Airlander 10 'breaks in two' and collapses at Cardington

BBC ^ | November 18, 2017 | BBC(Staf Reporter?)

[infool7]

The world's longest aircraft has collapsed to the ground less than 24 hours after a successful test flight. The Airlander 10 - a combination of a plane and an airship - was seen to "break in two" at an airfield in Bedfordshire, an eyewitness said. "it appeared the Airlander broke free from its mooring mast, triggering a safety system which deflates the aircraft." Two people on the ground suffered minor injuries.

[lefty-lie-spy]

Iron Maiden : Book Of Souls : R-101
These twats are just trying to relive disasters. What IS the point in England being so backward always?

[infool7]

I am sure they would do their best to ensure the utmost in safety but I can imagine something like a product with lithium batteries exploding, sabotage from a disgruntled vendor/employee or terrorism causing it to catastrophically break up at altitude without warning, raining down thousands of pre-packaged flaming missiles and drone parts on an unsuspecting heavily populated urban metropolis.

Could mean some lawsuits.

[littleharbour]

Zoolander 2 was a bigger disaster than Airlander 10

[infool7]

Link to the (18 minute) YouTube Iron Maiden - Empire Of The Clouds

[IronJack]

Without going all Freudian, does the front end of that aircraft remind anyone else of something?

[SERKIT]

[glasseye]

[infool7]

Perhaps but the R-101 was a real mess. HatTip lefty-lie-spy

[onedoug]

Now that’s funny.

Thanks for posting, SERKIT

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Oh, the humidity!

[TangoLimaSierra]

You win.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Yeah, because airplanes never have accidents!

This might not have happened if they didn’t build in that stupid “safety-NAZI” stuff.

[DaxtonBrown]

That’s seriously funny. I needed that.

[SgtHooper]

So when there are major windstorms, these things will end up where all the CA smog ends up.

[PAR35]

The Germans were always the only ones who were competent at building large airships. Goodyear was OK with blimps.

Looks like the Zeppelin semi rigid still has the lead for the current generation. (The current Goodyear ‘blimps’ are actually Zeppelin semi-rigids.)

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

The only “airship insanity” is the unreasonable fear of airships.

The Hindenburg disaster effectively halted meaningful development of the technology for decades. Hydrogen is no longer used as a lifting fuel — nor, are modern airships coated with rocket fuel, as was the Hindenburg.

[infool7]

I guess I should qualify that as taxpayer funded airship insanity.

If a commercial venture wants to make a case for and take the risk of engineering and building such a craft, great but I do not think taxpayers should be asked to fund these white elephants.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

No argument here. As a general rule, governments should avoid subsidizing industrial-scale commercial ventures. OTOH, I can see a place for government subsidies for pure research of the science involved, and for some basic (and non-propitiatory) development of the technology. (I.e. — just about the opposite of the way the “green-energy” industry is now supported.)

[central_va]

I have a 7 gallon pancake compressor they can borrow.

[infool7]

Well the Germans at the time were building a war machine and airplane technology was still in it’s infancy. Even with massive improvements in material science these things make no sense to me because of the... wind. Like global warming / climate change zealots, airship proponents minimize or deny completely the 800 lb gorilla in the room like the Sun and Milankovitch Cycles in the case of “climate scientists” and the wind in the case of bulky, bulbous floating sails that are completely captive to the prevailing winds that easily overcome them. I understand that they can use winds traveling in different directions at various altitudes to their favor like hot air balloons but airplanes have completely resolved that problem and pretending that there is some value in taking backward leaps in technology is a fools errand.