Talk:Airship

"Modern passenger-carrying airships are, by law, now required to be filled with non-flammable helium." --Whose law? Is there some kind of international accord on this?

The text isn't quite accurate. It's not so much that helium is required, but more that hydrogen is prohibited. The FAA regulations prohibit hydrogen for US standard type certified aircraft in the US. In Europe, the JAR regulations do the same thing. Blimpguy 18:57, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This page is redundant. The page for "dirigible" has all of the same information and is a more formal term. This page also has some information that is duplicated on the "hindenberg disaster" page.

This page should be reduced to just a reference to the "dirigible" entry.

Hi # 24.91.229.111. I saw you did that earlier. Are they exact synonyms? If so, you're right, we should merge. I reverted your edit earlier because the content from here needs to be merged by hand into the other page -- Tarquin 22:15 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

No, they are not exact synonyms. On the contrary, there are several types of airship that are not dirigibles - notably blimps and balloons. This doesn't have to mean that the airship page should not go, however. There used to be a page on airplane/aeroplane (which was frequently renamed back and forth as US English and International English speakers argued the term) and this was reduced to a redirect and the content incorporated in aircraft. Even though a simple redirect to dirigible is inappropriate, I think there is a case for treating this in the same way as we treated airplane/aeroplane. Tannin 22:23 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

<POV mode> yeah but that was just plain wrong </POV mode> Mintguy

-- Hmm. I believe that I merged the content before reducing the "airship" page. That said, I have never heard anyone in the business use the term "airship" to include balloons. The distinction between the propelled and non-propelled craft is pretty standard. Do you have a reference?

-- Ah, I see the confusion now. Tannin is confusing dirigible with rigid airship. In fact, blimps and rigid airships are types of airships. See the dirigible page for details.

I don't know enough about this subject to be sure what's what. However, having a large "tree" of links at the top of several articles is a bad idea. Is there one term which encompases all of these? If so, let's make that a "parent" article, and the others can say "a foo is a type of [ [ bar ] ] ..." -- Tarquin 20:12 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

-- I'm pretty sure of the classifications. So, unless I hear otherwise, I'll consolidate under "airship" since it is the common terms. The term 'dirigible' is a technical term based on a french word. So I'll leave a pointer from "dirigible" to "airship" with an explanation of "dirigible's" french origin.

The "See also" list was there when I first started working on this page. I'll try to make the "airship" page more conforming. Blimpguy Thu Jan 23 21:08:25 GMT 2003

I've looked this up; my dictionary agrees with you, digigible & airship are synonyms. Best to make D. a redirect, merge th econtent, and explain the alternative name here. I've rewritten the opener to explain the terminology, please check for factual accuracy. the rest needs a merge; I've just done a paste -- Tarquin 11:14 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

The Airship Association (http://www.airship-association.org) has long and wide experience of the use of the word 'airship'. It is by far the most commonly used word when talking about powered-lighter-than-air flight. This page should stay and links to other similar words, such as dirigible and blimp should indicate that 'airship' is the best term. Secretary - The Airship Association - 26th January 2004.

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Merge with Blimp  ? Airships tend to be manned. Blimps tend to be unmanned.--Jondel 07:27, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No. Blimps are a subset of airships -- specifically airship without rigid components. See the article for details. Blimpguy 20:28, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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This page and the page for the USS Macon have different figures for the crew count on the day of the crash. jdb 20:21, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

back to the airship term

There is one thing to consider, though most users will search for the term airship, dirigible should be a page unto itself because all dirigibles are steerable boyant craft (balloons), where-as airships also include heavier-than-air craft though that isn't common knowledge these days. The 747 is an actual airship and we should maybe note that difference in the two pages. Dirigible is the more acurate term for what we consider airship and though people say it is based on French it actually comes from a Latin term. The Italian, French, English, and Spanish terms are almost the same and derive from the origional term. I should look it up but not tonight (I think it was dirage). Anyway, I feel there should be slightly different pages for both airship and dirigible.

How one comes down on this issue depends upon whether one wishes to use the terms in their technical meaning or informally. Within the aviation field, the terms are (in modern times) always used as described in the article. There is a brief discussion in the article of the informal use of "airship" to mean all aircraft. There is also a discussion of "dirigible". Rather than making an entire "dirigible" article, perhaps you might want to flesh out the existing discussion(s). As for French vs Latin -- sure, the original root was Latin. However, France was the center of work in the field during the 1800's when the term was first applied. Thus, the English usage is usually described as being derived from the French rather than Latin.

