![]() Flying Whales has an impressive list of shareholders which includes the governments of France, China and Quebec. ![]() The LCA60T is the product of the well-funded and ambitious Paris-based start-up Flying Whales founded by Sébastien Bougon. Underneath its hi-tech skin, electric engines and advanced ultracapacitors it is basically a tried-and-tested zeppelin like those in Pullman’s books. Despite its slightly unusual design, the airship is actually designed to reduce risk and cost and ensure the project happens. The airship that is the shape of a blue whale is known by the catchy name of the LCA60T. It’s also possible that once airships break into the market, other uses may be discovered. “Airships can serve numerous missions ranging from humanitarian relief to natural resource extraction to heavy cargo operations. “We have identified a need for a safe and sustainable solution that can deliver heavy cargo and personnel to remote communities that have little to no infrastructure.” “Demand is created when customers have unmet needs,” says Robert Boyd, Lockheed’s programme manager. When Lockheed have secured the double-digit orders for their airship that they want the assembly line will be at a Lockheed Martin factory in Palmdale. Like its British rivals, Lockheed first built a technological demonstrator as proof of concept, but – unlike HAV – they are only now in the early stages of development of the prototype. Launched at the Paris Air Show in 2015, the LMH-1 is similar in size and shape to the Airlander. Engineers and pilots have spent whole careers in an industry that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. New, bigger, hi-tech airships were built by Zeppelin in Germany. The American Blimp Corporation manufactured airships for advertising. The US Navy continued to use blimps for anti-submarine warfare during World War Two. In the history books, the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 marked the end of the brief, glorious era of the airship – except it didn’t. They expect there to be about 150 of these airships floating around the world within 10 years. The manufacturers have some Boeing-sized ambitions for this new age of the airship. Its job: heavy lifting in some of the toughest places on Earth. About the same time, a vast new airship the shape of a blue whale, at 150m the length of an A380 and as high as a 12-storey building should rise up above its assembly plant, out of the heat and humidity of Jingmen, China. The Airlander won’t be alone in the skies either. The giant hangar built for an Arctic airship.The men and women on board the Airlander are tourists on an $80,000 (£62,165) luxury experience rather than explorers. ![]() In four to five years, all being well, one of the first production models of the enormous Airlander airship dubbed “the flying bum” will be the first airship to fly to the North Pole since 1928. The good news is that soon, the real world may finally drift closer to Pullman’s fantasy. Another can be found flying over the Amazon. A few more are employed to fly well-heeled tourists on sight-seeing trips over the German countryside. Last year, a blimp demeaned itself by setting two world records, including one for the fastest text on a touch screen mobile phone while water skiing behind a blimp. A handful of smaller airships can be found flying proudly across the United States on promotional tours for brands like Goodyear and Carnival Cruise Line. When I put the books down the reality is rather disappointing. What was once my local post office in Oxford is in Pullman’s fantasy – a zeppelin station where I could catch the evening airship to London. The giant airships of his parallel universe carry the mail, transport soldiers into battle and explorers to the Arctic. Zeppelins fill the skies of Philip Pullman’s epic trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials.
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