The Giant Air-Ship

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 10, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 40.

The Giant Air-Ship

A writer in the "Scientific American" of August 26 declares that if the dirigible balloon, or air-ship, is ever to become a factor in the commercial transportation of cargoes, it must be big. The bigger the air-ship can be made, the greater are its advantages. And he therefore suggests that the giant dirigible, which would combine tens, or even hundreds, of dirigibles of the present size, put in the proper shape and propelled by an engine having the combined force of the motors of all the small dirigibles which entered into its construction, would move much faster through the air than each of the small ones would singly, because the head-on resistance would be decreased, and there would be very much less "skin friction." Its principal difficulty would be the cost of housing such an air-ship. It would have to be moored in the open. And he says that while such an immense ship, which would furnish all the accommodations that one of the mammoth ocean liners does at the present time, seems fanciful, yet it would be no greater advance than has been made in the great 50,000 ton leviathans which ply the sea, and he expects that the 1,000 foot air-ship will make its appearance before very long.