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Selects: How Blimps Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, friends, have you ever flown into blimp? I haven't.
0:04
Speaker 1: It's one of my goals, and on August I had neither.
0:09
Speaker 1: But that's what we talked about and more in the
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Speaker 1: episode How Blimps Work coming up right now. Welcome to
0:19
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios
0:22
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:30
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's with us,
0:34
Speaker 1: so that makes this Stuff you should Know? How you doing?
0:37
Speaker 1: I'm good man, this is I'm excited about this one.
0:39
Speaker 1: Oh are you sure? Blimps? Yeah, because they have like
0:43
Speaker 1: eight names, blimp, dirigible, zeppelin, yeah, airship yeah. Uh well
0:52
Speaker 1: technically l t A I'm counting that lighter than airship, yeah,
0:56
Speaker 1: which I think is ultimately lighter than airship. L t
0:59
Speaker 1: A is the umbrella term for all of those things
1:03
Speaker 1: which are slightly different. Yeah. I think an l t
1:05
Speaker 1: A and an airship is all of them. The dirigible
1:08
Speaker 1: is all of them. Zeppelin is rigid, and a blimp
1:11
Speaker 1: is non rigid. Nice, and mostly we just said blimps.
1:14
Speaker 1: These days, not a lot of rigid airships aren't there?
1:17
Speaker 1: But would they? Would they constitute. Yeah, no, but there's
1:20
Speaker 1: they can be semi rigid or non rigid, right, yeah,
1:24
Speaker 1: and I think the future we'll talk about that obviously
1:26
Speaker 1: at the end, but I think those are some of
1:28
Speaker 1: those are more the semi rigid style, right. That's very huge. Yeah,
1:33
Speaker 1: but they're made of some really lightweight but very strong
1:35
Speaker 1: composite materials. Yeah. Boom so Chuck, Let's talk about the
1:41
Speaker 1: history of blimps because I think when anybody thinks of blimps,
1:45
Speaker 1: they think Handenburg, they think, they think the Handenburg and
1:49
Speaker 1: then maybe can currently or right after the Good Year blimp. Yeah,
1:55
Speaker 1: those are the two that really laid it on the
1:59
Speaker 1: line for blimped him. Uh yeah, you know, want you
2:03
Speaker 1: want to talk about the early history, I guess, and
2:05
Speaker 1: then get to the tragedy. Yeah, because there wasn't that
2:08
Speaker 1: much time in between the two to tell you the truth. Yeah,
2:11
Speaker 1: I mean it all started, of course with hot air balloons,
2:14
Speaker 1: because uh, they're not so different. In Sight three, a
2:18
Speaker 1: couple of frenchees, brothers, Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michelle. They
2:24
Speaker 1: said they were brothers, but they have different Last night,
2:26
Speaker 1: I think Jacques Etienne is his first and middle name. Okay,
2:29
Speaker 1: that makes sense. They all had three names, uh last name,
2:32
Speaker 1: serial killer, mong Gulfier. They invented the hot air balloon
2:37
Speaker 1: uh an unmanned hot air balloon in seventy three, and
2:41
Speaker 1: then later that same year a French physicist last name
2:45
Speaker 1: de Rosier had the first manned balloon flight. And they
2:49
Speaker 1: were just floating around because that's what our balloons do.
2:53
Speaker 1: You can go up and then if you're really good,
2:55
Speaker 1: you can come back down. But left and right, that's
2:57
Speaker 1: up to mother nature. That's right, which is a little scary,
3:00
Speaker 1: although I think these days can they steer them at all.
3:03
Speaker 1: We have a great article on this. You're you're subject
3:07
Speaker 1: to the winds, to the the um was the god
3:11
Speaker 1: of wind that you know, he comes out of the
3:14
Speaker 1: cloud and blows wind. Yeah that guy. Yeah, you're you're
3:18
Speaker 1: subject to his whim So if if you're headed towards something,
3:22
Speaker 1: it's go over it or hit it. Yes, okay, And
3:25
Speaker 1: you remember there was that terrible blo um hot air
3:27
Speaker 1: balloon accident and I think Virginia last year earlier this year. Yeah,
3:31
Speaker 1: like they hit a power line I think, and then
3:33
Speaker 1: the basket caught fire and like they had to jump.
3:36
Speaker 1: It was really bad. Um. But yeah, you can go
3:39
Speaker 1: up and over and I imagine it's under if it's
3:41
Speaker 1: like a power line, yeah, or a tunnel if you're
3:44
Speaker 1: really good, or you're in a cartoon like the laugh Olympics.
3:48
Speaker 1: That's something they do in there. But the I think
3:53
Speaker 1: if you're really good, you could probably know where to
3:55
Speaker 1: steer into the wind to maybe use use the wind.
3:59
Speaker 1: But know, with a blimp, the big distinction is, aside
4:02
Speaker 1: from its distinctive shape, is that you can maneuver like
4:07
Speaker 1: a pro That's right, And that's what Henry uh Jaffar
4:11
Speaker 1: did in eighteen fifty two when he finally someone said
4:14
Speaker 1: we should steer these things and he built the first
4:16
Speaker 1: powered airship and it was cigar field like the classic
4:20
Speaker 1: shapes that we know and love now, had a propeller
4:23
Speaker 1: like they have now, and a little engine although it
4:26
Speaker 1: was a steam engine which they don't use now. Three
4:28
Speaker 1: horsepower steam engine. Yeah, they're not huge engine still didn't
4:32
Speaker 1: take a lot apparently, No, it really doesn't, um. And
4:36
Speaker 1: those were rigid airships. Uh, it's a it's a metal framework.
4:40
Speaker 1: And in nineteen hundred, count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, that name
4:44
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, Zeppelin of Germany. Uh, and that's where they
4:47
Speaker 1: got the name, of course, because I never understood the
4:50
Speaker 1: led the lead well it was I think someone said
4:54
Speaker 1: as a joke, you guys are gonna go over like
4:56
Speaker 1: a led Zeppelin, or they did when they played on
4:58
Speaker 1: the BBC. Is that it? But I take the A
5:00
Speaker 1: out because the same reason you take the A out
5:03
Speaker 1: of def Leppard. I've never understood that either, in the
5:06
Speaker 1: same as you put a boom loud over Motley Crue.
5:08
Speaker 1: This just makes it cool, you know, different differentiates you
5:12
Speaker 1: gotta mispell something in your band. I think I was
5:14
Speaker 1: just looking too deeply into it. It's the problem. Yeah,
5:18
Speaker 1: L E A d Zeppelin would be weird. Yeah, but
5:21
Speaker 1: I think like our paradigm would have adjusted. We would
5:24
Speaker 1: think L E. D Zeppelin would be weird if we
5:26
Speaker 1: were used to led Zeppelin with an A, or if
5:29
Speaker 1: the Beatles was spelled B E T L E S. Yeah,
5:32
Speaker 1: instead of their penny name. Very punny, all right, boy,
5:37
Speaker 1: we get sidetracks so easy with music stuff. Not really
5:40
Speaker 1: Zeppelin was I think people saw that coming before the
5:43
Speaker 1: press play. Uh. So that was the rigid Airship, the
5:47
Speaker 1: first one, and those have a metal framework and it
5:50
Speaker 1: had tail fins and rudders had combustion engines and could
5:54
Speaker 1: cruise about feet with up to five people. Yes, not bad.
