Not What I Ask For From Transportation Infrastructure

[rinue]

It seems to me I regularly see people (perhaps many people; perhaps just a few people loudly and frequently) extol the utopian value of airships, with a sense that in a just world we would all be cruising around in zeppelins rather than planes. While I will grant that air travel has become absolutely miserable and is now basically like catching a greyhound (Airbus is honestly named), there are very good reasons nobody's using balloons anymore. Among other things, they are tremendously difficult to steer. So sure, you can take off, and it's very stately, but where are you going? When will you get there? Difficult to know.

Comments

[movingfinger]

The airship I took to Long Beach had motors with propellors which were part of a steering system. It was not wind-dependent but wind could give it trouble, particularly in landing and takeoff.

I found it a very comfortable and civilized way to travel, albeit more leisurely than most people would tolerate. If I can ever do a cross-continental journey or any other kind in an airship, I will. That one has now been returned to Europe as there was not enough interest in the US to keep it busy.

[rinue]

I'm super jealous now, and thoroughly appreciate your first-person perspective.

I think my entry isn't clear about this, but I would love to ride an airship. Similarly, I have designs on a few scenic railway journeys and would love to someday ride on a tallship, and go to classic car shows at every chance. I am pro-airship.

I am also sad I never got to ride the Concorde.

However I get fairly annoyed with retrofuturists, not because I think history is necessarily a constant advance (sometimes things are abandoned that are intensely useful, such as cursive handwriting), but because their counterfactuals tend to play down the problems with old technology (assuming we would have solved them, or that they weren't real problems) and shrug off the strengths of current technology (assuming they were inevitable and would also have accrued to the other system). Cheap, fast, reliable air travel by plane (for both people and freight) is nothing to shake a stick at.