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0 pointsabstrakraft10mo ago0 comments

Airship design has advanced since the Hindenburg. Notably, they don't use hydrogen anymore.

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LargoLasskhyfv10mo ago· 4 in thread

Actually it wasn't about the hydrogen that much. More like the hull painted with flammable stuff. With todays materials it couldn't have burned like that. So any airship design of today NOT using hydrogen is wasting buoyancy, and a rare (on earth) element, which could be put to use for more important things.

Out of irrational fear...

stickfigure10mo ago

Also, remember that half the people on the Hindenburg walked away from the incident. Jetliner passengers do not usually fare so well in crashes.

Fade_Dance10mo ago

I actually didn't know that. TIL.

Qwertious10mo ago

FWIW it was about hydrogen - the Hindenburg was designed around Helium (and thus didn't have various safeties around hydrogen) but due to embargoes against Nazi Germany they couldn't get the necessarily helium, so they filled it up with hydrogen against the original spec.

LargoLasskhyfv10mo ago

Yes. But still the paint burned first. And the hydrogen didn't explode, there was no "Knallgas". Even in all that chaos, the opportunity to mix in the right ratio with air to enable that, didn't arise. It just flared off.

One could even argue that all that flaring off generated some lift by updraft, making it crash softer, more slowly.

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