[HN Gopher] The Hindenburg's Interior
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The Hindenburg's Interior
Author : WarOnPrivacy
Score : 100 points
Date : 2024-09-07 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| Like Indiana Jones and the last crusade then
| breckenedge wrote:
| "No ticket"
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| Both the movie and the adventure game. They were perfect for
| their time. It reminds me that I should play it again.
| meesles wrote:
| Sergey Brin (and others, I'm sure) hopes to bring airships back
| with the technological advances since -
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/lta-airship-faa-clearance
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| There's also the, umm, Flying Bum[1] descended from a discarded
| project of the US military. (It's not quite clear what they
| wanted to do with it--radio relay for ground troops in
| difficult terrain? mobile command post?) Filling it with helium
| (expensive and very limited on Earth) feels kind of barbaric,
| though, knowing what lengths even physics labs go to in order
| to avoid wasting it.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_Airlander_...
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _it can use nonflammable helium instead of explosive
| hydrogen as a lifting gas._ "
|
| Frustrating FUD that's held back Hydrogen lift airships for
| almost a century, because clickbait scaremongering sells
| newspapers. What about [1] and [2], Spectrum.IEEE reporting on
| Hydrogen fuel-cell electric aircraft, or [3] them reporting on
| a hydrogen fuel cell rescue truck, without mentioning
| explosions or the Hindenburg.
|
| You know how many people died in the Hindenburg disaster?
|
| 36.
|
| And how many survivors?
|
| 62.
|
| Yes that's too many. FOURTY TWO THOUSAND people killed by cars
| EVERY YEAR in the USA[7] held back car development or sales?
| When was the last time an aeroplane crash killed that many
| people? It was August 9th - only a month ago - a crash in
| Brazil killed 66 people[4]. Before that? January 2023 a crash
| in Nepal killed 72 people. In fact, look how many plane crashes
| there are[5] - that doesn't leave newspapers scaremongering
| about airplane travel and regulators banning it. OK, it does,
| "Horrific Oregon plane crash shows moment aircraft flies into
| home and EXPLODES as residents evacuate area" a week ago in the
| Daily Mail[8].
|
| _Jet fuel is explosive_ , explosions are how engines work! A
| Boeing 737 carries ~20,000 litres or ~5300 gallons of jet fuel,
| and nobody writes articles about how planes are bad because jet
| fuel burns.
|
| With today's technology, and all the improvements in airline
| safety generally - checklists, regulations, mandatory
| inspections and maintenance, why wouldn't Hydrogen lift
| airships be similarly safe to airplanes? Look at "List of
| airship accidents"[6] and ask yourself how many could be made
| unlikely with today's technology, weather forecasting, and
| careful design and maintenance procedures? The first 30 years
| are mostly: - crashed - fell apart
| - burnt - strong winds broke moorings / crashed it /
| tore it apart - exploded
|
| And if you think the fire risk is not safely manageable, have a
| think about Hydrogen refuelling pumps at every gas station on
| every town and city street, used by ordinary people not paying
| much attention, refuelled and maintained by the lowest bidder,
| into old, maybe poorly maintained, cars and trucks.
|
| [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/hydrogen-powered-planes-fuel-
| cells
|
| [2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/stealthy-startup-promises-cheap-
| ca...
|
| [3] https://spectrum.ieee.org/hydrogen-truck-emergency-rescue
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voepass_Linhas_A%C3%A9reas_Fli...
|
| [5]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
|
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
|
| [7]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
|
| [8] I'm not linking to the Daily Mail. If you're desperate to
| read it, you'll have to find it.
| jdkee wrote:
| Now do deaths per mile traveled for those modes of transport.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Deaths per mile travelled for planes and cars designed and
| built before 1930, for a fair comparison. The Graf Zeppelin
| launched in 1928 did 1,000,000 miles with no crashes,
| deaths or injuries. How many other vehicles from the 1920s
| were that capable and safe?
| ghaff wrote:
| There's plenty of comfortable travel available if you're not in a
| hurry. You just need to pay for it.
|
| I've done Atlantic crossings by ship. You just need the time and
| schedule around availability. (And pay the premium of course.)
| cagenut wrote:
| two days on either side of a two to three week vacation is
| viable
|
| ten days on either side is not
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends on your situation. And, given Starlink, there's a
| lot of flexibility these days for people who can work remote.
