will the zeppelins like the Hindenburg ever become commerical again?

Yeah, distiller is right… speed is an issue if you want to use airships to replace aircraft. The most efficient way to get a 400 ton Turbine blade with all its bits attached from the where it is made to the other side of the world would be to use an airship to carry it from where it is made to the nearest port where it can be directly loaded onto a ship… the ship can carry the 16 turbine blades from that port to the nearest port to the hydro electric dam the turbine blades are for and from that port another airship could carry each turbine from the ship directly to the site where it is needed. This would be the cheapest option probably. If speed was an issue… ie it is costing you 1 million dollars a day that you have to wait for each item then sending the airships directly from manufacturer to the delivery point would probably be faster but I would expect a ship to be cheaper than an airship for round the world transport. For across a country an Airship all the way might be faster and cheaper… depends on the situation… but the airship either way would be very useful and simplify the transport process.
Even today 120 ton mechanical parts are loaded onto An-124s for transport to places all over Russia in one piece. The larger the transport devices payload the easier the transfer because you don’t need to break the object down into really small pieces. Airships don’t need roads or landing strips which is wonderful for jobs like taking 1,000 ton reflecting mirrors for a giant telescope that is of course situated miles from anywhere and at the top of a large mountain where the only access road is narrow and treacherous. There are lots of jobs like that it could be used for.

Even just taking all the equipment and materials to create an airstrip in the middle of no where in one trip including buildings for those working on the project.

The control issue is reduced by using thrust vectoring.

Sorry I wasn’t clear… I meant gale force strong winds… certainly many airships old and new had some method of directing thrust for manouver capability though I suspect the modern methods would result in a very sophisticated aircraft with stationkeeping ability like some ships would be outstandingly useful for large components delivered directly to the construction site and actually used to position and fit the component… so not only would it act as a transport vehicle it would also be acting as a mobile crane… which could be another use for it too.

Cruise ships are the holiday.

There is no way an airship could be big enough to do the same….

You do realise how large vessels like the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin actually were, don’t you?

They don’t need to go fast.

Look at a typical ultra-heavy transport scenario. Like shipping an outsized heavy transformer or a turbine from, say, Germany to India, some remote jungle spot. First that thing is loaded on a milliped-truck, going 50 miles for 5 miles because of bridges, villages, &c to reach some river harbor. There it is loaded on some river ship, floating down to some ocean harbor, where you need special heavy lifting equipment to get it onto an ocean going vessel. The same in reverse at the destination, sometimes you need to build a road to get into the jungle.

An airship the other hand could do that trip point to point within a few days.
And even if it does just 50kts it can reach any place in the world within a week.

The control issue is reduced by using thrust vectoring.

Cruise ships are the holiday.

There is no way an airship could be big enough to do the same.

Airships will never become commercial again unless they can do 400+ miles hour or whatever speed a plane goes at.

With modern light and most importantly fire retardant materials like carbon fibre for the structure even with hydrogen as the lifting gas a modern rigid airship would have many desirable features. It would also retain some old problems too like lack of control in high winds or bad weather and low max speed compared to an aircraft like a C-5 or An-124… but how many C-5s or An-124s can lift 1,000 tons and yet hover like a helicopter?

They also said the large cruise ships were dead too because aircraft were faster, but my understanding is that cruise ships are still in demand and are still being built and used.

Perhaps talk of using rigid airships for high altitude large radar pickets might stimulate investment and interest. The “hindenberg effect” unfortunately is distorting public opinion way out of proportion… sure hydrogen burns but does Joe public think Avgas could be used to extinguish fires?

A heavy lift Zeppelin would sure be needed! Especially for outsized heavy equipment transports that are now done the hard way by supersized truck. Sadly all commercial efforts so far didn’t lead to anything. That German outfit “Cargolifter” spent their money on a hangar (ok – a pool resort these days) and a fancy office buidling (not ok) and then defrauded investors of 300 million Euro (whereabouts still unknown).

And their CL160 airship would have been filled with helium. Just because TV plays the Hindenburg movie every time somebody says “hydrogen airship” and investors evaporate. But only with hydrogen it would work. Helium makes it uneconomical and inefficient.

But look up HULA Walrus. Perhaps one day… (Again helium! 🙁 )

There were several projects that popped up a few years ago but that never materialised. As far as I can recall, these projects concerned mainly the transports of freight, or rather of oversized objects.

I always wondered whether Airbus delved into this to figure out whether such a means of transportation could ease the shifting around of A380 parts ???

In near future I can see Zeppelin NT’s flying (better “driving” 😉 ) as a tourist attraction over Arab and Asian megacities (like Dubai for an example).

You have to admit that in today’s green conscious world, it’s worth considering. I just wonder what type/length of journey’s they’d be viable for…?