If you try and load this page from the UK, you get:

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes."

O.o

The good news is that blimps rely passively on the relationship between their overall density and that of the atmosphere to stay aloft. That's also the bad news.

In some future, more rational society, blimps would be tested for their resistance to a microburst, and if they failed, they would not be allowed to carry passengers. It's not true now, and every famous lighter-than-air disaster except Hindenburg involved the craft being pushed down to the surface entirely out of control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microburst

Picture of a microburst: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microburstnasa.JPG

> When the pilot wants to descend, the vehicle needs to be heavier, so the helium in the main body of the craft is compressed and put into storage chambers.

Ha, it's an inverted submarine!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Submersion_and_trimmi...

This is a concept that I find myself continuously in love with. As ahi points out, it comes up every few years and never seems to go anywhere, but something like an airborne luxury craft sounds like a fun vacation. You couldn't have all of the grandness of a cruise ship, but you could find several ways to take recreational advantage of being several thousand feet in the air. For example, a rock climbing wall outside of the ship. And instead of having a ship designed for a 2 week journey, maybe only 3 days (or one day), because there is inherently less room for things like spas and casinos and restaurants.

I also like the transportation focus presented by this article. Perhaps having a useful application (IE retrieving large things that are difficult for helicopters to retrieve) will help to encourage the market for all types of lighter-than-air craft.

Would cruise ships have happened without cargo ships first being designed? My guess is no, because cruise ships largely piggyback off of a technology that is industrially very useful. I do not think that a recreational company would dump so much money into finding ways to make ships more economically feasible. That takes industry, where the need is more obvious, and the potential demand is much easier to predict.

The problem with aircrafts like these is that helium is slowly but surely becoming a scarce resource on Earth. Here's a somewhat related story about scientists speaking out about using it in balloons.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19676639

We could always use hydrogen, which is even lighter and therefore more efficient than helium. There's just the problem with it being highly flammable.

This shows up every few years in credulous magazines like Popular Mechanics and Wired. It is literally vaporware.

I guess the only problem this solves is being able to land on the spot?

Even with compressing the helium to land again, I guess it could be more energy efficient, but it would take forever to reach it's destination. People typically fly in jets because they are fast, not because they are fuel efficient.

I wonder what the costs are to build an airship to the same scale as a commercial airliner. If speed was not a factor and it seated comparable amount of people, but it cost significantly less to build and operated there could be a niche market for the not-in-a-hurry air traveler.

If you're in California, you can book a zeppelin tour almost any day -- http://www.airshipventures.com/

Unfortunately it's quite expensive starting at $375 for a 45-minute flight.

Here is a screenshot of the article. http://i46.tinypic.com/358du2c.png

Couldn't get the video unfortunately. I'm in the UK, the VPN I used was Hotspot Shield, it's free.

How well does it cope with wind?

When I saw the title, I thought they'd figured out a way to make use of something other than helium, but I guess I was wrong. I was thinking maybe they built self-resizing vacuum chambers in order to reduce the weight/volume ratio. Like, there would be two membranes, and between them, supports that can extend or shorten to change the volume of the vacuum-space, and affect the overall density that way.

Does anyone know if this has been done, or if it's at all feasible?

“It’s impossible to get into some of the resource rich areas of the world. Ecologically, you can’t do it. Areas of the far north, or the Amazon are good examples.”

Oh great, now we can give the final blow to that annoying Nature!