5:58
Speaker 1: You could bring the whole family as long as you encounter,
6:02
Speaker 1: as long as you total no more than five, as
6:04
Speaker 1: long as you paid off the captain. Well then you
6:06
Speaker 1: just have to be a family four, that's right, because
6:09
Speaker 1: the captain's got to sit somewhere, right. Yeah, they got
6:12
Speaker 1: their little captain's chair. So everything was going quite swimmingly. Actually. Um,
6:17
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, there there was.
6:21
Speaker 1: It was just widely assumed that we would have a
6:24
Speaker 1: future where blimps zeppelins were just a regular feature of
6:28
Speaker 1: the sky. Well they were up until the Hinderberg went down.
6:32
Speaker 1: There were more than two thousand flights carried um tens
6:36
Speaker 1: of thousands of passengers over a million miles. Like that
6:39
Speaker 1: was air travel, we should say, ultra wealthy passengers at
6:43
Speaker 1: the time. Um. The Hinderberg in particular was it was
6:47
Speaker 1: high class. It was the pride of Nazi Germany, and
6:50
Speaker 1: it was on its maiden voyage, wasn't it. It It was
6:52
Speaker 1: almost called the Hitler by the way, was it really? Yeah?
6:54
Speaker 1: But Hitler was like I don't want my name on
6:56
Speaker 1: that thing. Really yet not that he like foretold the few. Sure,
7:00
Speaker 1: he just didn't. I don't know. He just didn't want
7:02
Speaker 1: to him named after an airship. He didn't believe um
7:06
Speaker 1: Freud's idea that sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, yeah,
7:11
Speaker 1: or a cigar shaped airship is just a cigar shaped
7:13
Speaker 1: there and it crashed and burned too, So he was
7:16
Speaker 1: probably pretty stoked that he didn't have his name on it. Yeah.
7:19
Speaker 1: He very famously went who yeah when he heard the
7:23
Speaker 1: news exactly. So, uh, we should probably stopped making light
7:26
Speaker 1: of this nearly eighty year old tragedy because people did die,
7:32
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I mean, should we tell the story?
7:37
Speaker 1: All right? Well, it took off on May three, seven,
7:40
Speaker 1: had thirty six passengers and six officers and crew members
7:44
Speaker 1: and trainees, left Frankfort at about seven fifteen and then
7:49
Speaker 1: crossed out over the Atlantic at about two am the
7:52
Speaker 1: next day. It's not super fast travel. It was compared
7:55
Speaker 1: to the ship travel at the time. It was about
7:58
Speaker 1: it took about half the time to cross the Atlanta
8:00
Speaker 1: because it did in a boat. Yeah, But compared to
8:02
Speaker 1: what we're used to, you were just it was leisurely
8:06
Speaker 1: um and apparently after reading more about the Hindenburgh it's
8:09
Speaker 1: not as um, and I guess ship travel is sort
8:12
Speaker 1: of the same way, like we're going to get there
8:13
Speaker 1: when we get there, like we're heading, we're trying to
8:16
Speaker 1: get there and then, but you never know what's going
8:18
Speaker 1: to happen. Right, that's why they called them the leisure class.
8:21
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. It follows followed a northern track across
8:25
Speaker 1: the ocean. Um eventually crossed uh into North America, over
8:31
Speaker 1: the coast of Newfoundland and arrived in lake Hurst, New
8:34
Speaker 1: Jersey about twelve hours late. And um, Germans, they're always late. Yeah,
8:40
Speaker 1: they're famous for it. And basically arrived there at the
8:43
Speaker 1: Naval air station and because of poor weather, the captain
8:47
Speaker 1: and the commanding officer on the ground said, you know what,
8:51
Speaker 1: the weather is not so great. Let's wait a little bit, um,
8:54
Speaker 1: because I can fly around forever in those things. And
8:57
Speaker 1: um he said, all right, well, the Jersey shore is nice.
8:59
Speaker 1: Let's just go fly about that and tell everyone to
9:01
Speaker 1: look around and look at all those old timey bathingsasically
9:04
Speaker 1: they're up to the ankles and water. Um. By six pm,
9:10
Speaker 1: conditions had improved and at six twelve he sent a
9:13
Speaker 1: message sand it's suitable for landing, recommended landing. Now about
9:17
Speaker 1: seven o eight, he finally pulled the blimp in. It
9:21
Speaker 1: was a bit of a dodgy approach, but he eventually,
9:24
Speaker 1: you know, got it down towards the ground pretty you know, uh, skillfully, which,
9:28
Speaker 1: as we'll see, it's not as easy as you'd think.
9:31
Speaker 1: Even though now easy, it's it's not in practice. No,
9:34
Speaker 1: they dropped the landing lines and then things went south
9:40
Speaker 1: like really fast. Yeah, but it was filled with hydrogen,
9:43
Speaker 1: which is the lightest element, right, Yeah, and uh it's
9:49
Speaker 1: also probably the most flammable or one of them. Yes,
9:52
Speaker 1: inflammable was a big error at the time. Um, a
9:57
Speaker 1: lot of blimps had caught on fire. This was not
9:59
Speaker 1: the first X event, and uh there was you know,
10:03
Speaker 1: people testified afterward because not everyone died. We'll get to
10:06
Speaker 1: the numbers here at the end of the story. But um,
10:08
Speaker 1: there was testimony that, um, it appeared as if gas
10:12
Speaker 1: was pushing against the cover. Maybe it escaped from a
10:15
Speaker 1: gas cell. The first visible flames appeared, and it varies,
10:22
Speaker 1: but most of witnesses say that the first flames are
10:24
Speaker 1: either at the top of the hall, uh, forward of
10:26
Speaker 1: the vertical fin or between the rear port uh engine
10:30
Speaker 1: in the port fin and they described it as a
10:32
Speaker 1: mushroom shaped flour and it pretty much engulfed the tail
10:36
Speaker 1: like right away, and it was able to remain steady
10:39
Speaker 1: for a little while. Like people could start jumping out
10:41
Speaker 1: at this point. Well, those are the people who died, correct, No,
10:46
Speaker 1: that's what I always heard, or that's what I have heard,
10:48
Speaker 1: is that the people who stayed in the gondola lived
10:54
Speaker 1: and the people who jumped were the ones that died
10:55
Speaker 1: because the flames, because hydrogen is light, they were burning upward.
