Bay Area blimpin'

Extreme airship fans probably know about Keith's blog, 'Blimpin' ain't easy', on being a new airship pilot for Snoopy 2, one of the MetLife blimps. It's an interesting peek into the life of a traveling airship. I spotted that in a recent trip to the Bay Area, Keith had taken a lot of photos of the scenery and I think it gives some idea of what we're likely to see with the Zeppelin.

Snoopy 2 is a small and nimble blimp. The gondola is secured to the pressurized envelope by means of lots of wires, and it also has ropes for the ground crew to grab when it lands. So you have to be clever with where you point the camera not to have ropes and wires in your money shot!

If Only..

I often wonder how many people are coming across us because they're looking for the band...

If you don't think it's a good idea...

As mentioned in the last post, we went to present at the City of Mountain View council meeting last Tuesday. While we were scheduled to present at 6.30pm, a controversial planning issue delayed the start of the meeting until 9pm, which gave us a chance to check out the yummy Shivas restaurant in Downtown Mountain View.

Our presentation was short, and as expected, picked up by the local press. This is great. The point of us reaching out to the community was to see what issues there could be, if any, with us proposing to NASA that we take space in Hangar 2, and to be able then to address those questions and concerns.

NASA have a lot to of issues to balance when making a decision like this. We know that it costs a great deal to maintain the airfield, but that because of noise and related concerns from the local community, they have many restrictions on what can and can't be done there. In addition, they have their own internal restrictions on what types of activities and partnerships are acceptable. And finally, the historic structures only have certain uses. So our approach was to make sure that we'd covered as many of the issues as possible to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. Because we think it would be awesome to have an airship back at Moffett Field. And now that we've presented at a public meeting, we can also talk about our plans here on the blog. Let us know your thoughts!

November Already?!

The more hectic it gets, the less time we find to post on our blog. As they say, no news is good news, but, dear reader, you deserve more than silence from us, so here's some snippets.

Last week we were at the X Prize Executive Summit and then we hung out at the X Prize Cup. While our airships aren't directly space related, there are plenty of things being done with airship related technology in the NewSpace arena and many of the issues that we face in doing something unusual in aviation are also faced by the new private space start ups - financing, regulatory hurdles etc. So we have a lot of friends there.

We have the 'gang' here this week, with Scott, our pilot, visiting to work with us on all manner of fun items. Michael Schieschke from Zeppelin is popping down having been to Winnipeg to present at the Airships to the Arctic conference and we have all kinds of meetings scheduled!

On Tuesday you'll find us at the City of Mountain View Council meeting. We're keen to hear community points of view relating to our proposal to bring an airship back to the area, and presenting at the Council Meeting seems like a good way to get that feedback. Last week we also met with the Moffett Field Historical Society board, which was a real pleasure for us.

So plenty going on, and once we come up for air, we'll let you know the highlights.