That's Us!

We spotted this newspaper clipping on the noticeboard at the DZR passenger facilities. Even if you don't read German, it's pretty obvious what it says and we think it looks good flying over the Golden Gate Bridge, don't you?

Zeppelin NT (Neue Toilette)

We heard that when the Zeppelin NT prototype was built it didn't have a toilet aboard, leading to a joke about the NT (which actually stands for New Technology) meaning 'no toilet'. Just to reassure our potential passengers, the Zeppelin does have a loo. (good British word there, albeit with a French origin.)

Here are some pictures of the toilet in #3 and one under construction for #4. I have a great picture of the blueprint for the toilet. Perhaps it would make a fun poster..

A Fliegerbier or two..

As a result of our previous post regarding Zeppelin related alcohol, Sig Geist sent us a picture of a beer bottle he has featuring a 1910 era Zeppelin AND the Count himself. Very cool.

Today Brian discovered additional Zeppelin beer in a special thirst quenching size which you can obtain at the gift store at the DZR passenger facilities in Friedrichshafen. Sadly, due to the restrictions on carrying liquids through airport security, we will not be bringing some back as carry on unless we can find 500 friends to each have a small bottle in their ziplock baggie. However our Zeppelin friends assure us that the glass is strong enough for us to ship it.

We'll look into what it would take to get some imported for our store...

Arrivals..

My plane landed at Friedrichshafen this afternoon (Sunday) and as we hit the runway I could see the Zeppelin on the mast - her crew watching the stormy skies trying to decide if it would rain, or if they could fly for a while. She did eventually take off and flew through breaking clouds into the early evening. Tomorrow I will get to see her up close, and also see the pieces of number four in the hangar. Can't wait!

Field Trip!

Some of the Airship Ventures team are off to Germany this weekend for an intensive week in Friedrichshafen at Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik. We'll be posting at least once a day, and we're aiming to include some video and plenty of pictures. If there's anything Zeppelin related you want to make sure we take a picture of, contact us through our website and we'll do our best!

my ten knot jeans aren't flapping too badly

Last week we spent a lot of time going around Bay Area airfields and open spaces with Zeppelin pilot, Scott, checking out the possibilities from a narrowed down list. Was there a big enough clear space? What were the approaches like? What were the dominant wind patterns? Dwayne, our facilities consultant, has been talking to multiple airport managers - "an airship? I think we have some sort of procedure for that in the filing cabinet." Our plans are to have a homebase with a hangar that we will fly from some of the time and then to operate for tourists from a number of Bay Area locations, hence the grand tour. Here are a few pictures from that tour.
["how do we get City Hall to build an airship landing zone into the redevelopment plan?"]
["hmm, is that C5 always there?"]

["Do you think we can persuade them not to grow crops?]

["the tower says that the ceiling is nearing 1000ft]

Cheers!

"I think there was once a blimp city brewery" said Scott, the Zeppelin pilot and airship operations consultant we’ve been spending time with. Suitably inspired, I went a-googlin’. Indeed, Blimp City Brewery once existed in Akron Ohio, but alas it is no more. You can find reviews on ratebeer.com and it seems to have produced some good beverages, but unless you find a supply somewhere, your chances of tasting it are somewhat slim.

Still in business however is the Tustin Brewing Company, and they make Blimp Hangar Porter.

But if beer is not your tipple, then perhaps you should explore Red Zeppelin wines. While we don't like their logo (we hope after we get flying the wine country and people see how safe our Zeppelin is that they might rethink), we do like the logo for one of their red wines and we really laughed at this cool picture of 'Bread Zeppelin'. We hope that they'll forgive us for putting it here and directing a little traffic to their site...

Airship Amusement

I finally got around to downloading a murder mystery game that I had spotted while surfing. It's called Zeppelin Airship Murder.

"The year is 1931 and the Airship "Titan" is on its 10th voyage across the Atlantic from Europe to the USA. The passenger list reads like a "Who's Who" of the rich, famous and glamorous globe trotters.

You have been invited to dine at the Captain's table tonight as the Airship glides majestically over the calm ocean below. You are dressed for dinner and arrive on time but the Captain is not there to greet his personal guests. Finally, word arrives of a disturbance in the observation room and the Captain is missing - presumed dead. But who killed the Captain and why?

The Airship Ventures team are overdue for another social gathering, so we'll play it soon and let you know what we think!

