on old-fashioned transport

A lot has been written on the economic potential of airships – or the lack thereof.

For twenty years now articles in popular science magazines have predicted the revival of the zeppelin.

Those might come true in time, but they appear coloured by a lot of enthusiasm and wishful thinking.

The concept does have unique qualities. An airship can do things no other aerial invention can do, but its commercial application remains a niche market.

Airships are slow, limited in their use, large and unwieldy. Slower than airplanes and less manoeuvrable than helicopters, they are outperformed by both. They are expensive to use and really hard to park in the average city rush hour.

They build airships, one at a time, and then try to sell them. But unlike a car, an airship is an investment good. So the engineers need to come up with a good use for their airship. And no one seems to have found a use that sells more than a few airships. So none of those companies are making much money.

Why do these engineers keep doing that? Why are they still trying to reinvent this old idea,, when every time they can see that for all intents and purposes helicopters and airplanes are more practical?

Why do these engineers keep trying, arguing that there will be good economic sense in airships, if only we built the next one a bit better?

There is another old means of transport that has been overtaken by its successors.

It is ancient, slow, unreliable and inefficient. Its maximum speed is a modest 15 mph and it prays to the gods of weather and good fortune to get safely from A to B. It has absolutely no economic relevance as a means of transportation.
Yet we keep thousands of them around, and keep making new ones, using space-age materials and an internet connection to the meteorological society website.
Our marinas are crowded with sailing ships.

The reason we keep sailing boats is not economical. We use them because we enjoy them. We love sailing boats. They’re beautiful.
Not just for how they look, but because of how they work.
We experience sailing as something harmonious. Sailing feels right. Sailing is zen.

Yachts depend on the presence of wind. It is precisely this interaction with nature which entails its magic. It’s an idea of balance, of freedom, of harmony.

It is this feeling airships share, and the reason engineers believe they deserve a second chance.
Zeppelins could have a similar second life, if only they were not so darn expensive.
The airship is an elegant, enchanting vehicle. A floating whale, a manned cloud.

It is a love for this elegance, not good economic sense, which is the reason engineers all over the world keep trying to reinvent the airship.

From this point of view, the main problem of the concept 'airship' is that today it is an investment good. It is expensive to build, expensive to store on the ground and even more expensive to fly.

An airship should be cheaper to operate than a light aircraft, as it can stay airborne without using fuel.
Yet today it is not. Current technologies vent precious gas to control their altitude and, are equipped with heavy engines to make them as fast as economically possible. They are equipped with high-tech components to control them very precisely.

A lot of energy goes into making airships better at things they are inherently not very good at, instead of maximizing their unique qualities.

What if we were to think of an airboat like we think of a sailing ship? A vehicle that uses the wind, instead of providing perfect control?

For there is another side to sailing ships too:

On a yacht, you do not need refuelling stations, you do not depend on infrastructure or roads. You  can sail around the world on a zero-emission power source and at a mileage cost of a can of soup and some toast.

They have long been surpassed in performance, but they remain the single most fantastic, sustainable means of transport designed in the last 4000 years.
Today there is no other vehicle that can match the autonomy and degree of freedom a papyrus sailing raft gives you.

What if we were to  build a more autonomous, sturdy airship, at the expense of speed and reliable performance?

A ship that could do what a sailing boat can do: operate in low-cost manner and independent from ground resources, enabling the crew to go wherever they want.
A cheaper, slower, but self-supporting ship. A ship that can remain at sea for three months.

A ship that is more about the voyage than about getting there in time.

Floating on the wind, having breakfast above the clouds. An airship, built like a yacht. A house boat. An intercontinental clipper, taking a lift on the trade winds…