Sounds like a good plan. I'll keep it on the stove for awhile.

Up and down

Does anyone know how airships control thier altitude? The bellman 01:26, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

Quick answer: They control their buoyancy. To go up, they might heat the lifting gas or allow it to expand. To go down, they might release some lifting gas or compress it. Finally, some airships use engines and a wing shaped body to generate lift, which requires that these airships have engines.

Blimps use large bags of lifting gas to stay up, and by compressing these bags they reduce their lifting power. Doesn't the article cover this? -- Ec5618 10:13, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

The "quick answer" above is wrong. It is a common misconception, but Helium-based airships do not change altitude by controlling bouyancy. Typically they fly a bit "heavy" and actually drive around using aerodynamic lift created by pitching the nose of the aircraft upward. When they want to come down, they just reduce power. The ballonettes inside the envelope are used only to compensate for changes in ambient pressure as well as internal temperature in order to maintain the Helium pressure within a very small range. Compressing Helium to change bouyancy is an very power hungry process (15 hp-minutes for 1 lb change in bouyancy) -- so nobody does it. The total lack of bouyancy control is what makes piloting an airship so difficult. In particular, if the ship takes off on a cool morning with full fuel and lands in the sunlight (heating the gas inside the envelope) and little fuel, the ship will often be "light". In this case the pilot needs to drive the ship at the ground and the ground crew needs to quickly attach sandbags or other ballast in order to keep the ship from floating away. An exciting event indeed. It is true that airships do carry some ballast and (particularly the "big rigids" of the last century) would adjust their bouyancy at the time of landing to reduce the excitement level. In fact, today the FAA requires that all airships carry suffient ballast so as to allow for "free ballooning" the ship to a safe landing should there be a total loss of enging power. However I believe that no operational airship ever adjusted altitude by means of ballast either (except Solomon Andrews and his Aereon back in the 1800's) Thermal airships (i.e. those using hot air rather than Helium) do control altitude by controlling bouyancy in the same way that a hot air balloon does. I guess I should add this stuff to the article at some point. Blimpguy 12:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You should definitely add your excellent explanation. It makes total sense. The gas only provides part of the lift, the engines and wings have to provide the balance of it along with the control (such as it is). Being almost-lighter-than-air sometimes, and actually-lighter-than-air at other times makes for inherent instability. That's probably why most of the famous airships ultimately crashed. Wahkeenah 12:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My sense is that the early airships crashed for basically the same reason that many early airplanes crashed. They were experimental craft in an era when there was much less known about aviation. Unfortunately, airships were so large that every accident made the papers. Early airplane crashes usually killed only one or two people and were thus less newsworthy. By WWII airships had evolved into robust, reliable machines. But it was too late. The early mishaps were deeply ingrained in the public perception and the technology was essentially abandoned after the war. Blimpguy 15:02, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point. Even one of the Wright Brothers eventually died from a plane crash, as I recall. But planes, at least the big ones, almost never crash nowadays, whereas the lasting image in the public mind, whenever the term "airship", "dirigible" or "zeppelin" is used, is of the Hindenburg disaster. Wahkeenah 17:12, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, Wilbur worried himself to death over patent suits trying to stop everybody else (particularly Glen Curtis) from building aircraft and Orville died of natural causes as an old man. Orville did manage to kill one of his first passengers, an army captain he was training, in 1908. Lots and lots of pilots of early Wright flyers, as well as other early airplanes, also died largely because the aircraft were aerodynamically unstable. But again, the deaths were 1 and 2 at a time and so were never charactarized in the press as "catastrophes" the way that every early airship mishap seems to have been. The other issue at play is that it is easy to build a small airplane (anybody can make one out of a piece of paper or balsa wood) but hard to build a big airplane. The reverse is true with airships, big is easy -- small is hard. As a result, the first airships were hundreds of feet long and when something went wrong, the price was high in both gold and blood. Understandably, people quickly grew tired of paying that price and focused instead on airplanes that presented less dramatic risks. Blimpguy 15:46, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There was a famous incident caught on newsreel film, sometime in the 1920s I think, when a group was trying to tether an airship (maybe the Akron or the Macon), a gust of wind caught it, and three guys held onto the ropes too long. Two of them fell to their deaths because the balloon was too high by then, the third managed to hang on long enough for the ship to land again. I saw that clip on TV when I was in single-digits, and it made a strong impression, as you can tell.  :) Wahkeenah 12:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)