Posted on by mwhybark

BLIMP WEEK, part three

OK, I’m making it official. I declare this to be BLIMP WEEK!

Seven consecutive entries here at mike.whybark.com will be oriented toward the wonders of lighter-than-air aviation! Tell your friends! Send your mom!

Now, technically, I hope to make most of the entries about dirigibles, but Blimp Week is more fun to say. And it’s so utterly opposed to that lamest of lame cable promos, the Discovery Channel’s $%^&* Shark Week.

And you KNOW what folks would think if I tried to call it “Zep Week”, for god’s sake.

<voice=pitchman>
All week, on mike.whybark.com, it’s BLIMMP WEEK! If it’s SLOWWW… and it FLOATS in the AIR… and it’s been EMPHATICALLY ABANDONED as a MILITARY TECHNOLOGY… we’ve got it here. It’s BLIMMP WEEK… DON’T TOUCH THAT MOUSE!
</voice>

Uhm, I’ll make that eight entries, since the next entry really should have it’s own title, and I am counting this entry.

Here’s a link to an old site about LTA, ZEPPELIN. I believe this is the oldest site on the topic to be found online. If “Zeppelin” is not the oldest, than this one is: Airship.

Posted on by mwhybark

More LTA

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!

asneed2.jpg

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”.