|
| ADDED: And if they can't work remote adding a few days on the
| sides probably isn't a great option either. Certainly it
| wasn't a good option when I was maximizing vacation days.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Stopping in the Azores wouldn't be a bad way to break things
| up
| porphyra wrote:
| There's plenty of comfortable travel even if you are in a
| hurry... If you can pay for it. Modern first class is pretty
| good and beyond that you could always fly private (I have only
| ever flown economy, though).
| ghaff wrote:
| True. I usually don't but have flown business trans-Pacific.
| Taking an ocean liner when schedule permits is very
| comfortable but really is a different beast.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| That's some serious drillium on the photos.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > A one-way fare between Germany and the United States was US$400
| (equivalent to $7,811 in 2021); Hindenburg passengers were
| affluent
|
| I feel like seeing such an affliction happen to so many of the
| richest people at once is what killed interest in the zeppelin
|
| I always felt that was too reductive, one crash killed public
| interest? No more like it killed that tiny market's interest
|
| I think it could be done better, safer, and cheaper now
| jerezzprime wrote:
| This isn't too far off from the cost of a first-class trans-
| continental flight.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yeah, it would probably have been economically viable if
| zeppelins had a pleb and business class too
| throwup238 wrote:
| The cabins were already tiny. Can you imagine sitting in
| the economy seats with 20" of legroom and airline quality
| food for a week?
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. It's hard to justify premium and much more time-
| consuming transatlantic travel even when I can afford it.
| I've done it for various reasons. But generally I'd
| prefer to spend my money and and time on other things.
| lallysingh wrote:
| They'd look different than airlines, Zepplins were
| primarily weight constrained instead of volume. Dumping the
| cabins can save a lot of weight.
| WalterBright wrote:
| What killed public interest was not necessarily the crash, but
| the happenstance that it was filmed and shown over and over and
| over, along with the famous live radio broadcast of it. Heck,
| my dad even saved 1937 newspaper clippings of the fireball.
| Tarsul wrote:
| Yes. I mean one just has to look at the last picture of the
| article with the Hindenburg burning. Not even the best
| propagandist could save this disaster.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > better, safer, and cheaper now
|
| I'm not so sure. What killed most Zeppelins was bad weather.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Germany's war preparations starting to divert resources away
| from civilian enterprises during the time probably didn't help
| either. Those zeppelins were massive investments in terms of
| material and industry after all
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Zeppelins were funded by the government for their massive
| propaganda value.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I was thinking that too
|
| A lot of trends were cut short by the world wars
|
| A lot of things I like from the 1890s and 1900 early aughts
| just stopped being made or were never explored fully, and
| then I remembered "oh yeah, everybody died" and its like the
| first time in hundreds of years that something so broadly
| affected so many socioeconomic classes in so many places at
| once
|
| happened again in the late 1930s
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's also why they were using hydrogen gas in the first
| place. Helium was too expensive.
| graycat wrote:
| > US$400, .... $7,811
|
| Ah, peanuts! Chump change!
|
| Somewhere recently saw a review of the Titanic, lots of
| pictures (taken BEFORE leaving England!) with the mention that
| the 1st class fare was $100,000. And that the ship cost $1.5
| million to build.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So 15 first-class passengers on one trip would pay for the
| whole ship? I assume a 16th would pay all the costs of making
| a trip.
|
| That's a ridiculous cost structure. What was going on?
| organsnyder wrote:
| Assuming those numbers are accurate, that $100k surely
| bought a lot of amenities (not just food and beverage, but
| also dedicated staff people) that weren't free.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You think the running cost of a trip was over $100,000? I
| mentioned this specifically in my first comment.
|
| A quick check suggests the passenger manifest has, OK, 8
| first-class passengers.
|
| It sounds like the ship is expected to turn a profit by
| the time it makes its second voyage. Really?
| trhway wrote:
| They didn't have to do multi-hundred-million dollars
| certification (and i think their safety record wasn't
| good). The lower speed also lowers the costs of making it.
| They are really less a plane and more like a ship, only
| floating in the air, and the ships are significantly
| cheaper.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I think it's more a case of things moving on. The Hindenburg
| crashed only shortly before cross atlantic passenger flight by
| much faster planes took off (around 1939). The Hindenburg was
| already a bit obsolete by the time the accident happened. And
| of course WW II then happened which made passenger travel by
| plane a bit impractical. Even so there was plenty of it
| happening.
|
| Post WW II we had transatlantic flights taking over and
| creating the modern aviation industry. With iconic planes like
| the Lockheed Constellation (which first flew in 1943).
| Initially those would have been similarly luxurious. And this
| is also not that different from what a Concorde ticket would
| have cost later on. And of course Concorde flights were also
| discontinued after a crash. Not unlike the Hindenburg.
