Airship (nonfiction)

Francesco Lana de Terzi's Aerial Ship design of 1670.

An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power.

Aerostats gain their lift from large gas bags filled with a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.

In early dirigibles, the lifting gas used was hydrogen, due to its high lifting capacity and ready availability.

Helium gas has almost the same lifting capacity and is not flammable, unlike hydrogen, but is rare and relatively expensive. Significant amounts were first discovered in the United States and for a while helium was only used for airships by the United States.

Most airships built since the 1960s have used helium, though some have used hot air.

An airship also has engines and crew and/or payload accommodation, typically housed in one or more "gondolas" suspended below the envelope.

In the News

• 

  Viking Funeral in the Sky is a short documentary film about the airship immolation craze of the 1930s.

• 

  Inventor and priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão's uses Gnomon algorithm to design improved airship.

• 

  Engineer George Cayley remembered as the father of aeronautics.

• 

  US Navy raises flock of Carnivorous dirigibles.

Fiction cross-reference

• Carnivorous dirigible
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• Viking Funeral in the Sky

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Spacecraft (nonfiction)

External links

• Airship @ Wikipedia