11:01
Speaker 1: Well it says here basically it was all depended on
11:04
Speaker 1: where you were. If you were close to a means
11:06
Speaker 1: of exit, you generally survived. Um, if you were deep
11:10
Speaker 1: inside the ship, like in the power room along the keel,
11:13
Speaker 1: or in the smoking room. They had a smoking room
11:15
Speaker 1: in the Edinburgh. I'm supposed it wasn't all smoking with
11:20
Speaker 1: a big blimpful of hydrogen. Oh yeah, yeah, I thought
11:24
Speaker 1: it was not a good yet. They had apparently a
11:26
Speaker 1: double um air locked door, one electric lighter and um
11:32
Speaker 1: you were allowed to smoke as long as you put
11:34
Speaker 1: it out before you left. And um, so like I said,
11:39
Speaker 1: if you were in the smoking room on B deck,
11:41
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. Um. If you were one of
11:45
Speaker 1: the nine men closest to the front of the ship,
11:48
Speaker 1: you definitely didn't survive. Yeah. So out of the ninety
11:52
Speaker 1: seven people on board sixty two survived. I think when
11:55
Speaker 1: you see the footage, I mean you can watch it
11:57
Speaker 1: on YouTube, it looks like, how on the world could
12:00
Speaker 1: anyone survive it? Because it goes I mean it's fully
12:02
Speaker 1: burned in less than a minute and on the ground. Yeah,
12:04
Speaker 1: it went up fast. But sixty two to survive, thirteen
12:08
Speaker 1: of the thirty six passengers and twenty two of the
12:10
Speaker 1: sixty one crew. And there's still two guys alive today
12:15
Speaker 1: checked as of two years ago. But they don't like
12:18
Speaker 1: to talk about it. I can imagine. Yeah, there's one experience.
12:21
Speaker 1: They're both named Verner Verner Franz and Werner Donor, the
12:25
Speaker 1: two Verners, and one was a little cabin boy and
12:27
Speaker 1: one was a passenger with his family, and uh, they
12:31
Speaker 1: were contacted for like the you know, the ceremony. I
12:36
Speaker 1: guess you don't call it an anniversary, I guess, uh memorial. Yeah,
12:42
Speaker 1: it just sounds like a party, you know. But they said, no,
12:46
Speaker 1: we're not coming. We don't like to talk about it. Yeah.
12:48
Speaker 1: So it's been a long standing mystery exactly what happened.
12:50
Speaker 1: And I found an article in the UK Independent from
12:54
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen about a study from that year that
12:58
Speaker 1: found they said they they figured it out. They built
13:01
Speaker 1: like scale models of the Hindenburg, which was like two
13:04
Speaker 1: and a half football fields long by the way, They
13:06
Speaker 1: were building scale models that were like like sixty ft long,
13:10
Speaker 1: so good sized ones, and they tried to blow them
13:12
Speaker 1: up because there was a rumor that it was sabotage.
13:15
Speaker 1: You know that everybody hated the Nazis even then. Um
13:19
Speaker 1: and uh. They tried all all manners stuff, and what
13:22
Speaker 1: they finally figured out was that probably what happened was
13:26
Speaker 1: from being in that stormy weather, that exterior the envelope
13:30
Speaker 1: of the blimp became um electrified and when the ground
13:36
Speaker 1: crew ran up and grabbed the cables, they completed the
13:38
Speaker 1: current from the blimp to the ground, which caused a
13:41
Speaker 1: spark which actually um ignited a hydrogen leak that fire
13:46
Speaker 1: caused pushing out. Yeah. Yeah. One thing they say it
13:50
Speaker 1: definitely isn't which they long thought it was, was the
13:52
Speaker 1: actual fabric was like painted in this flammable stuff, and
13:57
Speaker 1: that's not true. It was the standard fabric, Okay, it
14:00
Speaker 1: was just a big balloon fill of hydrogen. Yeah, So
14:06
Speaker 1: when that happened, UM, the future of blimps were just
14:12
Speaker 1: pretty much like that was it for blimps. That wasn't
14:16
Speaker 1: the immediate end. But as far as like commercial blimp travel,
14:19
Speaker 1: that's tough for an industry to get over, so it
14:22
Speaker 1: kind of fell on the wayside, although they did continue
14:24
Speaker 1: on UM in a couple of forms. Up until the sixties.
14:28
Speaker 1: The US government, especially the Navy, maintained blimps. One of
14:32
Speaker 1: the UM I think that I guess the Air Force,
14:35
Speaker 1: I don't know is the Navy, but one of the
14:37
Speaker 1: branches of the U. S Military use blimps as UM
14:40
Speaker 1: giant aircraft carriers of the air, not not the sea,
14:45
Speaker 1: the air, which is pretty awesome. And apparently they had
14:49
Speaker 1: them so you could connect like a light plane to
14:53
Speaker 1: what's called like a trapeeze mechanism coming out of the
14:55
Speaker 1: bottom of the blimps and just like hook your plane on,
14:58
Speaker 1: climb up and say, hey, guys, where are we going?
15:02
Speaker 1: Or you can take off from there too. What, yes,
15:05
Speaker 1: how do you take off, you just drop. I think
15:07
Speaker 1: you just released the hook from the trap peas and
15:09
Speaker 1: started to free fall, and then you just go off
15:12
Speaker 1: into the distance and go thanks for the ride, lady.
15:14
Speaker 1: That sounds really weird. Um. And they had even bigger
15:17
Speaker 1: plans that were never realized because the Navy scrapped the
15:20
Speaker 1: program and I think nineteen two UM to have like
15:24
Speaker 1: a landing strip on top of the blimp, so you
15:27
Speaker 1: could have just like planes takeoff and land and then
15:30
Speaker 1: be stored like in the blimp, which would have been
15:33
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Well, cargo airships are the wave of the future, perhaps,
15:37
Speaker 1: so we'll see. Yeah. So, but that was the military
15:41
Speaker 1: was involved in blimps for most of the first half
15:45
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century and then um, our friends a
15:48
Speaker 1: good Year came up with a blimp that has really
15:51
Speaker 1: served them well. Like they were making blimps for the military,
15:54
Speaker 1: and then um, they started using them for commercial purposes
15:58
Speaker 1: and everybody he knows about good Year thanks to those blimps. Yeah,
16:02
Speaker 1: and they're going to figure in here, of course, because
16:04
Speaker 1: you can't talk about blimps a lot without a ton
16:06
Speaker 1: of buzz marketing for good Year. Um. But you know
16:10
Speaker 1: that's where they make their name. In fact, my in
16:12
Speaker 1: laws almost wrote on the one based out of Akron
16:15
Speaker 1: because that's where they're from, and they I think he
16:18
Speaker 1: was going to put in a bid on a like
16:21
Speaker 1: an auction bid to win a trip Nate, and I
16:24
Speaker 1: think it never happened. The trip never happened. I think
16:27
Speaker 1: he either lost the bid. I'll have to ask him,
16:30
Speaker 1: but I don't think they ever wrote on the blimp. Okay,
16:32
Speaker 1: I was gonna say the trip never happened. That doesn't
16:34
Speaker 1: sound like the Good Year I know. No, No, they're
16:37
Speaker 1: very They're like the Germans. So they've got there's three,
16:41
Speaker 1: um Good Year blimps. Actually there's one and I believe Texas.
16:45
Speaker 1: There's one in California. There's one in Ohio or is
16:48
Speaker 1: it Florida California and Ohio is what it is. I'm sorry, Um,
16:52
Speaker 1: the spirit of good Year, the Spirit of America, the
16:55
Speaker 1: spirit of Innovation and Chuck. About the time this episode
16:58
Speaker 1: comes out, Robin Roberts, the TV personality, is going to
17:03
Speaker 1: be christening the newest member of the fleet, the wing
17:05
Speaker 1: foot one. Nice. So they're gonna have four, yeah, because
17:09
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sporting events there. Sure, and you
17:12
Speaker 1: can't watch a big sporting event without hearing the words. Uh.
