Up in the sky — is that an airship? Is it a plane? It’s an airship. A very large airship.
bird? plane? No, I’m Goodyear Airship Pilot Jerry Hissem.
Goodyear Airship Pilot Jerry Hissem gives Beacon Journal a tour around the Wingfoot Lake hangar and shares some of his favorite memories.
If you’ve been to the San Francisco Bay Area recently, you may have seen a giant blimp hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge. It may look like the kind of airships you see in advertisements these days, but it’s actually much larger.
The giant airship recently discovered in California is the Pathfinder 1, which is billed as the “world’s largest aircraft” and was developed by LTA Research. Pathfinder 1 is 406.5 feet long and 66 feet wide and is a type of airship known as a “lighter-than-air” or LTA aircraft. For comparison, the Goodyear blimp is 246 feet long.
LTA includes balloons and powered airships, as well as airships such as the famous Goodyear Blimp, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025.
Noting that the Pathfinder is not an airship, it aims to differentiate itself from an era of low public awareness dating back to the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. J. Gordon Leishman, a professor of aeronautical engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the development and testing around the Bay Area raises interesting questions about the future of airships.
He said that for airships to have any future survival in the industry, they will have to compete with more established methods of transporting cargo and people, but there are several advantages that could make them useful.
“There are interesting aspects to lighter-than-air aircraft technology, such as airships, in terms of how they can contribute to aviation,” he said.
What you need to know about “lighter than air” ships
A lighter-than-air aircraft is one that uses a gas less dense than air to create buoyancy, Leishman said. These include balloons (unpowered and free-floating), airships, and airships.
So what’s the difference between an airship and other types of airships?While other types of airships have some degree of internal structure, an airship is essentially an envelope filled with gas. They are called airships or semi-rigid airships. Pathfinder 1 is a rigid airship, not strictly speaking an airship.
Currently, there are not many airships operating around the world. If you happen to spot an airship, it’s usually easy to tell whether it’s promoting advertising for companies like Goodyear or DIRECTV, or providing aerial footage of sporting events. So when San Franciscans spotted Pathfinder 1 floating near the Golden Gate Bridge, they may have wondered what it was doing.
The Goodyear blimp is no longer a pure airship, Leishman said. These resemble semi-rigid airships, but are more commonly known as airships.
What is the airship doing in San Francisco?
LTA Research is conducting flight tests of Pathfinder 1 in the Bay Area to test a “proof of concept” aircraft. The company first announced in May that it had successfully flown a ship outside the airspace of Moffett Federal Airfield, which once housed U.S. military airships and balloons.
The Pathfinder was previously tested both tethered and untethered at an airfield in Mountain View, California, outside San Francisco. Last month, the company announced it had received permission to fly Pathfinder in an expanded area around San Francisco for longer-distance test flights.
Are airships and airships making a comeback?
Airships have long suffered from a bad reputation as “unsafe, big, slow-moving giants,” Leishman said. In the Hindenburg disaster, an airship carrying passengers across the Atlantic caught fire while landing in New Jersey, killing 36 people. Early airships, including the Hindenburg, were often filled with hydrogen gas, the lightest gas but reactive and potentially explosive. Non-reactive helium gas is now used instead.
But imagine a floating hospital. Or take a smooth, low-level flight over a national park. That’s what LTA Research hopes to accomplish, the Akron Beacon Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.
“Why an airship? Well, because physics doesn’t lie. Buoyancy means free lift,” LTA Research CEO Brett Crozier told an audience at the Akron Roundtable on Nov. 20, the Beacon Journal reported.
“Helicopters burn enormous amounts of fuel just by hovering, and planes have to maintain forward speed for lift, but airships float. With modern carbon fiber, fly-by-wire controls, electric propulsion…suddenly, we’re not looking backwards, and we’re looking into the future of aviation.”
The company behind Pathfinder 1 says on its website that it is working toward a future of lighter-than-air technology that can help reach places without traditional roads, runways, or ports. The company says they can be used to transport disaster relief supplies, cargo and people.
“LTA airships will reshape air travel and cargo transportation as we know it today by adapting to a changing world and transporting goods and people to their destinations across roads, runways and ports,” the site states.
Leishman said disaster relief is one unique use for airships. Airships can travel long distances, require less fuel than other forms of transportation, and don’t require runways, so they could reach isolated areas with little infrastructure or areas cut off by natural disasters, he said.
It also can move as fast as the trucks that transport most goods in the United States. However, it is not clear whether there is a demand for airship transportation. Although the overall carbon footprint is low, the cost may be too high. Leishman said lighter-than-air aircraft are more susceptible to weather conditions than airplanes. Additionally, helium is also in short supply.
Still, Leishman said interest in lighter-than-air vessels is cyclical, waxing and waning over time.
“Maybe it’s a novelty in some ways,” he says. “You’d think, ‘Maybe it would be fun to cross the Atlantic on an airship instead of on a cruise ship.'” I don’t know, but I’d like to give it a try. ”
Contributor: Patrick Williams, Akron Beacon Journal