|
| These days, there's a business and first class section
| servicing the rich with similar pricing. This never really went
| away.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Similarly, the Concorde crash also featured horrifying film
| of it flying trailing a gigantic fireball, shown over and
| over on TV.
|
| It would give anyone pause thinking of flying in it.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Another factor is that Germany was the expert in airships.
| The Zeppelin company scrapped their airships, made fixed-wing
| aircraft during the war, and was nearly destroyed at end of
| war.
|
| After the war, planes were better and faster.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Concorde just became a poor value for everyone involved. It
| was noisy, it sucked fuel, it required three crew on the
| flight deck to operate it, demand was dropping because for
| their money, people were preferring the more oppulent,
| spacious, and comfortable first class of a modern wide-body
| than the cigar-tube regional jet experience of sitting in the
| Concorde, even if it was faster.
|
| The crash just sealed its fate.
| krisoft wrote:
| > one crash killed public interest
|
| It was not really one crash, but a series of crashes.
|
| R38 broke up in the air over the UK. Roma crashed and burned in
| Virginia. Dixmude exploded mid-air over Sicily. R101 crashed
| and burnt in France. R100 was declared a failure and broken up.
| USS Akron crashed, and so did the USS Shenandoah.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. That generation of airships was terrible at maneuvering.
| An airship has huge sail area, isn't very strong, and is not
| high powered. Crosswinds are a big problem.
|
| The modern Zeppelin NT handles better. Remember Airship
| Ventures, which used to have an airship touring over Silicon
| Valley? They had one. Unfortunately, they launched the
| service in 2008, during the recession. Then the price of
| helium doubled. So that operation shut down. The NT was fly
| by wire with steerable fans, which gave it enough
| maneuverability that it could be landed without a big ground
| crew. Here's the Airship Ventures craft landing at Moffett
| Field.[1]
|
| DARPA funded Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works to build a more
| maneuverable airship. The result was the P-791.[2] This could
| be taxied out of a hangar, flown, landed, and taxied back in,
| all under its own power. All the propellers are on two-axis
| gimbals, and the flight control systems is constantly
| adjusting them to keep it level. It has hovercraft-type air
| bags as landing gear, so it can suck itself onto the ground
| when needed under windy conditions. All the propellers are on
| two-axis gimbals. Worked fine, but no military need at the
| time.
|
| I'm surprised that no billionaire has an airship yacht yet.
| You need an airship-sized hangar anywhere you want to go,
| though, so there are not many destinations possible.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5zO1ZzTws
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791
| sillywalk wrote:
| I can picture the rigid airship Excelsior from Archer.
| throwup238 wrote:
| For the last time, the Excelsior is filled with non-flamable
| helium!
| Loughla wrote:
| For the longest time I had frisky dingo and Archer mixed up. I
| never understood how Archer was so mainstream when it was SO
| weird.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Fantastic pictures! I've seen books on the Hindenburg, and
| haven't seen these pix before.
|
| Love all the weight-saving construction of everything.
| mannyv wrote:
| It's interesting that the furnishings look, well, modern.
|
| They don't look dated, or quaint, or from another era. The
| Bauhaus really did win.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Eh, the current furniture trend is all about precisely cut
| woods. The Hindenburg furniture looks like something you would
| see in a diner or fast food restaurants.
|
| It's worth noting that everything, including the furniture, was
| designed to be lightweight and not flammable, so it isn't
| necessarily representative of what was in vogue then either.
| porphyra wrote:
| On the other hand, the heavy use of aluminum parts resembles
| modern airplane interiors to some extent. Truly a great
| material, lightweight and strong.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Airlines take great care to hide the metal in their cabins,
| particularly the lie flat seats of first and business.
| schiffern wrote:
| They didn't say it looks like _expensive_ modern furniture.
| They said it doesn 't look quaint or dated.
|
| The fact that such design been made accessible and
| democratized isn't a disqualifier. If anything it makes it
| even more "of our time."
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's dated, just not its original dates.
|
| Diners have been dying for a long time and fast food chains
| are busy ripping out their dining rooms for more drive thru
| lanes in 2024.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Especially post-COVID but even before then, the vast
| majority of their sales were coming from drive-thru. The
| people who came inside were retirees who would order from
| the dollar menu and get a free cup of coffee and sit
| there for an hour.
| Isamu wrote:
| Literally Modernist. There's some details that might be Art
| Deco inspired but overall just clean lines, metal tube
| furniture, uncluttered. It fits with the need to keep weight
| down.
|
| The Modern architect Le Corbusier took inspiration from the
| clean lines and shapes of aircraft and such, you can read about
| it in Vers Une Architecture.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| "Smoking Room"?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| But at negative pressure as I recall?
