Why zeppelins are not used today

Zeppelins were also used for surveillance. Both sides used them to spot submarines , which were nearly invisible to ships but relatively easily seen from the air. And airships were exceptionally useful for fleet maneuvers, carrying radios that could convey information to commanders on the ground.

They also provided a measure of aerial protection for convoys. No less important was their tremendous cargo capacity. Zeppelins could carry men and munitions great distances, something that was not possible with the fixed-wing aircraft of the day.

Zeppelins remained popular after the war, and their development continued until the LZ Hindenburg disaster in The crash, seen by millions of people in newspapers and newsreels, helped end the public's interest in traveling by airship.

Today, they are used largely for promotional flights our most famous airship is without doubt the Goodyear blimp, the latest iteration of which is Wingfoot One and industrial purposes, though lighter-than-air airships have drawn renewed interest as military surveillance and communications platforms, as well as for passenger transport.

Airships "had a usefulness when employed correctly," says Underwood, who notes that although the technology has advanced, what we're doing today is "not a whole lot different from what they were doing" back then. But scientists are now considering bringing Zeppelins back as cargo containers. On May 6, , the Hindenburg crash killed 36 people in a particularly horrifying manner as it burst into flames in Manchester Township, New Jersey, punctuated by announcer Herb Morrison's live commentary of, "Oh, the humanity!

The fire couldn't have come at a worse time for DZR, the German company that owned and operated the Zeppelin-class airship. Tensions with its home country, Germany, were rising in the West, technological trends were heading toward heavier-than-air planes, and DZR scrapped its metal in While there have been sporadic attempts to revive the industry , they've emerged as a niche at best.

Instead, the scientists focus on the less-exciting, but more crucial, industry of cargo transportation. Airships could play a role in fighting global warming, they say. This is backed up by statistics. Around a quarter 23 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions stem from transportation. In the U. At home and abroad, boats represent around 3 percent of transportation emissions. Jet streams are meandering air currents within the Earth's atmosphere that move all across the planet.

While their meandering nature means they go in all directions, scientists track them reliably. Airships were used for bombings during World War I, and started carrying passengers in the late s. By the mids there were regular trans-Atlantic passenger flights. Hydrogen was initially the lifting gas of choice, as it was cheap and abundant and is lighter than helium. Since then, airships have been relegated to use for large ads-in-the-sky, and before drones became commonplace they were used to take aerial photos at sporting events.

But passenger airships may soon be making a comeback, and more than one company is already banking on it. OceanSky Cruises —based, perhaps unsurprisingly, in Sweden—is currently taking reservations for expeditions to the North Pole in the season. If you cringe at the thought of 12 hours of stiff-backed, knee-crunched, parched-air flights, imagine something closer to a flying cruise ship: your own room, a bed, a restaurant and bar, maybe even a glass-floored observation room where you could see the landscape below drifting past in glorious detail.

Would all this make it worth the fact that 12 hours of travel would turn into 60? Airships travel at about one-fifth of the speed of planes; 20 knots versus And nowadays the lifting gas of choice is helium, despite being expensive and scarce. Google co-founder Sergey Brin also started an airship company.