (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Zobeid ( 314469 )
    For example, consider this sentence. . .

    Quote: The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik -- named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" -- is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fuelled the earlier generation of airships.

    1. Flammable is a non-word. (Re: The Elements of Style) The word they were grasping for is "inflammable".

    2. Airships were never "fueled" by hydrogen or helium. It provides buoyant lift, it's not burned for energy.

    3. The first generatio

    • Re:Poorly Written Article (Score:3, Informative)

      by fnj ( 64210 )
      Bzzzzt. Thank you for playing.

      1. Wrong. Flammable is a perfectly good word. Inflammable is a redundant and misleading word, since it means flammable, but looks like it means non-flammable.
      2. Correct.
      3. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No Zeppelin until the 1990s used helium. When the first Zeppelin flew in 1900, there was not enough helium in the world to come close to putting a visible bubble in even one of its 17 gas cells. In 1915, by which time dozens of Zeppelins had flown, a single cubic foot cost $2500, a

      • Your third point would seem to be directly in conflict with an article on the US Zepplin the Macon from 1933.

        http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/macon.html [lucidcafe.com]

        While it may have been expensive to gather that much helium, it doesn't seem to have stopped the US Navy - they had 2 of these ships (the other was called the Akron) - and they could even launch aircraft from them.

        There was a game that came out a year or two ago along these lines - obviously this is the inspiration for the game's central theme of ai

  • using up the planet's supply of helium? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pomakis ( 323200 ) <pomakis@pobox.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @12:23PM (#9420784) Homepage
    Helium is a very useful substance to use for this sort of thing, but I think we have to be careful how much of it we waste. Let me explain. Helium is a fairly rare element on the planet. Up until sometime in the 1940s or thereabouts, it was thought that helium was pretty much nonexistant on the planet. It doesn't exist in the atmosphere because any helium that's floating around in the atmosphere eventually leaks out into space because it's so light. Also, it can't be part of any heavier molecule because it's an inert gas. Any helium that escapes into the air will eventually leak out into space and be lost forever. I believe that this property is unique to helium. Anyways, it was eventually discovered that helium is trapped in certain kinds of sand, and so the helium-mining industry was founded. I guess there's a lot of it, but unlike every other element in existance, once helium is leaked, it's gone from the planet forever. Sure, we're depleting the planet of a lot of things, such as fossil fuels, etc., but at least the individual atoms of these substances stick around, so we still have the fundamental building blocks for these things, etc. But once the helium is gone, it's gone! There's no way we can make more short of building nuclear fusion plants to build new helium atoms from hydrogen. Yet I've never seen this matter even briefly discussed anywhere. Am I missing something, or is this actually going to be a problem in the future? I can't help but think that in a couple of hundred years, we'll be smacking ourselves in the head for wasting all of the planet's precious helium on children's balloons, etc.

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