Over a year ago I made remark of the fact that every ten years or so, the lamestream media runs a “Here Come the Blimps” feature predicting a stunning renaissance in lighter-than-air craft, a renaissance that, sadly, never seems to pan out.
Last fall, I reprised my skepticism when a U.S. Army blimp, moored outside Baltimore, went on a rampage, getting its cables tangled in some power lines and shorting out 20,000 customers before the poor thing was shot down. The rogue blimp did something that fact, reason, and logic could not, which was to put an end to a $2.7 billion program that had no purpose but to spend the taxpayers’ money.
But while I was snickering at the demise of a pair of 240-foot blimps, over in Great Britain, a 300-foot monster, the “Airlander 10”—that thing pictured above—was lumbering towards ascent. I don’t know what the Airlander 10 will actually accomplish, but it is damn big and it seems it will fly, at least for awhile. My friend Diane Levy, whose fascination with all things blimpish piqued my interest in lighter-than-air craft way back in the Reagan Administration, must be smiling.
