Pathfinder 1: The Airship That Could Usher in a New Age

I am old enough to have seen now 30 years of, "Maybe airships are coming back" articles.

I seem to have missed the business reasoning for this development?<p>Why are they investing money and time into this?<p>I thought the consensus is that airships are just too hard to dock&#x2F;land, handle in anything than low wind scenarios that they are not much use?

&gt;A century after terrifying disasters, is it a safe-enough bet?<p>In the Hindenberg disaster, 35 of the airship&#x27;s 97 occupants died. Meanwhile, every time I browse the front page of HN, there seems to be another story of an aircraft crashing or being shot down and everyone on board being killed instantly.

More and more the present moment seems like a shitty echo of the gilded age.

previous discussion ~1.5 year ago:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38013919">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38013919</a>

Helium of all things basically leads me to believe this is wishful thinking only a billionaire could love. Granted, he wasn’t a rich man, but Weigert’s Vector W8 seems a reasonable comparison. Making something impressive is, frankly, asking for the free market to slap one in the face more often than change the world in the long run.<p>Bonus points if their ad campaign uses the slogan “The Segway of the Skies”

&quot;Helium is less flammable than hydrogen&quot; uh-huh