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Scottish Sun
20-05-2025
- Business
- Scottish Sun
Luxury zeppelins of the future from ‘flying bum' world's largest aircraft to Google billionaire's ‘impossible' airship
New zeppelins would be much safer than in the past, according to the companies wanting to rebuild the company BLIMP-SE OF THE FUTURE Luxury zeppelins of the future from 'flying bum' world's largest aircraft to Google billionaire's 'impossible' airship Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) NEARLY a century after zeppelins were largely abandoned, a handful of start-ups are trying to revive the airship for both cargo and passenger flights. Blimps were the biggest aircraft to ever take to the skies. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 7 Billionaire Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, is just one of the people trying to bring back the airship Credit: Getty 7 Brin's company LTA Research has created a 400ft "lighter than air" blimp-like vehicle - dubbed Pathfinder 1 Credit: LTA 7 It has been green lit to fly no higher than 1,500ft Credit: LTA But the tragic Hindenberg disaster in 1937, which claimed the lives of 35 people when the blimp exploded into flames, had brought the airship industry to its knees. New zeppelins would be much safer, according to the companies wanting to rebuild the company. Pathfinder 1 Billionaire Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, is just one of the people trying to bring back the airship. Brin's company LTA Research has created a 400ft "lighter than air" blimp-like vehicle - dubbed Pathfinder 1 - which received airworthiness approval in late 2023. It has been green lit to fly no higher than 1,500ft. The blimp reached another milestone in October last year - it's first untethered outdoor flight. Brin wants to turn these sky-giants into fuel-efficient cargo vessels. The Pathfinder 1 will use only non-flammable helium, as opposed to explosive hydrogen, making it cheaper to fly than planes fuel wise. These airships could one day carry up to 200 tons of cargo each, LTA CEO Alan Weston previously told Bloomberg. That is nearly ten times the amount a Boeing 737 can carry. Incredible plan for hypersonic 'Air Master' passenger plane that can hit 4,600mph & fly from London to NYC in 45 MINUTES Airships don't need a runway, enabling Brin to make his Pathfinder 1 something of a humanitarian project too. The airship aims to be incredibly light but with a lot of space for cargo, making it an efficient means of delivering large amounts of aid and relief workers to difficult-to-access disaster zones. 7 The German zeppelin, The Hindenberg, crashed to the ground after bursting into flames in 1937 Credit: AP:Associated Press What happened to the Hindenberg? On the second of its scheduled 1937 transatlantic crossings, the Hindenburg burst into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey. While the blimp was designed to be filled with helium, it was filled with hydrogen instead. This was due to US export restrictions on helium at the time. Hydrogen is extremely flammable. The official cause of the fire was due to a "discharge of atmospheric electricity" near a gas leak on the ship's surface, according to The incident killed 35 out of 96 passengers and one member of ground crew. A reflexive fear of hydrogen based vehicles began to spread among the public, in what has come to be known as 'Hindenberg syndrome', which largely brought an end to airship travel. 7 The 320ft Airlander 10, from UK-based Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), is part airship, part aeroplane Credit: Hybrid Air Vehicles 7 Airlander 10 has already seen commercial interest Credit: Hybrid Air Vehicles 'The flying bum' The 320ft Airlander 10, from UK-based Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), is part airship, part aeroplane. Dubbed 'the flying bum' due to its unique shape, the Airlander 10 is expected to fly roughly 1,000 feet over cities. From 2030, the company behind the project hopes to build two dozen airships per year from its factory in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. HAV is hoping to revolutionise regional air travel with its airship. For short plane journeys run by regional airlines, the costs of operation using an Airlander 'are at or below the cost of what they're operating today' with smaller passenger planes, HAV boss Tom Grundy has said previously. Like Pathfinder 1, the Airlander will not need miles of tarmac runway far from city centres. "It doesn't have to be stuck to going between today's airports," according to Grundy. "It can go into different places. And yet it's faster than moving around the world over the surface. "It's faster than those ferry journeys. It can often be faster than a train journey, very often faster than a car journey. So providing this middle option." Airlander 10 has already seen commercial interest. European regional airline Air Nostrum has said it will buy 20 Airlanders to carry passengers between Mediterranean islands. Luxury tour company Grands Espaces also wants the aircraft to take ferry passengers over the Arctic. With airships, weight is the key concern rather than volume - unlike planes. Although this should mean there are more spacious seats for passengers, while luxury high-flyers could even each have double bedrooms. 7 French firm Flying Whales, backed by the French government, is working on a separate 656ft-long rigid airship known as the LCA60T Credit: Flying Whales Flying Whales France-based firm Flying Whales, backed by the French government, is working on a separate 656ft-long rigid airship known as the LCA60T. Designed for heavy load transport, the LCA60T will have a carrying capacity of 60 tons. Flying Whales raised €122million (£103million) to fund the project in 2022. It will bound through skies on helium, in combination with hydrogen fuel cells to cut CO2 emissions.