17:15
Speaker 1: Aerial coverage provided by Goodyear and those shots. Man, they're
17:19
Speaker 1: pretty great. They really are. Haven't been around forever. It
17:22
Speaker 1: was I think an Orange Bowl in Miami where the
17:25
Speaker 1: first one was broadcast and what like the sixties maybe
17:28
Speaker 1: I don't know, something like that, and it changed America. Yeah,
17:33
Speaker 1: well it um certainly gives them a lot of press
17:35
Speaker 1: and saves well, I don't know about saves some money.
17:38
Speaker 1: Haven't seen their balance sheet, but it's they don't just
17:41
Speaker 1: spend money on that thirty second spot. They still do
17:45
Speaker 1: to tie into the blimp. But it's great advertising for them. Yeah. Um.
17:51
Speaker 1: They also were good sports in a movie called Black Sunday.
17:55
Speaker 1: Did you ever see that movie? Of course I never
17:57
Speaker 1: saw it. Um, but apparently the seventies they provided Um,
18:01
Speaker 1: they provided some of the footage for the movie, and UM,
18:05
Speaker 1: let their blimps be used, uh, and let their name
18:08
Speaker 1: be used even like it wasn't like the the good
18:12
Speaker 1: Wire blimp. You know, they didn't try to have to
18:15
Speaker 1: change it just enough. They used good Year, which made
18:17
Speaker 1: the whole thing even more terrifying and realistic. Yeah, they
18:20
Speaker 1: wanted to kill everyone at the Super Bowl. That was
18:22
Speaker 1: the plot, right, uh with a blimp right that shot darts,
18:28
Speaker 1: which is weird. But it was written by the guy
18:31
Speaker 1: who wrote Silence of the Lambs. Oh. Yeah, he's a
18:33
Speaker 1: good writer. Have you ever read any of his books?
18:37
Speaker 1: Oh he was the bookwriter. Oh no, I didn't know that. No,
18:41
Speaker 1: I haven't read any of Silence of the Way. He
18:43
Speaker 1: does very good research. Interesting guy. Um. Anyway, so good year,
18:48
Speaker 1: good year in the military. After the Hindenburg. That was
18:51
Speaker 1: the two cases of blimps. But like you said, there
18:54
Speaker 1: is potentially a future for blimps, which we'll talk about.
18:58
Speaker 1: But first, let's talk about how blimps work. Can enroll
19:00
Speaker 1: after these messages. So you want to know how blimps work, buddy,
19:20
Speaker 1: I do. They're pretty simple. This is the delight to
19:23
Speaker 1: learn because it was like, oh, I thought that would
19:26
Speaker 1: be just that little to it, and that's really kind
19:28
Speaker 1: of the case, right yeah. Yeah, there's not like oh
19:31
Speaker 1: and here's where it gets really hard. They're like the
19:34
Speaker 1: pontoon boats of this guy. Yeah. Like the most complicated
19:37
Speaker 1: thing on the blimp is probably the gyroscopic camera on
19:39
Speaker 1: the front of it to film the football stadium. I
19:42
Speaker 1: think you're right. Uh so, let's talk about the anatomy
19:46
Speaker 1: of a blamp you have. You mentioned the envelope earlier.
19:48
Speaker 1: That is the thing that you're looking at. That is
19:50
Speaker 1: key big cigar shaped balloon. It's filled nowadays with helium.
19:57
Speaker 1: It is that shape because of aero done amics, of course,
20:01
Speaker 1: and they are super lightweight and super strong. Like you
20:03
Speaker 1: were saying, neoprene to ply neoprene polyester generally, is that
20:08
Speaker 1: what the envelopes made of. There's a company UM called
20:11
Speaker 1: the I LC Dover Corporation. They make a lot of
20:13
Speaker 1: skins UM and they use the same material that they
20:18
Speaker 1: make UM space suits out of for NASA for blimps.
20:22
Speaker 1: Too good enough for Neil Armstrong, Buddy, good enough for
20:25
Speaker 1: my blimp. This is like all about Ohio. This one
20:28
Speaker 1: oh is here? Ohio? Yeah, yeah, let have done that
20:31
Speaker 1: so it was good here? No, No, I knew that, Um,
20:35
Speaker 1: so were your in laws. That's right. The envelopes they
20:38
Speaker 1: hold UM and it depends on the blimps for all
20:41
Speaker 1: of these statistics, of course, but between sixty seven thousand
20:44
Speaker 1: and two hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet of helium
20:48
Speaker 1: and UM, it's not super The pressure is really low
20:51
Speaker 1: inside point zero seven pounds per square inch. So that's
20:54
Speaker 1: why if you shot a blimp, it wouldn't like fall, No,
20:58
Speaker 1: just leak very slowly and you just land it and
21:01
Speaker 1: patch it up. I guess, yeah, very slowly. Yeah. British
21:05
Speaker 1: Ministry of Defense fired hundreds of bullets into an airship
21:09
Speaker 1: just for fun, well, not to see what if it
21:11
Speaker 1: would could be shot down in battle basically, and it
21:14
Speaker 1: took many hours to deflate and land. So cool. And
21:17
Speaker 1: they don't even deflate them, they just leave them that
21:19
Speaker 1: way so that they're natural structure will not natural, but
21:23
Speaker 1: their original structure UM prevents them from being shot down.
21:27
Speaker 1: That's one big benefit. Because I was wondering about that.
21:30
Speaker 1: I was like, you're just providing a target for every
21:33
Speaker 1: teenager with a gun in any country that you hover
21:36
Speaker 1: a blimp over. UM. Now I understand. But secondly, as
21:40
Speaker 1: we'll see, it also has to do with the dynamics
21:42
Speaker 1: of the flight of UM hovering in the atmosphere. UM.
21:48
Speaker 1: So you've got the envelope, and the envelope also has
21:51
Speaker 1: something called nose cone battons, which is basically like a
21:54
Speaker 1: support structure for the nose the front of it. Just
21:57
Speaker 1: the very very tip and it keeps the the the
22:01
Speaker 1: the blimps front from being mashed in as it moves forward,
22:05
Speaker 1: which is pretty smart. Yeah, I think I misspoke. The
22:07
Speaker 1: nose cone is on just the very tip, and then
22:09
Speaker 1: the batons are like the fingers that distribute the stress
22:12
Speaker 1: over the front of the conetch. Okay, so they're like
22:15
Speaker 1: the the the structure that comes out of the nose, right,
22:19
Speaker 1: and then also on the nose as the mooring. Um
22:23
Speaker 1: hook because you got to hook a blimp up to something. Yeah,
22:27
Speaker 1: it's got a little spindle there and um, it's got
22:29
Speaker 1: a little wheel under the tail rudder and that's basically
22:33
Speaker 1: how it sits. You just tie it down, very simple. Um,
22:37
Speaker 1: just like a balloon. That's right. So there's here's where
22:41
Speaker 1: it gets a little craftier, like nineteen century crafty, but
22:45
Speaker 1: still neat. Nonetheless, Um, there's something called balonetts, right, and
22:50
Speaker 1: these are basically air bladders that are located within the
22:54
Speaker 1: envelope and you inflate or deflate them depending on whether
22:59
Speaker 1: you want the blimp to go up or down. If
23:00
Speaker 1: you wanted to go up, you deflate these ballonets. You
23:04
Speaker 1: wanted to go down, you inflate them. And the reason
23:06
Speaker 1: that works is because you're inflating or you're inflating these
23:10
Speaker 1: ballonets with air and helium, which blimps fly using now
23:15
Speaker 1: is lighter than air. So more air means the blimps heavier,
23:19
Speaker 1: so it goes down. Less air means it's lighter, so
23:22
Speaker 1: it goes up. Yeah, it's pretty easy. It's sort of
23:24
Speaker 1: like how a submarine operates. Um. And there's one in
23:27
Speaker 1: the four and one in the aft. So that's how
23:30
Speaker 1: you control your trim. You can just knows it up
23:32
Speaker 1: or knows it down, filling up or deflating. That's the
23:36
Speaker 1: pitch axis, that's right, or trim Okay, Well, the trim
23:43
Speaker 1: is the levelness okay. And the axis where the nose
23:47
Speaker 1: and the back go up and down, that's the trim axis.
