"They can loft enormous payloads." (Image by AngMoKio.)

From “Is There a Future for Airships?” a new Scientific American article wondering whether the past can become prelude:

“The notion that airships represent the future of air cargo is being revived by a new generation of entrepreneurs some 75 years after a catastrophic fireball brought the industry to a screeching halt.

Far safer than the Hindenburg, whose tragic 1937 docking remains an icon of aerospace gone wrong, these modern airships are a hybrid of lighter-than-air and fixed-wing aircraft. They can loft enormous payloads without requiring the acres of tarmac or miles of roadway necessary for conventional air and truck transport. And they do so at a fraction of the fuel and cost of aircraft.

Airships ‘give you access and much larger payloads at much lower costs,’ said Peter DeRobertis, project leader for commercial hybrid air vehicles at Lockheed Martin’s Aeronautics and Skunk Works division in Fort Worth, Texas. ‘It’s also a green aircraft; you’re not polluting.'”

••••••••••

Famously haunting summation by Herbert Morrison: “Oh, the humanity.”