The Sun
20-05-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Luxury zeppelins of the future from ‘flying bum' world's largest aircraft to Google billionaire's ‘impossible' airship
NEARLY a century after zeppelins were largely abandoned, a handful of start-ups are trying to revive the airship for both cargo and passenger flights. Blimps are the biggest aircraft to ever take to the skies. 7 7 7 But the tragic Hindenburg disaster in 1937, which claimed the lives of 35 people when the blimp exploded into flames, had brought the airship industry to its knees. New zeppelins would be much safer, according to the companies wanting to rebuild the industry. Pathfinder 1 Billionaire Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, is just one of the people trying to bring back the airship. Brin's company LTA Research has created a 400ft "lighter than air" blimp-like vehicle - dubbed Pathfinder 1 - which received airworthiness approval in late 2023. It has been green lit to fly no higher than 1,500ft. The blimp reached another milestone in October last year - its first untethered outdoor flight. Brin wants to turn these sky-giants into fuel-efficient cargo vessels. The Pathfinder 1 will use only non-flammable helium, as opposed to explosive hydrogen, making it cheaper to fly than planes, fuel-wise. These airships could one day carry up to 200 tons of cargo each, LTA CEO Alan Weston previously told Bloomberg. That is nearly ten times the amount a Boeing 737 can carry. Incredible plan for hypersonic 'Air Master' passenger plane that can hit 4,600mph & fly from London to NYC in 45 MINUTES Airships don't need a runway, enabling Brin to make his Pathfinder 1 something of a humanitarian project too. The airship aims to be incredibly light but with a lot of space for cargo, making it an efficient means of delivering large amounts of aid and relief workers to difficult-to-access disaster zones. 7 What happened to the Hindenberg? On the second of its scheduled 1937 transatlantic crossings, the Hindenburg burst into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey. While the blimp was designed to be filled with helium, it was filled with hydrogen instead. This was due to US export restrictions on helium at the time. Hydrogen is extremely flammable. The official cause of the fire was due to a "discharge of atmospheric electricity" near a gas leak on the ship's surface, according to The incident killed 35 out of 96 passengers and one member of ground crew. A reflexive fear of hydrogen based vehicles began to spread among the public, in what has come to be known as 'Hindenburg syndrome', which largely brought an end to airship travel. 7 7 'The flying bum' The 320ft Airlander 10, from UK -based Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), is part airship, part aeroplane. Dubbed 'the flying bum' due to its unique shape, the Airlander 10 is expected to fly roughly 1,000 feet over cities. From 2030, the company behind the project hopes to build two dozen airships per year from its factory in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. HAV is hoping to revolutionise regional air travel with its airship. For short plane journeys run by regional airlines, the costs of operation using an Airlander 'are at or below the cost of what they're operating today' with smaller passenger planes, HAV boss Tom Grundy has said previously. Like Pathfinder 1, the Airlander will not need miles of tarmac runway far from city centres. "It doesn't have to be stuck to going between today's airports," according to Grundy. "It can go into different places. And yet it's faster than moving around the world over the surface. "It's faster than those ferry journeys. It can often be faster than a train journey, very often faster than a car journey. So providing this middle option." Airlander 10 has already seen commercial interest. European regional airline Air Nostrum has said it will buy 20 Airlanders to carry passengers between Mediterranean islands. Luxury tour company Grands Espaces also wants the aircraft to take ferry passengers over the Arctic. With airships, weight is the key concern rather than volume - unlike planes. Although this should mean there are more spacious seats for passengers, while luxury high-flyers could even each have double bedrooms. 7 Flying Whales France -based firm Flying Whales, backed by the French government, is working on a separate 656ft-long rigid airship known as the LCA60T. Designed for heavy load transport, the LCA60T will have a carrying capacity of 60 tons. Flying Whales raised €122million (£103million) to fund the project in 2022. It will bound through the skies on helium, in combination with hydrogen fuel cells to cut CO2 emissions.
