The Republic of Heaven

eloquent wrote:As far as I understand it, a dirigible is another word for airship. The name actually comes from the french word meaning steerable, because airships/dirigibles can be steered (as opposed to balloons which cannot). Anyway a zeppelin is a much more specific term for a particular type of airship which is always filled with hydrogen, and actually refers to the brand.

So if airship were equivalent to automobile
dirigible = car
zeppelin = Volkswagen

The Hindenberg (built by the Zeppelin Company) and the Graf Zeppelin II (her sister ship) were designed to be filled with helium, but there was a general shortage of He at the time and the Americans, who were the major suppliers, didn't have enough to keep all their own airships aloft, let alone sell this valuable materiel to a potentially hostile foreign power.

As a consequence, the Hindenberg was filled with hydrogen instead and the extra lift that it gave provided an increase in carrying capacity. As it is now believed that the real cause of the fire was static electricity igniting the covering (it was doped with a aluminium/cellulose compound that's chemically very similar to the stuff that's put in the Space Shuttle's solid-fuel boosters!) rather than the hydrogen inside it, the Hindenberg's fate would probably have been the same even if she had been filled with helium.

AySz88 wrote:What's this post doing here?

i dunno and i dont understand the last line either,

Lmao that guy has been playing far too much Devil May Cry. He appears to have fused parts of the game into his reality. Or he's just talking weird crap .

Just had a look at the map and reminded myself that the zepplin station is on the Oxpens road, near the site of the real life* Royal Mail sorting office in Oxford, so maybe Phil had this in mind.

* Real life? HDM IS real life

C.J wrote:I no that some of you will not belive me (but dont be a fudge/in the 5th year harry potter) but the magnetic polls are about to flip. every 5'000 years the magnetic polls flip BUT it has not don it in 70'000 year, this is sereus. for about for days during this the earth is not 3d but 5d. it ukers wen the lion gate is opened.

I'll watch out for that one then.
Sereusley

An airship hangar would be like an airport, it's not going to be in the middle of the suburbs, it's going to be on the outskirts.

bharned1 wrote:An airship hangar would be like an airport, it's not going to be in the middle of the suburbs, it's going to be on the outskirts.

The zeppelins don't land like airplanes though. They simply tether to a pole and let out gas. This means they land vertically more like a helicopter and wouldn't require a lot of room like an airplane would. Also, if you take the movie at face value there is a scene in which a zeppelin takes off in a courtyard, of all places.

A major problem that i had when i bought Lyra's Oxford was they pasted the map onto the text of page 18 instead of putting it on the blank page that came before it. so of course when i tryed to remove the map, it riped the whole page making page 18 impossible to read.(ironicly one of the more important pages of the book.) but i was able to return it and got another one.