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Higher pressure, to prevent hydrogen leaks from elsewhere
| coming in
| SoftTalker wrote:
| People smoked constantly in those days. Asking them to stop for
| a three day voyage would be untenable. It was probaby
| considered quite an imposition just to ask them to go to a
| special room.
| kleiba wrote:
| I'll make sure to remember these pictures next time I'll be
| crammed into my economy class seat for 9 hours flying over the
| Atlantic.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Will you also remember the price difference, the choice of
| flights and how common it is now vs then?
| kleiba wrote:
| No. I won't remember that I could fly first class for a lot
| more money, either, because that's equally not what I was
| getting at.
| trhway wrote:
| My favorites though not Zeppelin. Dining rooms, sleeping berths
| while faster:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_X
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_377_Stratocruiser
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Why did we stop building crazy stuff like this?
|
| Everything seems to now be an exercise in somehow optimizing
| profits
|
| Even our billionaires are boring now
|
| Where are the wild eyed people dreaming up impossible
| megastructures and geoengineering projects? I can't imagine
| anyone even attempting to build the Panama canal today
| neuralRiot wrote:
| >Everything seems to now be an exercise in somehow
| optimizing profits
|
| It has always been, but now the idea is to maximize it as
| fast as possible and "tomorrow is not my problem", same as
| school grades discussed in another post, the goal is to
| pass the metrics, the final result doesn't really matter.
| trhway wrote:
| Yep, optimization. I did at some point napkin on cargo
| Zeppelin 3-4 days vs 747 in half a day Shanghai to SFO.
| Zeppelin would burn almost the same fuel, and ultimately
| 747 would provide higher ROI due to more flight over the
| same time period.
| derbOac wrote:
| The Hindenburg, and apparently those linked planes ended
| after catastrophic accidents. Not saying they couldn't have
| been revived but safety has a way of constraining what you
| might do.
|
| Reading the main article reminded me of the Concorde.
| Similar luxury vibes and similar end.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I'd love to see airships (and flying boats) come back. Would open
| up new routes and different destinations.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They're just too slow for most people. Like trains. There's a
| certain charm to spending three days to get to LA on a train,
| eating in the dining car and watching the scenery go by, but
| for most people they'd rather get on an airliner and be there
| in 4 hours.
| fragmede wrote:
| Like cruise ships? An airplane can also get you places way
| faster, but cruise ships are a some $50 billion industry,
| with some 30 million passengers each year. How much of that
| industry would an airship need to slice off to be profitable?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Cruise ships are about the cruise though. They're not
| really to get anywhere. I think most of them start and end
| at the same port?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| So an airship that runs over a picturesque coastline
| route would do the trick. Don't have to fly over the
| Atlantic. Just fly around the caribbean islands
| NikkiA wrote:
| While they were both still in service, there was a famous
| long-serving cruise package of QE2 from Southampton to
| NYC, then Concorde back (and another package of the
| opposite directions)
|
| But yes, mostly these days cruises are a circular trip.
|
| Some info: https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--
| the-qe2
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| There is no way today to have the experience of looking down at
| the earth, silently, from a few thousand feet.
|
| I think an LA to Las Vegas route could be viable. You aren't
| limited by volume-- only weight. You could have huge vaulted
| ceilings and massive windows. Hell, bungee jumping while we're at
| it.
|
| Here's a vision deck for an aerostatic future:
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6...
| bombcar wrote:
| Hot air balloons get you close and because they're unpowered
| you are flowing in and with the wind, so there is absolutely no
| apparent movement.
| bithead wrote:
| Isn't it true that at the time there wasn't anything like weather
| radar? What would have happened if a zeppelin got caught up in a
| strong storm?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Search [1] for 'storm' and 'blown' and 'wind'...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I wish the billionaires would drop a few dollars into making
| enormous airships come back, just because they are amazing and
| not for profit.
|
| Even for profit, they can lift more than anything else - build
| houses or appartments in a factory and float them accross the
| country to their destination. Then they can be bigger than
| road/bridge/tunnel limits. Because they are buoyant they don't
| need much energy for the effort of lifting (improves on airplane,
| helicopter, hovercraft, mag-lev).
|
| If not that, then just for tourism / novelty / showing off. Along
| the lines of the beautiful (but not very economical) buildings of
| old - train stations, libraries, opera houses - to show off doing
| something grand and impressive.
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(page generated 2024-09-07 23:01 UTC)