23:51
Speaker 1: Or no, the pitch axis right yeah, okay, no one
23:57
Speaker 1: can see you not in agreement, okay, um chuck. Then
24:01
Speaker 1: there's the caternary curtain and the suspension cables, which I
24:05
Speaker 1: didn't get the caternary curtain really I understood. The suspension
24:09
Speaker 1: cable is just fine. Uh. It's on the on the
24:11
Speaker 1: inside about thirty off center. Um. And it basically if
24:18
Speaker 1: you look, it sort of looks like the where you
24:20
Speaker 1: attach the basket to the hot air balloon. They all, um,
24:24
Speaker 1: you know, there's a number of these lines that run
24:27
Speaker 1: down and I'll meet at a single point, um near
24:31
Speaker 1: the gondola, right, and that's what you attach the gondola
24:35
Speaker 1: to the blimp using right. Yeah. So basically, if if
24:37
Speaker 1: you if the blimp envelope wasn't there, it would sort
24:40
Speaker 1: of look like a hot air balloon. It would have
24:42
Speaker 1: these lines that run up from the gondola a k.
24:44
Speaker 1: A basket up to the top. So they would be
24:47
Speaker 1: like the um vertical lines are the horizontal lines. Okay,
24:53
Speaker 1: I understand exact amundo. Um. Then you've got the really
24:57
Speaker 1: technical stuff, the flight control surfaces everything we've just described
25:01
Speaker 1: as basically balloons, and then the structure that gives the
25:03
Speaker 1: balloon it's shape, right, and then um, the flight control
25:08
Speaker 1: services are basically a rudder and elevators and they're the
25:13
Speaker 1: things that you can control to make the balloon tilt
25:17
Speaker 1: upward or side to side. That's pretty much it. Yeah,
25:20
Speaker 1: there's that one rudder on the top and bottom and
25:23
Speaker 1: that controls your yaw and you do it with little
25:25
Speaker 1: If you look at the captain's chair. He's got little
25:27
Speaker 1: little foot pedals. It's like a clutch pedal you would
25:30
Speaker 1: put in, push in, and um. On the bottom, very
25:35
Speaker 1: bottom back of the rudder, there's something called a boost
25:37
Speaker 1: tab and that's just a little additional sectioned off piece
25:41
Speaker 1: of the rudder that's also controllable. It's like a little
25:44
Speaker 1: mini rudder and um. It assists with the rudder I
25:48
Speaker 1: think to make an even tighter turn. So if you
25:50
Speaker 1: imagine just the smaller rudder as part of the main rudder,
25:54
Speaker 1: just to give you that extra boost I guess when
25:56
Speaker 1: you need to turn. Uh. And then there's two elevators
25:59
Speaker 1: and a UM. If you are sitting in your little
26:02
Speaker 1: captain's chair, imagine a car steering wheel placed vertically like
26:07
Speaker 1: by your side. And that's just a wheel that you
26:10
Speaker 1: turn up and turn down. It's really very basic. It
26:13
Speaker 1: sounds like the Wizard of Oz to the curtain, like
26:16
Speaker 1: all the machineries messing with and it looks very steampunky
26:20
Speaker 1: when you look at it. Huh. So you steer up
26:23
Speaker 1: or down with that wheel and uh, that's pretty much it.
26:27
Speaker 1: Oh no, don't forget the engines. Oh well, yeah, I
26:30
Speaker 1: mean as far as like driving this puppy. Yeah, the
26:32
Speaker 1: flight control. Yeah, this is what separates it from hot
26:35
Speaker 1: air balloons. Don't forget the engines, No, the hot the well, yeah,
26:39
Speaker 1: the engines, but also the flight control services. But the
26:42
Speaker 1: engines are turbo prop engines. Right, there's twin ones, which
26:46
Speaker 1: means there's two, one on each side of the gondola
26:49
Speaker 1: at the rear. And they're pretty cool because they propeled
26:52
Speaker 1: the thing forward, but very cleverly. There's also something called
26:57
Speaker 1: air scoops that are basically these funnels that face the
27:02
Speaker 1: back of the turbo prop and they catch the vented
27:06
Speaker 1: air out of the props and they use those to
27:09
Speaker 1: inflate the ballonets. Yeah, it's called prop wash. This is
27:14
Speaker 1: all the lingo I've learned. That's good stuff. Uh. And
27:17
Speaker 1: the engines are just six cylinder engines. Like I said that,
27:20
Speaker 1: you don't need a ton of power to power these things.
27:23
Speaker 1: And you can go at about thirty to seventy This
27:26
Speaker 1: says miles per hour, not knots. So how about that
27:30
Speaker 1: and seventies cruising apparently, like fifty is where you want
27:34
Speaker 1: to be get this. I did the calculations. So one
27:37
Speaker 1: of the um one of the great advantages blimps have,
27:41
Speaker 1: which is the reason we're even talking about these things,
27:43
Speaker 1: anybody's talking about still making blimps, is that they can
27:46
Speaker 1: stay aloft for days, weeks, even um, which gives them
27:51
Speaker 1: a huge advantage over airplanes which have to stop and
27:53
Speaker 1: refuel and stop and refuel. But going seventy miles per
27:57
Speaker 1: hour chuck, a blimp NonStop at that rate could travel
28:01
Speaker 1: the circumference of the Earth around the equator in fourteen days. Wow,
28:07
Speaker 1: that enough fuel? Yeah, which I think it's not very hard. No,
28:12
Speaker 1: they at thirty knots. The sky ship, which is just
28:16
Speaker 1: one example, UM, consumes about eight gallons of fuel per hour,
28:21
Speaker 1: so apparently during an entire week of operations it consumes
28:24
Speaker 1: less fuel than a seven sixties seven commercial jet uses
28:27
Speaker 1: to move away from the gate. So it's super green,
28:32
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. You can understand why cargo
28:34
Speaker 1: companies are looking at them too. Yeah, and that's it
28:37
Speaker 1: runs on av gas of course, not just regular old gas.
