But people are making a go of it. An airship can be seen gliding over San Francisco.
Airship Ventures offers tours in California's Bay Area. Co-founder Alexandra Hall says she got into the airship business because of her husband. Brian Hall flew one while on a business trip in Cologne, Germany and was hooked.
The company says it works sports events and aids scientific missions. It plans to expand its fleet of airships to "support East Coast operations and expanded support of air shows, special events and scientific research missions" and intends to further develop its flight training and education capacities."
Mike Lawson, onetime chief executive of E-Green Technologies, was another player.
As reported by Alternative Energy news a few years ago, Lawson test-inflated an airship dubbed the Bullet 580 at Garret Coliseum in Alabama and says the 235-foot long, 65-foot diameter vessel "will usher in the return of inflatable giant airships."
Alternative Energy said Lawson hopes to use the ships in "sightseeing, carrying heavy loads, as near-space satellite for broadcasting communications, weather watch, and geophysical surveying and monitoring any untoward events like oil spills, etc."
The E-Green ship was described as covered with a type of Kevlar, one-sixteenth of an inch thick. The ship cost about $8 million and ran on algae-based fuel, the "latest bio-fuel that can be developed from brackish and waste water." The Bullet uses helium rather than the Hindenburg's hydrogen.
Unfortunately, it appears the Kellyton, Ala. company didn't make it. Others will try the hauling routine. Perhaps.
Airship Ventures, based in Moffett Field near Sunnyvale, flies the Eureka, a Zeppelin NT airship, around the San Francisco Bay Area on daily sightseeing flights, advertising operations, corporate and event occasions and scientific missions.
The Halls say their Airship Ventures is "the only commercial passenger airship operation in the United States ... and one of only three operating anywhere in the world."
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