R100 Comes to Roost in Montreal

[@ZeppelinR101]

Thanks for uploading this.

[@zuutlmna]

Hey.. Dust off those prints. With modern high strength, lightweight fabric, and some nice off-the-shelf modern aircraft engines, the weight savings in those items alone would be enough to use helium, and still..!!!...have a large surplus of weight savings to work with.. Maybe add some flash condensers to enable use of water ballast etc.. That original fabric was extremely heavy and volatile. -Modern flame-retardant aviation grade fabrics would produce even more weight savings!, and possibly some cost savings too, as mostly off-the-shelf.. People would love to fly in airships again. I think an airship industry might be doable (and least in terms of science and engineering), now that we have vastly better materials and technology. ..

[@zuutlmna]

The British airship program had the right idea with the big mooring tower-masts. Take care of business without "landing" the airship. Keep aircraft airborne and in revenue operation as much as possible.

[@awuma]

Wonderful and majestic as rigid dirigibles were, modern versions of carbon fibre and impervious materials would still be vulnerable to weather and air currents, and would be slow, expensive and carry too small a payload to be commercially feasible. Furthermore, helium is a rare resource in ever increasing demand. Non-rigid airships have some specialised applications, and avoid some of the rigid's vulnerabilities but certainly not all.

[@MH-fb5kr]

That mooring looks dangerous and tedious

[@7775Kevin]

Man the British sure couldn’t figure out how to put the outer cover on an airship.

[@edwardcole4623]

?

[@jericarolinem2789]

Why did they use hydrogen in their airships if they were allies of the United States? They could have been permitted to use helium. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had the R101 disaster

[@corrigenda70]

The US would not supply us with helium. As to why I suspect it was not known what supplies they really had.

[@bernardthedisappointedowl6938]

Not sure helium would have made a big difference to the R101, as it ploughed into a hillside with some force - plenty of petrol and flammable fabric to make a nice fire without the help of hydrogen - and helium, being a lifting gas, would have done nothing to extinguish the flames below, ^oo^

[@productions4452]

The r101 crashed because unlike her sister, she was a design failure. She was so heavy with hydrogen, she came crushing down. If she had been filled with helium she wouldn't even lift off the ground.

[@MH-fb5kr]

The R 101 crashed because of a gale