New York Post
16-05-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Companies betting on zeppelins as major player in future of air travel: report
Ballooning hopes. Companies are betting that diesel-powered zeppelins will be part of the next wave of innovative air travel that will be remarkably safer and greener than Hindenburg-era balloons, according to a report. Eco-friendly airships are being brought to market by several start-ups, which believe that the newfangled zeppelins could satisfy a market niche of tourism and cargo shipping, the Washington Post reported. Pathfinder 1 constructed by LTA Research. aerospaceamerica Companies LTA Research, which is backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin; FLYING WHALES, which is backed by the French government, and Hybrid Air Vehicles are designing the ships to replace the old aluminum, copper and wood with carbon fiber and titanium. LTA Research has begun testing zeppelin-esque aircraft Pathfinder 1 — which is a rigid airship that made its first untethered outdoor flight at NASA's Moffett Field in California just last year, the BBC reported. Hybrid Air Vehicles is aiming to build two dozen ships at a British factory by 2030 that will focus on carrying cargo and tourists, WaPo reported. French-backed venture FLYING WHALES will aim at building a factory in Quebec by 2027 and start business operations by 2029, the report stated. Advocates say the use of zeppelins will cut down on carbon emissions as they consume only a few gallons of diesel fuel per hour in combination with electric battery power — contrasted to jet engines in commercial airplanes that burn thousands of gallons of kerosene per hour, WaPo reported. Yet, fire-wary engineers have designed the ships to float using nonrenewable, nonflammable helium instead of hydrogen, which some critics suggest deflates the eco-friendly stance of the projects, according to the outlet. Skeptics, including zep-expert John J. Geoghegan, author of 'When Giants Ruled the Sky,' don't believe in the viability of this new push. A zeppelin is pulled out of its hangar at an airfield in Baden-Wurtemberg, Germany, in 2023. dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images 'The next generation of airships today are quite effective at reducing carbon emissions. The question is whether the market will support enough of them for them to make a significant contribution to reducing climate change,' Geoghegan told the outlet. Other balloon poppers point to economic constraints, as the technology relies on nonflammable helium, which faces regular shortages and price hikes due to it being a scarce and nonrenewable resource. But zeppelin developers seem to think the float-substance change is necessary to hedge against concerns over the explosion of the Hindenburg, which came down in a fiery crash in 1937.
Washington Post
15-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Would you swap your plane ticket for a seat on a zeppelin?
A century ago, zeppelin passengers soared across the Atlantic Ocean in luxurious gondolas hanging from humongous hydrogen-filled balloons — the biggest aircraft humanity has ever built. Then, in 1937, the Hindenburg crashed and burned, and the future of the airship industry went up in smoke. Now, a handful of start-ups want to revive the airship as an alternative for some cargo and passenger flights. The new zeppelins would be much safer, the involved companies say, thanks to materials, technology and weather forecasts that aviators in the 1930s could only dream of. And boosters argue that modern airships could offer a low-carbon and inexpensive way to transport goods and travel. Whereas airplanes burn thousands of gallons of kerosene per hour in their jet engines to stay in the air, the zeppelins in development need a few dozen gallons of diesel fuel per hour, in combination with battery power, cutting harmful emissions by up to 90 percent, companies claim. And because these craft use much less fuel, the idea is that it should translate into lower costs for shippers. The zeppelin revival faces skeptics, though. Among them is John J. Geoghegan, author of 'When Giants Ruled the Sky,' a history of the airship industry. Companies have tried — and failed — to bring back airships every decade or two since the Hindenburg, he said. Every time, the dream has run into a hard economic reality: They haven't found a way to make money. 'The next generation of airships today are quite effective at reducing carbon emissions,' Geoghegan said. 'The question is whether the market will support enough of them for them to make a significant contribution to reducing climate change.' The new zeppelins are still in the early days of their development — none are yet certified to fly. But LTA Research, a start-up backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has begun testing a zeppelin-like airship, adapting a historic California hangar built for Navy spy blimps as space for construction and storage. Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) is building a factory in Britain that it says will crank out two dozen ships per year by 2030 to carry cargo and tourists. The French government has backed another start-up, Flying Whales, which plans to build an airship factory in Quebec in 2027 and begin commercial operations by 2029. These modern craft are designed to be sturdier than the zeppelins of yore. Aluminum, copper and wooden frames have given way to carbon fiber and titanium. Crude instruments and steering wheels reminiscent of sailing ships have been replaced by computerized controls and sensors that should allow for precise maneuvering. 'If you went into the gondola, it would look like a commercial aircraft … like you were in a Boeing or an Airbus,' said Brett Crozier, CEO of LTA Research. The specific designs vary. LTA Research and Flying Whales are following the example of the old zeppelins, using sturdy rings to hold the shape of their long, lighter-than-air balloons. HAV's hybrid airship is like a mix between a blimp (which by definition doesn't have a rigid structure) and a plane. Its balloon is slightly heavier than air, but its shape helps generate lift as it moves forward, which pushes it into the sky. One thing they all have in common is their massive size. Airships' balloons need to be huge to lift their gondolas off the ground. 'There's no such thing as a small airship, period,' said Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba. When LTA Research floats its 400-foot-long Pathfinder 1 airship out of the hangar for a test flight, it's the biggest aircraft in the world. But this is just a prototype for an even bigger version the company plans to use commercially. HAV's airship is 300 feet long and can carry 11 tons of cargo or about 100 passengers. Flying Whales plans to build a 600-foot airship that can carry 60 tons. The engineers have understandably thought a lot about fire risk. The modern prototypes are designed to float using nonflammable helium instead of hydrogen, which cuts the fire risk but invites other challenges. Helium is a scarce, nonrenewable resource that faces regular shortages and price hikes. Companies collect helium as a by-product of natural gas extraction, but — unlike hydrogen — they can't manufacture it: The only way to make helium is at the center of a star or through the slow decay of radioactive elements like uranium. Ultimately, the fate of airships depends on finding a niche in the transport and transportation markets. 'I've been on an airship, and it's a tremendous experience. It's graceful. It's poetic,' Geoghegan said. 'But commercial markets are very hard-nosed, and they're not into poetry and grace. They want a return on investment.' Airship company executives say they can hit a sweet spot that isn't covered by planes or trucks. 'You can either send things expensively and quickly, or cheaply and slowly,' said Diana Little, co-founder of airship start-up Anumá Aerospace. 'This is the middle way that doesn't exist right now.' According to the latest designs, the new airships would tend to max out at about 80 mph. They could beat trucks crawling along interstates in traffic. They'd be much slower than commercial airliners, though, which tend to cruise at between 550 and 600 mph. Some airfreight and tourist flights don't have to move at jet speed, airship boosters argue. They can take it slow to go green. Globally, cargo flights warm the planet about as much as 22 million cars, and their greenhouse emissions are rising, according to a 2024 report from the environmental nonprofit 'We don't need cargo jets. There's very little trade that needs to go that fast,' Prentice said. He pointed out that airlines often convert the oldest and least-efficient passenger planes into cargo carriers. 'They're the most polluting form of air transport, and that's what airships should replace.' As a way to move goods, airships may be most appealing for airfreight that can wait a couple of days for delivery, bulky cargo that won't fit on planes and deliveries to places without runways or roads. The French government originally invested in Flying Whales because it was interested in hauling timber out of remote forests. But the company's leaders say its craft could also carry massive wind turbine blades or pylons for power transmission lines into places that planes or trucks can't easily reach, or carry aid into disaster areas where infrastructure is wrecked. As far as passenger flights, the greatest potential may be for tourist travel where the novelty of an airship is part of the experience, experts say. HAV has struck deals to sell its airships to tourism operators that plan to sell seats onboard as a luxurious and scenic way to cruise between Mediterranean islands, cross the Scottish highlands or fly over the Arctic. Although airships don't need much infrastructure at their destination, they need large clearings or mooring poles to allow them to load and unload. They also need to operate within about 500 miles of their massive, specialized hangars: The LTA Research hangar in California, for instance, covers seven acres under a roof so high that fog sometimes forms near the ceiling. Geoghegan, the airship historian, says he'll believe the revival when he sees it. 'I would love to see airships flying through the sky,' he said. 'But I don't think that specialized cargo, or disaster relief, or even specialized tourism is a big enough market to really sustain these companies.'