How Green is my Airship?

I came across a neat website the other day which allows you to calculate how many tonnes of CO2 you emit in aviation. It requires info on your fuel, how many liters you burn per hour and how many hours you fly per year.

I was curious about the Zeppelin NT so I ran some numbers for how much CO2 would be emitted for carrying 120 passengers and then did the same for some of the helicopters that are being used to give people tours in the San Francisco Bay Area. The helos don't carry as many people, so they have more flight hours to get to the same number. I then divided the total CO2 by the number of passengers to give me a per passenger figure (1000kg = 1 tonne for those not familiar with metric).

I realize that fuel consumption is always a moving target, but I figured that it would give me some ideas about the relative emissions of these two sightseeing methods. Interesting, but not unexpected, results.

UPDATE. Ecogeek published a fun article about green flight and airships get a mention! Thanks to Andreas at Airshipworld for spotting this.

Airships: The Big, Bad and Bold

Today we stopped by the Anderson - Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum to meet briefly with their exhibit curator who had contacted us after seeing a press release about our airship plans. She is busy putting together a new exhibit that opens on August 12 called Airships: The Big, Bad and Bold and wanted some more information from us. She had visited Friedrichshafen but had been unable to fly the Zeppelin NT at the time, although she saw it in action.

Marilee took us into the partially completed exhibit area. There were already some gorgeous Art Deco airship prints on the walls and a tantalizing number of large model mounts waiting for a set of large scale models which we were told are being built locally. We also got to see some of the memorabilia and artifacts that will form part of this exhibit. My particular favorites were a set of ceramic zeppelins each with a British or European city coat of arms on them.

The Museum is closed on Mondays, but we were grateful for the sneak peak, and to see a 1:200 scale Graf Zeppelin that they have hanging in their main atrium. We will certainly be going back once the exhibit is open! It runs through December 31.

Wishful Thinking

Our friend, Betsy, sent us a link to an amusing zeppelin cartoon drawn by Randall Munroe. I've put a tiny clip as the image for this entry to tease you, so you'll have to click on this link to see the full cartoon.

If only.... (removes the need for ground crews...)

Being in one place

We've been surprised - pleasantly - by the number of airship folks who are contacting us with an interest in working for us. As it says on our website, we will be looking to recruit a full team and a list of the positions is given. For those of you that are following what we're up to, we thought we'd post a little more information here.

We plan on hiring only a couple of key posts before the end of the year. Virtually all other positions will be hired during the first half of next year. We are carefully keeping all resumes that are sent to us (thank you!), and will make sure that all those individuals are contacted when the relevant position openings are on the website.

In talking to some of the friendly inquirers, we've discovered that there is an appeal to working with an airship that is mostly in one place. Not that we won't ever do some travel if the event/contract is worth it, but this certainly won't be 11 months on the road. On the other hand, the cost of living in the Bay Area is a notch or two above the usual locations in North Carolina and Ohio....

Happy Birthday! Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! to the founder of Zeppelin. Born 8 July 1838.

Out of body experience?

We're enjoying many of the comments that are posted at the bottom of the various online news stories about us and will be posting a compendium of the ones that made us laugh in a day or so.

However we HAD to share this. A re purposing of the original CNET article was given a title that, seen through a 1960's cultural lens, fell into 'you didn't really mean that as it sounds did you' category.

Yes, folks, the "Zeppelin will give high flying tourists a trip". And you won't get arrested for it. Watch for the bumper sticker.

News comment roundup

One of the joys of online news is that people can comment on the story. We are pleased to bring you some of our favorite comments.

From Digg
Oh the huge manatee! (best to get that over with early.)

I would love to see this become a reality. I live right next to Moffett. I'd love to get a part time job on that thing just for the thrill of it.

from Topix

"...hey look up there...it's enormous and so long and hard and white...and it vibrates...I want a ride on that"...these people are BRILLIANT marketers...it didn't start over San Fran by accident...

from USA Today

Whooppeee I only like my Zeppelins full of Led....ROCK ON!!! That is such a cool idea that has been right under our noses the whole time. I hope it works.

And our favorite headline (1960’s inspired)

“Zeppelin will give high-flying tourists a trip”

A little more official

This morning in Germany Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik (ZLT) sent out our joint press release about Airship Ventures optioning Zeppelin NT serial # 04. Ours went via marketwire as soon as we woke up! You can access both German and English versions on our website here.

