Later the same day I dribbled the two scanty grafs on airships headlined “The goodrich blimp?”, this crossed the wires:

“Cargolifter buoyed by Boeing partnership” – Reuters

Cargolifter, which aims to develop zeppelin-like airships to transport heavy plant and construction loads, said it had signed a letter of intent with plane maker Boeing (NYSE:BA – news) to examine potential business opportunities to develop “lighter-than-air” vehicles for commercial, military and security use.

Ooh! Can we have an airship base in Seattle? Can we? Pretty please? Hunh? Can we? Can we?

They could, uh, dock at the Space Needle! Yeah! Yeah! That’s the ticket!

Thanks to Prism kites for the skyline shot (oh, I made a few improvements) and to Cargolifter for the CG airship. The non-CG airship is a demo model called “Joey” that is literally small enough to be carried with in the larger CL160.

“Scanty grafs”, get it? Like, you know, the Graf Zeppelin? Oh, never mind.

Oh, and “LTA” is geekspeak for “lighter than air” and implies “aviation”; so a translated headline would be “More lighter-than-air aviation”.