28:41
Speaker 1: You couldn't pull it up to a gas station like
28:43
Speaker 1: your car, because I think AV gas is still leaded,
28:46
Speaker 1: or a lot of it is. Oh and that's the
28:49
Speaker 1: dif that's not that cream. Yeah, true, but they're not
28:53
Speaker 1: burning much of it. Uh, So let's see what else
28:57
Speaker 1: is there. The valves, you've got to be able to
28:59
Speaker 1: let air in and out. You also want to be
29:00
Speaker 1: able to air in and out of the envelope itself
29:03
Speaker 1: in case things become too pressurized. You don't wanted to pop. Yeah,
29:08
Speaker 1: that's true. So you've got your air valves for the
29:10
Speaker 1: um for the bladders inside, and they are underneath, uh
29:15
Speaker 1: to tow up front, two in the back. And then
29:17
Speaker 1: you have your helium valve and you can either vent
29:20
Speaker 1: it and you don't have to do this much because
29:22
Speaker 1: you should have it pretty like the pressure set um.
29:25
Speaker 1: But if something does happen, you can either manually do
29:28
Speaker 1: it or it's set to automatically release. And if you
29:30
Speaker 1: look at the Goodyear blimp, it's sort of in the
29:32
Speaker 1: y of a year. Wow little it just looks like
29:36
Speaker 1: a little gas cap. You really know you're blimps? Man? Well,
29:40
Speaker 1: I mean I went to the good Year site. It's awesome.
29:43
Speaker 1: You can like there's all sorts of animated gifts and
29:47
Speaker 1: or is it gifts? I never could yeah? Yeah, graphic interface. Yeah,
29:53
Speaker 1: but there is a correct way. I just don't know
29:55
Speaker 1: what it is. Well, the guy who created gifts says,
29:58
Speaker 1: he pronounces it Jeff. Oh. It kind of throws a
30:00
Speaker 1: wrench in the works, but I disagree with him. Morgellons
30:05
Speaker 1: give the Goodyear blimp. Gondola, which is where we are now,
30:12
Speaker 1: is twenty two point seven five ft long. It is
30:15
Speaker 1: aluminum on welded steel frame, and that's where everyone rides. Um.
30:21
Speaker 1: Depending on your blimp, it's gonna hold up to well.
30:24
Speaker 1: It depends on how big the blimp is, but usually
30:26
Speaker 1: you don't see a blimp with more than twelve passengers
30:28
Speaker 1: or so. Yeah, and it's not even necessarily passengers. The
30:31
Speaker 1: gondola can also be the place where it holds all
30:33
Speaker 1: of the surveillance equipment to depending on what you use
30:37
Speaker 1: it for. Or it can also be the massive cargo hold. Yeah,
30:41
Speaker 1: and you've got your communications up there, your flight surface controls,
30:44
Speaker 1: any KNAB equipment, UM propeller controls. That's where all the
30:50
Speaker 1: there's there's not much else to it besides what what
30:52
Speaker 1: you got there in the gondola. What's funny is UM,
30:57
Speaker 1: I always thought blimps were basically like know, you you
31:02
Speaker 1: get the blimp in the air and it takes off,
31:04
Speaker 1: and then that's it, but it's it's at least with
31:07
Speaker 1: good Year. It's kind of like, um got helicopter parents
31:11
Speaker 1: almost because when the blimp. When you see the blimp,
31:14
Speaker 1: if you look around, you'll also find a ground crew
31:17
Speaker 1: with a bus, uh eighteen wheeler and a bunch of
31:22
Speaker 1: vans that follow it everywhere because I guess those things
31:26
Speaker 1: break down. Yeah, and apparently the pilots to their f
31:30
Speaker 1: A certified and Goodyear pilots also have another training program.
31:34
Speaker 1: But the pilots are even it's all sort of everyone
31:36
Speaker 1: is cross trained. It sounds like to work on the
31:39
Speaker 1: ground or make repairs and um yeah, it's like a
31:42
Speaker 1: little self contained unit all just traveling around together like
31:46
Speaker 1: a like anato chasers right. Oh, and you talked about
31:51
Speaker 1: um the end. You know, if they just took off
31:54
Speaker 1: and floated around, if the engines did stop, that's exactly
31:57
Speaker 1: what you're doing. You're basically a hot air balloon at
32:00
Speaker 1: that point, so you lose control of the flight service controls. Yeah, well,
32:04
Speaker 1: I mean if it's they call it a free balloon,
32:07
Speaker 1: so it's buoyant um and it's kept aloft obviously, But
32:11
Speaker 1: if they lose all the power, then all you can
32:14
Speaker 1: do is ascend and descend because I think I guess
32:17
Speaker 1: the rudders and the elevators are also powered mechanisms. I got,
32:20
Speaker 1: it's not just attached to a cable, attached to a
32:22
Speaker 1: pedal attached to a wheel. That the guys next to
32:25
Speaker 1: it sounds like it is though, And as far as
32:28
Speaker 1: weather goes, they compare it to roughly operating is about
32:32
Speaker 1: as similar as a helicopter. Like we can fly in
32:35
Speaker 1: bad weather, um, but we try to avoid super bad weather. Yeah.
32:40
Speaker 1: I don't blame them, sure, because I mean that's not fun.
32:43
Speaker 1: You want to be above the Rose Bowl in like
32:45
Speaker 1: seventy degree weathers. Yeah, So coming up, we're gonna talk
32:49
Speaker 1: about how blimps fly, and then also the feature of
32:54
Speaker 1: blimps and if there is such a thing after this,
32:58
Speaker 1: so chuck. The way blimps flies pretty simple and beautiful
33:17
Speaker 1: and elegant, if you ask me. Yeah. Yeah, So you
33:20
Speaker 1: have helium, right, which is they used to use hydrogen.
33:23
Speaker 1: Helium slightly heavier than um hydrogen, but not that much more.
33:28
Speaker 1: You don't notice a difference, I would guess. Yeah, I
33:31
Speaker 1: mean you get why they use hydrogen. They weren't dummies, right,
33:34
Speaker 1: It was lighter than air. The lightest of all the
33:36
Speaker 1: gases of all the elements from what I understand, um.
33:39
Speaker 1: And when hydrogen blew up, they said, okay, not hydrogen.
33:43
Speaker 1: What else do we have? And they said, well, helium works,
33:46
Speaker 1: and so they started using helium. And helium has a
33:49
Speaker 1: lift of lift capacity of point seventy pounds per square
33:55
Speaker 1: foot right, which is one point one kilograms per square
33:59
Speaker 1: meter um, which means it can lift a pretty decent
34:03
Speaker 1: amount of wait for just a little bit amount, And
34:08
Speaker 1: since they're filling these balloons with hundreds of thousands of
34:12
Speaker 1: cubic feet or cubic meters of these um of helium,
34:17
Speaker 1: they can look tons and tons of weight, and they
34:20
Speaker 1: do it by just simple physics. Since helium is lighter
34:23
Speaker 1: than air. As long as the helium has enough lifting
34:28
Speaker 1: power to lift whatever the envelope and the gondola and
34:31
Speaker 1: all of the mechanisms way, then it will rise more
34:34
Speaker 1: than the air. It will rise into the air. It's
34:37
Speaker 1: called positive buoyancy. And what you want as a blent
34:40
Speaker 1: pilot is neutral buoyancy. So that's why you're gonna control,
34:43
Speaker 1: like we talked about your air bladders to uh get
34:47
Speaker 1: that thing where it's Once you've got your cruising altitude.
