Skip to main content

Oh, the humanity!!!!

I've been reading articles here and there for the past couple of years about a resurgence in the technological development and use of dirigibles. Apparently there is a lot of development going on to develop airships using new materials for the 'balloon' part and safer, less flammable gases to fill them.

A trip on the web pulls up a bunch of pages for companies who are building these things. I read about one a few months ago that is literally a football field long. They can lift enormous amounts of weight. I mean, these things sound great to me!!!

Funny thing though. I live in a major city in the Northeastern US. There's a lot of shipping and commerce going on around here and yet, the only place I've EVER seen a dirigible is floating over a baseball game or a parade. It seems like the couple of years that I've been reading about these things would be enough time to actually get some of them up in the air and in use for more industrial applications than advertising, but I've never seen one, or heard anything about infrastructure for them or anything.

Engineering questions/problems aside, these things seem really interesting to me and it seems like with the modern materials and such, we might expect to see one floating around with some shipping containers suspended below them or something. And wouldn't it be an interesting way to travel? I'd much rather take a flight across the US that takes a couple of days and during which I can really see the landscape below, if I've got the time...you know, a vacation rather than a business trip. Personally, I look forward to seeing these things soon.

If anybody reading this has seen any of these new dirigibles being used as something other than a flying billboard, leave a comment.

Comments

Dot Dwyer said…
Though I think it could be a cheap form of transportation, I dread the thought of containers being carried over my home tethered by cables. Not becaus I don't think it could be done but because of the general level of my fellow menial laborers out there.That it is just another opportunity for "Oops ! I guess I forget to attach the thingy. . ."
August 5, 2008 at 11:08 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Invasion (repost)

The ships arrived at dawn and by 8:00 AM it was clear that wherever the aliens were from, they were far, far ahead of us technologically. They demanded not a world or national leader or statesman, not a poet laureate, but a common person to whom they would explain their demands. I had spent the night passed out at the laundromat after a party at Sullivan's. It was there that the UN Security Force found me and hustled me onto the alien shuttle. There were hordes of politicos, strategists, academics, etc. all babbling incessantly about what I should say and try to learn. I was just thinking of a cold Heineken and some sardines and crackers. On the ship I was led to a smallish room with a huge dais sized couch thing and a smaller, humanform chair. I took the chair. Shortly our alien invader appeared. It was big. REALLY big, like elephant big. It's body would be best described as fish like. Its head was a sunken cavity in the large end of the fish body that had two eyestalk like ap
1 comment
Read more

A Rose By Any Other Name...

I was walking home from the grocery store yesterday and a flight of urban pigeons caught my eye as they flew toward me. As usual, a couple of them were flying precariously low, so that as they came closer I instinctively ducked. When this happens I'm not near as concerned that a pigeon is going to collide with me as I am that one is going to shit on me. It's happened. Anyway, all of this got me to thinking about...err...shit! I know this isn't an attractive topic for the old blog, but think about it -- for something as useless as shit, the human race has come up with a lot of words for it. They say Inuits have 100 different words to describe snow. I decided to see how many words came to mind to mean shit. Here goes: shit crap caca dung cowpie (specialized) manure spoor droppings guano excrement turd feces scat ordure That's about all that I can some up with. 14. That's 14 words to describe something that's useful for two things, fertilizer and medical dia
3 comments
Read more

Mr. Creosote's food science....

I like to eat. Really. I appreciate well prepared food, be it some regional peasant fare or expertly crafted haute cuisine. I like to cook too, and I'm pretty good at it. I refuse to use a recipe and tend to like to prepare simpler, straightforward dishes. Sometimes after watching a cooking show or perusing a menu on the window of a fancy restaurant, I like to play a little game where I think about ideas for dishes that, frankly, sound uhhh, not so good. Here's a few ideas: -tuna pudding -peanut butter soup with canned asparagus spears and cranberries -angel hair pasta with stewed prunes -waffles with anchovy paste -oatmeal with braised eel -baked trout stuffed with parsnips and Brachs caramels -pan fried calves liver with orange sauce -egg rolls stuffed with cottage cheese and vienna sausages -gaspaucho of strawberries, waermelon, peaches, and oysters with a chicken fat meringue Isn't this fun? The best part is that one will hopefully never have to eat any of this!
2 comments
Read more