BBC News
15-02-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Pathfinder 1: The airship that could usher in a new age
Pathfinder 1, bankrolled by a Google billionaire, is an attempt to revive the airship. A century after terrifying disasters, is a safe-enough bet? On 24 October 2024, a brief post was shared on the social media network LinkedIn. In it Google co-founder Sergey Brin's airship company LTA Research finally announced Pathfinder 1's first if brief untethered flight at Nasa's Moffett Field in California, part of the space agency's Ames Research Center. "This morning, Pathfinder 1 reached another milestone: untethered outdoor flight. This successful test marks another important step in our journey, and we are excited to build on this achievement through our rigorous testing program." Airships are hard to hide. Despite the secrecy, one YouTuber filmed it from the road and uploaded it to the video-sharing site. "Pathfinder 1 is a pretty amazing vehicle," says Alan Shrimpton, editor of the Airship Journal. "It is the first fully rigid airship, certainly of that size, for a very long time, and there was a great expectation that it would fly shortly after it began its outdoor testing programme. "But Alan Weston [founder and former CEO of LTA Research] always said the biggest fault with rigid airships was that people in the past rushed their development and they were not going to make that same mistake. They were going to check it and check it again – and they did." The understated tone in LTA's post belies the historic achievements of Brin's company so far. This was the first flight of the first airship built by the Google cofounder's company, the first time a classic rigid airship of this size had flown since the 1930s, and the first of a new generation of airships. The last giant rigid airship Graf Zeppelin II flew for the final time on 20 August 1939, 12 days before World War Two started, and was scrapped the following year. Rigid airships have a complex metal framework that supports a huge envelope filled with enough hydrogen or helium to lift a sizeable number of passengers, or cargo such as disaster relief, for days at a time. Hydrogen-filled airships are also symbols of the Golden Age of the airship. The era between the world wars when the promoters of the technology beguiled the public with promises of scheduled commercial passenger services between destinations like Europe and North America, and North America and the Pacific, and in some cases delivered on these promises. The Graf Zeppelin flew "the first regularly scheduled, nonstop, intercontinental airline service in the history of the world" between Germany and South America, and was far faster than ocean liners that plied the route. But the crash of the airship Hindenburg in 1937 – which killed 36 people including one person on the ground – showed the drawbacks of the flammable gas used as buoyancy. The airship faded into obscurity; just as conventional aircraft design surged ahead. Eighty-six years later in November 2023, Pathfinder 1 emerged for the first time from the historic Hangar Two at Moffett Field to begin its outdoor flight-testing programme. But the largest aircraft in the world stayed stubbornly tethered to the ground to the frustration of many aviation enthusiasts. Its expected first flight just didn't happen. But thanks to the Google co-founder's deep pockets, LTA Research appears to have the freedom to wait-to-get-it-right that others have not always had. They have used this freedom to, for example, find better materials than lightweight aluminum alloys like duralumin to construct the giant frame of a rigid airship from, and cotton-composite materials and even cow guts to make the envelope out of, and gain a much better understanding of aerodynamics involved in flying very large airships. And it seems like they have been able to cautiously flight test their creation, without the over confidence and pressure from investors that have been a problem in the past. "People said that they could not do it and that it was impossible," says Janne Hietala, CEO of Kelluu Airships, whose 10 autonomous drones, each of which can be transported in a 12m (40ft) sea container, are currently "the world's largest" fleet of airships. "This is a brilliant, very bold attempt to do the hard work, the engineering that is required, to mass-manufacture big airships. I don't think they will build hundreds of those because of the difficulties in mass-manufacturing airships of that size, but it's still possible." Pathfinder 1 is not a historical replica. It is a proof-of-concept airship designed to see if a rigid design can be updated with new materials. In particular, LTA Research wants to solve the thorny problem of how to mass produce aircraft of this size. It wants to build production models in Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Iowa where the great US rigid airships of the 1930s were built. "I've been down to Moffett Field to see Pathfinder 1 twice, and it is really an amazing thing to see in person," says John Geoghegan, author of When Giants Ruled the Sky. "It's very impressive to be able to see the learning they have made from the past even from the outside." The fact that the giant rigid airship does not have tail fins in the traditional cross shape, but at an angle, is an example of such learning, because airships float up and down on a mooring mast and the bottom tail fin used to get damaged. Likewise, the airship's engines are no longer inline but staggered along its length to reduce the wind, drag and vibration that they used to cause. Like many other new designs, it uses helium as a lifting gas to prevent the infernos that doomed the Golden Age of the airship. Helium is less flammable than hydrogen, but there is a trade-off for this increased