34:49
Speaker 1: You just want to be at the same level you
34:52
Speaker 1: yet and you want to fill it up by blowing
34:55
Speaker 1: exhaust into your air scoops which fill up your balonets.
34:59
Speaker 1: And the higher you get into the atmosphere, the less
35:02
Speaker 1: pressure there is, which means the higher up you could
35:04
Speaker 1: float conceivably, So you want to make sure you get
35:07
Speaker 1: that air in so you don't just float away, and
35:10
Speaker 1: you achieve is it negative buoyancy or neutral buoyancy? You said, yeah,
35:14
Speaker 1: that's what you want. And then when you want to land,
35:15
Speaker 1: you did you just the opposite um You fill it
35:18
Speaker 1: up with even more air and then you make the
35:21
Speaker 1: blimp heavier than the helium inside can lift and it
35:25
Speaker 1: just slowly comes down to the ground. And I mean
35:28
Speaker 1: that's it. That's how blimps rise and fall. Yeah, it
35:32
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. And when they're on the ground, they
35:35
Speaker 1: just tie it to that little spindle. You've got your
35:37
Speaker 1: little wheel under the rear. You got a little tractor
35:39
Speaker 1: to tow it around, maybe a hanger. And uh, that's
35:43
Speaker 1: the life of a blimp. And it, like I said,
35:45
Speaker 1: they don't inflate and deflate these. I'm sure it's a
35:48
Speaker 1: time and expense. Uh, and I think they're running out
35:52
Speaker 1: of helium too. Didn't we learn that? Yeah, do you
35:54
Speaker 1: know much about that? Well, we we covered it, and uh,
35:58
Speaker 1: the I probably the Mars Turbine episode Mars Turbine. Well,
36:03
Speaker 1: I read a really interesting article and I think the
36:06
Speaker 1: New Republic, I can't remember. I found it online last night,
36:10
Speaker 1: and um, it's about the helium shortage and why we
36:13
Speaker 1: have a helium shortage. And apparently the US has had
36:16
Speaker 1: a reserve, a strategic helium reserve since in a cave
36:22
Speaker 1: in Texas, and apparently during the Clinton era, the government said,
36:28
Speaker 1: let's make some money off of this, or let's make
36:31
Speaker 1: our money back off of it, so they passed it
36:32
Speaker 1: all that said, start selling this stuff off Bureau of
36:35
Speaker 1: Land Management, but only make enough money off of it
36:40
Speaker 1: to recoup whatever we've put into it over the years,
36:43
Speaker 1: which is like one billion dollars. So they started selling it,
36:46
Speaker 1: and by setting the price artificially, they created an artificial market.
36:51
Speaker 1: Because this is like eight of the world's helium reserves
36:55
Speaker 1: in this cave in Texas. So whatever the BLM was
36:58
Speaker 1: selling it for, that's how much the market value was.
37:01
Speaker 1: But it was artificial, so you had artificially cheap helium
37:05
Speaker 1: flooding the market, which had a two pronged effect. One,
37:08
Speaker 1: it led to these scarcities that we're running into now
37:11
Speaker 1: because they just started selling it off in a fire
37:13
Speaker 1: sale the private industry. But the other more positive effect
37:16
Speaker 1: it had was that it spurred all of this technological
37:21
Speaker 1: innovation because nuclear magnetic resonance, the technology behind m ri
37:27
Speaker 1: I superconductivity UM molecular analysis, uses helium two super cool
37:35
Speaker 1: magnets to turn them into superconductors, right, So you need
37:38
Speaker 1: helium for that. So all these industries were using this
37:40
Speaker 1: helium from the Bureau of Land Management to like advanced
37:43
Speaker 1: technology by leaps and bounds, which is one of the
37:46
Speaker 1: big reasons why we are where we are right now
37:49
Speaker 1: technologically speaking because of helium. But now we're starting to
37:54
Speaker 1: run out. There's I think nine billion cubic feet of
37:58
Speaker 1: helium left in the reserve of in Texas, which is
38:01
Speaker 1: about a third of what they had when they started
38:03
Speaker 1: selling it off in the nineties, which would be fine
38:06
Speaker 1: if we just clamped it out and said, okay, this
38:08
Speaker 1: is a reserve again. But instead, for some reason, the
38:10
Speaker 1: government just doubled down and issued another decree to the
38:14
Speaker 1: beer of lamb. Management is like, keep selling this stuff.
38:17
Speaker 1: Let's just get rid of all of it for no
38:18
Speaker 1: good reason. I don't understand why. Interesting, like it made
38:22
Speaker 1: sense in the nineties maybe, and it had all these
38:24
Speaker 1: great effects, but now it's like, okay, we understand that
38:27
Speaker 1: helium is literally irreplaceable. As the article put it, like
38:31
Speaker 1: there's once there's no helium. There's no helium, Like we
38:33
Speaker 1: can't go get it anywhere else for manufacturer, and we
38:36
Speaker 1: have no technology to recycle it. I wonder what the
38:39
Speaker 1: reason is. I guess money private industry has a lot
38:43
Speaker 1: of interest in it, and there's good interest to like
38:46
Speaker 1: using it for m RIS or pharmaceutical research or that
38:49
Speaker 1: kind of parties. Well that's the thing. So med, the
38:52
Speaker 1: med and pharma sectors used of helium worldwide. Welding uses
38:58
Speaker 1: seventeen percent because they use heli in the weld. Party
39:02
Speaker 1: balloons equals eight percent of worldwide helium use. I have
39:06
Speaker 1: a feeling that party balloons are going to go the
39:07
Speaker 1: way of the dinosaur very soon, if they haven't already.
39:10
Speaker 1: And half of that is the stoner kid who operates
39:14
Speaker 1: the helium tank just talking funny. Yeah, So that's the
39:17
Speaker 1: helium shortage. That's the skinny on it. So that I
39:21
Speaker 1: wonder if there's any other gas they could use for blimps.
39:26
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seems like a giant waste. Or
39:29
Speaker 1: I wonder if they couldn't, like do like a hybrid
39:33
Speaker 1: so it's fueled by hot air like a balloon. Huh,
39:37
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either.
39:41
Speaker 1: H Well, I guess we are at the future then
39:44
Speaker 1: in the future, and depending on who you ask, the
39:50
Speaker 1: future of airships is either super exciting and awesome and
39:54
Speaker 1: when you look at these they are, or it's not
39:57
Speaker 1: going to be funded enough to really um, there's not
40:00
Speaker 1: a lot of money being pumped into it. Well, the
40:02
Speaker 1: government was for a little while with the Afghanistan war.
40:06
Speaker 1: The Department of Defense was like, give us new blimps.