What does this mean? Well, it means that we have reserved it (which requires $$$) and that we fully intend to purchase the airship. It shows we're serious, very serious, and it allows us to work closely with ZLT as we continue to refine our plans. Actually, we signed the option in March this year, but we wanted to wait until we had a few things a bit further along, such as the website, before going public.

Why didn't we just wait until we were ready to buy? You know how sometimes you see something you want, and so you start saving up for it, but by the time you have all your pennies together, someone else has bought it and then you're really disappointed..? Zeppelins don't get built overnight. NT#04 is currently under construction, and we wanted to make sure we were first in line to buy it and didn't do all the work to prepare for having one only to then miss out and have to wait for the next one.

What next? We have a LOT of work to do. Our next steps involving firming up a lot of the operational details. We know there's speculation out there about where we'll be operating from (don't believe everything you read ), and people really want to know about buying tickets and so on. So, expect a few more releases and updates over the coming months.

If you are feeling even more impatient, may we suggest you check out Zeppelin tours? The photo above showing NT04's main longitudinal ribs was taken by John Christopher of Zeppelin Tours while leading a group of 'flightseers' in Friedrichshafen earlier this year. Currently Zeppelin Tours offers trips to Germany, but as you will see from their neat website, they are hoping to do more locations in the future!

Moving forward

I'm assuming that some of you visiting our blog (welcome!) are here because you found a story about us! We're excited that now we can come out of stealth mode and start to talk about more of what we are doing, even if it is a little earlier than we'd planned! The upside of being 'outed' is that now instead of my posting things once they are a done deal on this blog, you're now going to get all the gory details as they happen! We're also going to persuade a few of our team to start posting too. I hope you find some stories of interest in the archives to whet your appetite for more. And there's always our new website to check out.

Please join our mailing list so we can keep you up to date!

This wonderful image is created by Rob Walker who is doing a series for us. You'll be able to get them as notecards, postcards and T shirts in our webstore shortly.

Recruiting 'helium heads'

We're at flight school and listening to some fascinating presentations and discussions around the emerging fields of 'air taxis', very light jets, personal spaceflight, sport aviation etc. All these groups face regulatory hurdles as well as hurdles to reach market and attract investment. Heavy stuff. So we were pleased to be the 'lightweight' addition to the agenda!

Generally our ideas were well received, but we found a surprising level of negativity that relates to the perception (and in some cases, experience) that folks here have with blimps. As they generally haven't seen a Zeppelin NT, then they have no other reference. Perhaps this explains why many entrepreneurial airship ideas are struggling to find traction in the investment community - a perception of old technology, slow, unreliable etc. Something to think about in terms of marketing and education.

Fortunately we do have some advocates in the room. One of the attendees was recently in Friedrichshafen for a meeting with another aviation company based there. He said that he was traveling along when he looked up and saw the Zeppelin NT bank and turn and then start to land. He was astonished at the fact that it was so manueverable and commented to his companion that he'd never seen an airship do that. He came back to the USA and had made a note to himself that there absolutely should be one of these in Northern California.... we of course agree!

Flight School

Things have been busy, so expect a bunch of posts and news over the next month! Before then the Airship Ventures crew are bound for Flight School in Aspen, Colorado.

Contrary to the initial impression of the name, Flight School is not where we learn to fly in the traditional sense, but the combination of investors, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers that Esther Dyson is bringing together will most likely enable several of the new ideas presented to 'get off the ground'.

I'll try to blog about some of the unusual aviation related ideas that I come across, as well as people's reactions to our own venture.

Himmelstreppe

On page 4 of the wonderful book, Dr Eckners Dream Machine, the author, Douglas Botting, is describing the passengers boarding Graf Zeppelin for her round the world trip. He says "Lady Hay Drummond Hay.....wearing a cloche hat and with a fashionable stole around her neck, clambers up the short wooden gangway - Himmelstreppe, they call it, steps to heaven - shows her ticket and enters the ship".

When I first read this I stopped in disbelief. Surely it could not be a coincidence that the nickname for the boarding stair for the Zeppelin was also the name of one of the most famous Led Zeppelin songs of all time, Stairway to Heaven. Indeed, if you hunt for the German lyrics, you can see it quite clearly.

Well, dear readers, I have Googled, and searched high and low, and this would appear to be just one of those coincidences. But what a wonderful coincidence...