The dirigible and the Future (FIRST EDITION 1970)

Characteristics

Description

CONTENTS 

• Foreword

• The Background 

• The Commercial

• The Military

EXTRACT FROM THE FOREWORD 

In these days of jumbo jets and supersonic planes, one may well ask-why the dirigible? Isn't this prototype obsolete? 

Well, the answer is that the dirigible was never obsolete, nor extinct, but only suppressed, as a result of a freakish thinking in this space age. The dirigible is an important part of the air age, an indispensable supplement to the airplane, not conflicting with the latter, but rather continuing aviation's development, from functional flying to luxury flying. Functional flying, the sardine can way of air travel, has reached its zenith in the jumbo jet, while luxury flight will attain its peak in the giant dirigible.

Present-day airlines talk much about the jet as a "luxury" flight, which is misleading. Because of tightness of space, lack of comfort, uneasy feeling, all luxury in a modern jet is a misnomer. Crampness is a constant feature of all airplanes, and crampness will not bring luxury to a flight, even if the jet is gold-plated. Crampness automatically excludes all heavy-than-air, every type of airplane, from any kind of luxus travelling, regardless of the filet mignon dinner, the hostess and her smile, the captain and his jolly crew. Only the giant dirigible can give the spaciousness, decorum, feeling of ease and comfort, which is truly luxury. Spaciousness in a dirigible is the only answer, the only opulence of the skies.

Certainly, the tragic accident of the Hindenburg did not put an end to the airship. If after the Hindenburg crash, another dirigible had been put into trans-Atlantic service...

[…]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, the author actually grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where as a boy he saw the dirigibles flying over his home, the SS Los Angeles, the Akron, the Macom, and the Graf Zeppelin, little dreaming that some day he would be much involved in the controversy over these magnificent aircrafts. He graduated from University of California at Berkeley in 1949, and then studied in Rome and Florence, Italy, later in Vienna, Austria, and finally in Madrid, Spain. He traveled and worked in France and Germany, contacting Zeppelin people, like the late Rudolph Sauter, discussing the rigid airship with leading figures in that line. He read extensively on the dirigible subject in his native Amercan, also in French, German, and even Russian. He believes that the drama of the airships is yet to come, and a new era will dawn, when the giant dirigibles will grace the travel. skies, giving the public a much needed diversification in air


At present, he works and resides in New York, having just published a novel, The Waltzer, which story takes place in Vienna during the post war years.