Great idea, but still afraid of the repeat of the same disaster. Wondered why we can't just switch to helium instead... this is why: https://phys.org/news/2010-08-world-...ze-winner.html
Hindenburg disasters could've been prevented but US didn't want to give helium to the Nazis..., I guess it's probably better that way. Had helium airships caught on, our supply of helium probably would be depleted by now... no more birthday party balloons!
Oddly, the Goodyear Blimp is now a Zeppelin. A few years ago they replaced the fleet with ones with a semi-rigid structure, making them zeppelins. Well, technically a zeppelin has a fully-rigid structure, but the semi-rigid are commonly called zeppelins and are definitely not blimps.
Some good airship info here, where else other than airships.net?
Airships, Dirigibles, Zeppelins, & Blimps: What’s the Difference?
Many years ago, Turner Classic Movies showed the four Brass Bancroft movies starring Ronald Reagan and I watched a couple, probably back before having kids when I had time to sit around watching TV. They were sort of like James Bond action/adventure movies with Reagan as the star, but shorter "B" movies designed to be shown before the main feature, if I remember correctly. At least one of them took place aboard an airship, complete with scenes in little compartments like those shown at the bottom of the picture above and fistfights and whatnot. It may have been all filmed in a studio, but I remember thinking it was pretty cool and not half bad, as movies go.
A little snooping around the internet says it was Murder in the Air (film) - 1940.
https://heshydrogen.com/the-hindenburg-myth/Originally Posted by Crazed_Insanity
Very interesting. Extremely flammable coating + extremely flammable gas...
Never studied much on airships or blimps before, interesting reads! Thanks guys!
BTW, assuming we can make hydrogen ships working safely, I wonder if we can really put a whole lot of them in the jetstreams without somehow messing with the climate somewhat?
There's probably some sort of cost to everything that we do. If we could really surf the jetstream to transport our goods around the world, that'll be cool.
Wait...is that why they're called "B movies"? Good lord, after watching MST3K for the past 30 years, I never knew that.
"A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not an arthouse film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music). "
- Wikipedia
Man, ya learn something every day.
Yup. I learned that from Robert Osborne on TCM. Sounds like the B movie was the second feature. I thought it came first, maybe after the cartoon and the newsreel.
I watched the first ten or twelve minutes of the movie last night and then sort of scrolled my way through the rest, stopping to watch here and there. Other than the comedy-relief sidekick, it seems to be a pretty decent action movie.
Here's the trailer. Dig how Brass Bannock brutally takes out an enemy starting at 0:25!
And here's the entire movie. The dirigible scenes start at around 34:50 or so.
Last edited by George; August 22nd, 2019 at 08:07 AM.
I initially read "bottom half" as the second movie, like "bottom of the 5th" being the latter part of the inning, but now I think it might refer to where the movies were placed on the marquee, like how an opening band is always below the headliner.
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