The blimp, the airship, the dirigible. Whatever you call them, you probably don’t find yourself thinking about them too often. They were an easy way to get airborne, predating the invention of the airplane by decades. And yet, they suffered—they were too slow, too cumbersome, and often too dangerous to compete once conventional planes hit the scene.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/01/23/could-solar-powered-airships-offer-cleaner-travel/