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Who the hell wants a two-day blimp ride to London?
I mean it would be a fun experience, but so is taking the Quean Mary II and even she struggles to stay in the black dispite being eminently more practical.
Over land a train will always win, and in the ocean and in the ocean there are ships that can outrun it.
More to the point, people travel by air because it’s fast enough to get you anywhere in the world in a day, give or take. Biofuels and even direct fuel synthesis using atmospheric carbon powered aviation is always going to beat out airships because airships do not solve a useful problem for travel.
This is how I see it. There isn’t a practical use case that makes airships attractive compared to other options, and tourism will never be enough to sustain it at scale.
I think that was an Archer reference, but I’d rather spend two days on an airship with a bunk, a dining room, and a bar, than seven hours stuck between potentially two of the worst people I will ever meet and with barely any room to stretch my legs.
It’s a nice thought, but frankly if you have the ability to spend your time like that while traveling then you’re probably already in the target market for this… wealthy people with money and time to burn. How often do you find yourself booking train cabins for long-distance travel?
And yes, it absolutely was an Archer reference.
Wealthy people already have their private jets. The only way it makes sense for regular people to cross the Atlantic in less than eight hours is for it to be a nominally miserable experience while of course burning lots of fuel with all the negative externalities that entails. Passenger jet forces us to put up with some significant problems and I think airships are just a better way.