40:09
Speaker 1: We want these things now. And all these companies ran
40:12
Speaker 1: in and we're like, here's your blimps, here's your blimps,
40:14
Speaker 1: give us some money. The problem is is the whole
40:17
Speaker 1: program got scrapped because nobody could fulfill the enormous orders
40:20
Speaker 1: the d D was placing four helium Well that makes sense, uh,
40:25
Speaker 1: And the military is interested because they basically, um, could
40:29
Speaker 1: be uh a satellite function as a satellite like a
40:33
Speaker 1: ten thou fot satellite. Yeah, pretty much. Um. There are
40:37
Speaker 1: people doing it though. Lockheed Martin has a pet one
40:41
Speaker 1: UM that is super cool looking. It is a try hall.
40:45
Speaker 1: If you look at it from the front, it looks
40:46
Speaker 1: sort of like three blimps squashed together. Um. And it
40:51
Speaker 1: has four big it looks like feet these disc shaped
40:54
Speaker 1: cushions that apparently for landing and these are also cool.
40:58
Speaker 1: There's um an the one in California from Worldwide Aeroscorp
41:03
Speaker 1: called the Dragon Dream. Yeah, and it's different look and
41:06
Speaker 1: it sort of looks like a whale shark. Did you
41:07
Speaker 1: see it. It's a single hull, I guess, but it's
41:10
Speaker 1: sort of kind of flattened out. Um. Yeah, it looks
41:13
Speaker 1: like a whale shark. They they actually submitted that design
41:16
Speaker 1: to the d o D and when the d D
41:17
Speaker 1: scraped the program. Um, they bought their design back because
41:22
Speaker 1: they want to go commercial like cargo carrier with it. Yeah.
41:25
Speaker 1: And they're in trouble though because the Dragon died well
41:29
Speaker 1: it had a roof collapse and a hangar. Yeah, and
41:31
Speaker 1: they don't know if they have the money to even
41:33
Speaker 1: fix it. And then continue, well, they have another model
41:36
Speaker 1: called the mL eight sixties six that it sounds like
41:39
Speaker 1: they're putting their energy into. It's supposedly can carry two
41:43
Speaker 1: and fifty tons, which is more than twice the cargo
41:46
Speaker 1: payload of a cargo seven seventy s twice. And again
41:52
Speaker 1: you mentioned how little fuel it takes to power these things.
41:55
Speaker 1: So it'll take a little while for you to get
41:57
Speaker 1: your package, But the company shipping it as going to
42:00
Speaker 1: spend too much money delivering it. I still say, if
42:02
Speaker 1: it's a military like to use as a cargo plane,
42:07
Speaker 1: I know you can't shoot a hole in it, but
42:09
Speaker 1: what if you launched a surface to air missile at it?
42:12
Speaker 1: You know, it's still pull a helium. That's it doesn't
42:14
Speaker 1: sound like I don't know. They're so high up there
42:17
Speaker 1: you can't the fact that we have satellites and drones.
42:21
Speaker 1: It seems to me like the surveillance uses of blimps
42:24
Speaker 1: or preposterous, especially considering that we could be using that
42:28
Speaker 1: helium for medical purposes instead. You know, I agree you
42:34
Speaker 1: got anything else on blimps? Got nothing else? Um, I
42:36
Speaker 1: got one other thing. If you were fascinated by the
42:39
Speaker 1: um the way blimps float. I think it's cool for
42:43
Speaker 1: some reason. I did a brain stuff video about that.
42:49
Speaker 1: You can calculate how many balloons it would take, like
42:52
Speaker 1: regular party balloons to lift yourself into the sky, and
42:56
Speaker 1: I made a video about it. So you go to
42:58
Speaker 1: a brain stuff show dot com and check it out. Uh.
43:02
Speaker 1: And if you want to read this article, you can
43:04
Speaker 1: go to how stuff worst dot com. Type in how
43:07
Speaker 1: blimps work and it will bring it up. And I said,
43:10
Speaker 1: how stuff works, I think So that means it's time
43:13
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh sterilizing addicts.
43:18
Speaker 1: Remember that Old One did a show on whether or
43:22
Speaker 1: not it's legal to sterilize addicts. It turns out it is, Yeah,
43:25
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. Uh. And this is from someone
43:27
Speaker 1: who had a personal uh stake in it. Um. It's long,
43:32
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna edit it in my head as I go. Hey, guys,
43:35
Speaker 1: just recently listen to your podcast and sterilation sterilization of
43:38
Speaker 1: addicts had a personal story to share. Um. Until my
43:43
Speaker 1: mother is a fully recovered heroin addict and I'm grateful
43:46
Speaker 1: just to be alive. Until I was six, she was
43:49
Speaker 1: only an alcoholic. However, drug addiction set in fast. My mother,
43:52
Speaker 1: brother and myself, along with whatever scumbag boyfriend she had
43:56
Speaker 1: at the time. We're constantly on the run from the police,
43:58
Speaker 1: looking for shelter and searching for food. My father is
44:01
Speaker 1: an upper middle class blue collar worker who always had
44:03
Speaker 1: a sound home environment. When my mother was sent to
44:06
Speaker 1: prison when I was ten, I was sent to live
44:07
Speaker 1: with my father. Always had food, to shower and clean clothes.
44:10
Speaker 1: Was never in fear for being homeless. UH. I live
44:13
Speaker 1: with my father for three years until I finally ran away.
44:15
Speaker 1: Once I regained contact with my mother, my father, even
44:18
Speaker 1: with his financial support, instability was never there, even though
44:21
Speaker 1: he was only a few feet away. My mother, even
44:24
Speaker 1: while on drugs, always listened and always cared about my
44:27
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings, and that was what was important as
44:30
Speaker 1: a child. My mother eventually overcame her addictions cold turkey
44:34
Speaker 1: because she could see it was damaging to me and
44:37
Speaker 1: my brother. She's been clean for eleven years now and
44:40
Speaker 1: as an amazing mother, an amazing grandmother to my nephew.
44:44
Speaker 1: I like to believe that seeing the harder side of
44:46
Speaker 1: life made me appreciate UH such things and be more
44:49
Speaker 1: humble and responsible. UH and fearful of what could happen
44:52
Speaker 1: if I slipped or did not take care of myself.
44:55
Speaker 1: I don't want to be the poster child for children
44:57
Speaker 1: of addicts. Whoever, I do believe that we are all
45:00
Speaker 1: and control of our own lives. Uh. And that is
45:05
Speaker 1: anonymized as Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, Corney Jake seven, Yeah,
45:10
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, you can read it, and I said,
45:11
Speaker 1: all anonymious anonymous size it is there some sort of
45:15
Speaker 1: name anonymizer on the internet now, he said, please do
45:19
Speaker 1: just make it something awesome like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh.
45:22
Speaker 1: That's great and that's a cool PS. I've been secretly
45:25
Speaker 1: wanting Jerry to be the Tyler Dirton of your podcast.
45:29
Speaker 1: What that even means? Like made up? But like we
45:32
Speaker 1: think she's real, but she's not. Okay, are you real, Jerry?
45:36
Speaker 1: Jerry says, no, Nope, that answers that Cornelius Jacobs the
45:40
Speaker 1: seventh and you read the Roman numerals correctly, Chuck this time,
45:43
Speaker 1: good going be I. I UH. If you want to
45:49
Speaker 1: get in touch with me and Chuck to tell us
45:51
Speaker 1: any story like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, UM, please do
45:55
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45:58
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