Airships: Exploring New Possibilities For An Old Industry

"Shortly thereafter they took off. This felt strange, lofting up over the bay, bouncing a little on the wind, not like a jet, not like a helicopter. Strange but interesting."

— Ministry of the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2022

In 1935, Alexander Klemin, a lawyer and former Dean of the NYU Guggenheim School of Aeronautics, wrote in the Air Law Review that the "American airship history has been a series of disasters followed by Congressional investigation." Two years before this statement, the USS Akron crashed off of the coast of New Jersey — resulting in the largest loss of life of any airship disaster. Two years after that statement, it wasn't an American airship — but a German one — that had the most memorable disaster, when the Hindenburg crashed near Lakehurst, New Jersey. These disasters cemented a view that airships were dangerous. Before airships fell out of use, however, they had been seen as a luxurious and efficient mode of transportation.