safety. It generates less lift than hydrogen, and it is in short supply. This makes it very expensive to fill the envelope of an airship with. "There's a lot of baggage around airships, and a lot of people who have pre-set ideas about them, and so these guys are being incredibly careful and extremely cautious about the information they release," Geoghegan adds. "They do not want to do anything to contribute any more negative publicity. For the public always remember the airship disasters and not the successful flights." Pathfinder 1's first untethered flight also has significance for the wider lighter-than-air community, which has for a long time had little more than glossy CGI graphics of large airships to show investors. That it has occurred at a time when high-profile airship companies such as Flying Whales "appear to be struggling to… build a flagship production facility" is a good morale boost for the sector, says Shrimpton. "Investors tell so many people going out to try to get funding for their lighter-than-air projects that yes, it's interesting, I can see the benefits of it, but show me one that is flying today… now they can." "It is fantastic that LTA Research is making so much progress using modern technology to solve these problems," says Diana Little, co-founder of airship startup Anumá Aerospace. "It reminds people about the capabilities of lighter-than-air flight. "Aviation is an industry desperately looking for a decarbonisation solution and airships are part of that solution," Little adds. The first flight of Pathfinder 1 has been at least 12 years in the making. Brin's interest in airships seems to have begun in 2012 around the same time as a modern semi-rigid Zeppelin NT (New Technology) airship began tourist flights from Moffett Field. The following year he founded LTA Research Ltd and in 2017 his airship company began to lease space at Moffett Field and research began at the Akron Airdock. There they built a 12-engine, 50ft-long (15m) electric "baby airship" to test their technology. No one had built aircraft like these giant rigid airships for decades. So, it took time for the engineers to learn how to do this, particularly with a focus on safety and not repeating the mistakes of the past. In the 1930s, the materials used to create the such rigid airship's framework and envelope which were simply not strong enough to deal with the stresses of flight. The use of computerised controls, new and much stronger lightweight materials like carbon fibre and titanium to construct the complex skeleton of the rigid airship are just some of the ways the giant rigid airship has been brought into the 21st Century. So too are the use of flame-retardant synthetic materials for the envelope of the airship, sensors to monitor the helium and engines that can be rotated to provide vectored thrust. The knowledge and skills of the great engineers of the past had to be relearned by LTA – together with the latest research and technology – in order to design the airship and work out how to mass produce even larger craft in the future. Rather than expect their engineers to work at the top of unsteady 85ft-high (26m) ladders to build these ships like they did in the 1930s, LTA have designed a massive cradle-like structure that allows the workers to stay on the ground while the giant ships are slowly rotated in front of them. To do this they needed to find the skilled workers who were willing to join a risky project that may one day make aviation history, and are continuing to seek them today. In 2017 work started at Moffett Field on LTA's smallest airship Pathfinder 1, and planning began in Akron on the Pathfinder 3, its successor which is planned to be one-third-larger. (There is no Pathfinder 2.) But a fully-fledged return of large airships is not yet a given. "I am crossing my fingers," says Shrimpton, "but if Pathfinder 1 suffered a failure in flight everybody would point to it and say, 'See once again, a large airship crashes – it is not safe,' which would provide an almost insurmountable hurdle for the whole passenger/cargo-carrying airship industry." The same applies to other airship companies, such as Flying Whales, whose airship has not even been built yet. "They need to get over that same hurdle and prove to the public that they have a vehicle that is safe, like LTA Research is doing." Geoghegan is more sanguine about it. "Interest in airships is cyclical," he says. "Every 10 or 15 years a company comes along that is working in the airship category and a couple more sprout up. Some get prototypes flying. But none of them ever pan out. "So, there is a lot of skittishness among the investor community about building these things. It is in part about the technology, is it robust enough to work. Then, second, what is the business application? Is there a market that exists that would financially support airships on this scale? More like this:• The giant hangar poised for an aviation revolution• The huge shed built for an Arctic airship• How airships could return to our crowded skies "We keep hearing the same things trotted out. One is for tourism. One is for disaster relief. One is that it will be a green, non-polluting alternative to conventional aircraft, and the fourth one is specialised cargo. "But I remain to be convinced that there's an economic case for these things." The engineering challenges that LTA faces certainly remain significant. "In the end, for LTA Research it is proof that their design worked, and a milestone for their staff, who worked tirelessly for three or four years to bring the design to fruition," says Shrimpton. But Pathfinder could have much wider implications if it successfully takes to the skies. "It is really important. It is something the whole airship industry needs – to be seen in the sky." --
