Challenge and WI: personal airships for inner city traffic

Ilberto Santos-Dumont (July 20, 1873 – July 23, 1932) was a Brazilian early pioneer of aviation. Heir of a prosperous coffee producer family, Santos Dumont dedicated himself to science studies in Paris, France, where he spent most of his adult life. Between 1898 and 1905, he built and flew 11 dirigibles. With air traffic control restrictions still decades in the future, he would glide along Paris boulevards at rooftop level in one of his airships, commonly landing in front of a fashionable outdoor cafe for lunch. On one occasion he even flew an airship early one morning to his own apartment at No. 9, Rue Washington, just off Avenue des Champs-Élysées, not far from the Arc de Triomphe.


Photo of Aida de Costa (first woman ever to fly) flying to a polo match in 1903.

Aida-1903.jpg




So how do we get this technology more widespread to the point that it becomes a viable mode of transportation like it was predicited on some postcards and pictures at the time?
 
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What may be interesting is the development of personal airships at the expense of automobiles. In that case there will be the continued use of horse drawn vehicles and eventually airships would be the way to travel over horse shit ladened streets.

However, it is probably unlikely since aerial traffic congestion, not to mention parking one's airship would be difficult and grow more difficult every day. In an apartment building there will only be so much rooftop space to park so many airships. Storms and bad weather will easily damage early airships.
 
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