Whither the zeppelin?

Let's suppose for the moment that the Hindenburg disaster does not happen for any of a variety of reasons. Now: in the face of improving conventional aviation, what gives with lighter-than-air transportation on the short term? Does it:

a) become a luxury-only proposition, providing leisurely travel for those with plenty of money and time;
b) become a steerage proposition, becoming a way of transporting bodies without using more expensive aviation gasoline (I suspect the engines could be air-cooled diesels since the application is more roughly analogous to marine engines than aviation engines)
 

BlondieBC

Banned
By now, it could have easily fade from use or even if in use, had a large gap when not used. The most likely item would be some gimmick/luxury tourist event. See the glacier of Alaska by air. Ten day sight seeing trip in Africa.

It has some big disadvantages. You are very, very weight limited compared to ship or rail. You are weather vulnerable.

It has a few advantages. Faster than boat, 150 mile hour travel speed allows longer legs overnite. When I did a cruise in the Gulf of Mexico it was basically New Orleans one day, travel day, Cancun, travel day Key west, travel day. With faster speed (say 5 times faster, you could have much longer legs). For the right tourists wanting just to see the highlights, it could be attractive. It is a gimmick to say it I did it. Lots of people try it once. It can also land at places with limited infrastructure. For example, it might have some uses in a place like Russia if you wanted to say just hit some highlights that are far apart. It is also basically unlimited volume of area to use, they are the size of Aircraft carriers if not larger and they might have 50 people on them. No idea how that would be used today for tourism.

And you can see blimps as OTL where they can become long endurance drones or supply ships.
 
This was generated by seeing a Navy blimp while outside earlier today. I'm not suggesting anything other than a highly limited niche market for lighter-than-air transportation--perhaps, as one poster suggested, something of an alternative to the cruise ship and thus strictly a tourist attraction of sorts. Come to think of it, that may not be altogether ludicrous: there are tourist railroads that don't do anything apart from re-enacting (if you will) rail transportation of decades ago; it's not entirely unfathomable to imagine a tourist airship endeavor.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
This was generated by seeing a Navy blimp while outside earlier today. I'm not suggesting anything other than a highly limited niche market for lighter-than-air transportation--perhaps, as one poster suggested, something of an alternative to the cruise ship and thus strictly a tourist attraction of sorts. Come to think of it, that may not be altogether ludicrous: there are tourist railroads that don't do anything apart from re-enacting (if you will) rail transportation of decades ago; it's not entirely unfathomable to imagine a tourist airship endeavor.

It would be a wonderful trip. You could say board the Zeppelin early in the morning (6 am) in Victoria. With a speed of say 150 and altitude of 1500 feet, you could make about a thousand miles up the BC/Alaska coast and be back for a late dinner. This is roughly to Anchorage and back. The advantage is it is one day to see all the Glaciers, not a 3 day cruise.

Or it would be great for whale watching. It actually easily has the range to make the Antarctic whaling grounds in a two day trip. Leave late one evening, and in morning you would be over the whaling grounds. Come back the next night. All out of your trip to New Zealand.

1) Does not hit endangered whales.
2) Probably quiet enough to spook them.
3) Your are looking down, so much easier to spot the dark shapes under the water.
4) You are higher, so can see more ocean at any given time.
5) Can loiter over a large group of whales/dolphins for hours if desired.

Or say for astronomy buffs. Many cities have a lot of light pollution. You could put an observatory on one of these. Say leave LA in evening and by true dark, you could be far enough away from cities to not have light issues. And with 5K or say elevation and ability to move, clouds should not be an issue.

I think if you can avoid the Hindenburg disaster, you could easily see some type of niche tourist today. You might also need to have the company do something like move to Switzerland pre-WW2. It would be a common practice if done between 1920 and 1933.

It can also provide what we can do with drones decades earlier, if their was a desire. I can play with situations where in the 1980's on the war on drugs, the USA builds a few of these ships to watch for drug smugglers. Think of a AWAC that says on station for a week at a time. Basically anytime you want surface ship like loiter times, but at 5K feet, it will work.
 
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