Cost of Zeppelin Ride Balloons to $500: Your Wallet Will Go Blimp

The headline involved several painful puns, but the bottom line is that for $500 big ones you will soon be able to soar above the Bay Area in a Zeppelin NT airship (no relation to Windows NT I hope). The folks at Airship Ventures (AV) make great efforts to inform you that their airship is NOT a blimp. A blimp doesn't have any frame or structure, relying on the lifting gas to give it shape whereas the Zeppelin NT that AV acquired does have a rigid framework. You can find out all about the airship by reading this FAQ. The lifting gas in question on the Zeppelin NT is helium, not hydrogen, so the airship won't have Hindenburg issues. Of course, it should be noted that the skin of the Hindenburg was doped with powdered aluminum, which as rocket scientists have found, is very flammable.


For such a price, you'd be expecting a pretty special experience and I think that AV will be able to deliver that. Whether or not there are enough takers in the current economic crisis to keep the company afloat until better times arrive is another question entirely. You can find out more about Airship Ventures and their plans by clicking here to visit their website. You can also check out their blog, which is following the progress of the ship as it heads towards San Francisco by clicking here.