Airship

Definition: Airship

Airship

Noun

1. A steerable self-propelled airship.

Date "airship" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1900. (references)

Specialty Definitions: Airship

Domain	Definitions
Transportation	A power-driven lighter-than-air aircraft. Source: European Union. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Airship

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

An airship is a lighter-than-air aircraft that can be steered and propelled through the air.

Airships are also known as dirigibles from the French dirigeable, meaning "steerable". The term airship is sometimes informally used more generally to mean a machine capable of atmospheric flight. Likewise, the term dirigible is sometimes used informally to refer only to rigid airships (see below.)

In contrast to airships, balloons move through the sky by being carried along with the wind.

Airships are typically filled with either helium or hydrogen. Some airships are filled with hot air in a fashion similar to a hot air balloon.

Types of Airships

Rigid airships have rigid frames containing multiple, non-pressurized gas cells or balloons to provide lift. Rigid airships do not depend on internal pressure to hold their shape.
Non-rigid airships (a.k.a blimps) use a pressure level in excess of the surrounding air pressure in order to retain their shape.
Semi-rigid airships resemble blimps in requiring internal pressure to maintain their shape, but have extended, usually articulated keel frames running along the bottom of the envelope to distribute suspension loads into the envelope and allow lower envelope pressures.
Hybrid airships, a very general term for any combination of heavier-than-air (airplane or helicopter) and lighter than air technology. Examples include helicopter/airship hybrids intended for heavy lift applications and dynamic lift airships intended for long-range cruising.

History

Although some balloons with limited mobility flew in the 19th century, the first successful airships were built by Alberto Santos-Dumont in Paris around 1900. Santos-Dumont's machines typically consisted of a long, non-rigid gas envelope beneath which was hung a truss to which the engine and pilot's seat were attached.

The most successful airships were the rigid Zeppelin type, so named after the pioneer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (born in Konstanz, Baden, Germany April 8, 1838 - died March 8, 1917). Von Zeppelin began experimenting with rigid airships before World War I. He had, by the time war broke out, given them a standard and highly efficient layout: an essentially cylindrical metal-framed and fabric-covered hull, large tail fins for stability, and streamlned engine and crew pods hung beneath the hull.

The prospect of using airships as bomb carriers had been recognized in Europe well before airships themselves were up to the task. H. G. Wells described the obliteration of entire fleets and cities by airship attack in The War in the Air (1908), and scores of less famous British writers declaed in print that the airhsip had altered the face of world affairs forever. On March 5, 1912 Italian forces became the first to use dirigibles for a military purpose during reconnaissance west of Tripoli behind Turkish lines. It was World War I, however, that marked the airship's real debut as a weapon.

Germany believed it had found, in the zeppelin, the ideal weapon with which to bypass the British Navy and strike at Britain itself. Raids began by the end of 1914, reached a first peak in 1915, and then were discontinued until 1917. Zeppelins proved to be terrifying but inaccurate weapons. Navigation, target selection and bomb-aiming proved to be difficult under the best of conditions, and the darkness and clouds that frequently accompanied zeppelin missions reduced accuracy even further. The physical damage done by the zeppelins over the course of the war was trivial, and the deaths that they caused (though tragic) amounted to a few hundred at most. The zeppelins also proved to be vulnerable to attack by aircraft and antiaircraft guns. Several were shot down in flames by British defenders, and others crashed 'en route'.

Airplanes had essentially replaced airships as bombers by the end of the war,and Germany's remaining zeppelins had been scrapped or handed over to the Allied powers as spoils of war. One such prize, the British dirigible R-34, landed in New York on July 6, 1919, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic by an airship and the first nonstop crossing by any aircraft. Impressed, British leaders began to contemplate a fleet of airships that would link Britain to its far-flung colonies. The success of another prize, the Los Angeles, encouraged the United States Navy to invest in airships of its own. Germany, meanwhile, was building the Graf Zeppelin, the first of what was intended to be a new class of passenger airships.

Initially airships met with great success and compiled an impressive safety record. The Graf Zeppelin, for example, flew over 1 million miles (including the first circumnavigation of the globe by air) without a single passenger injury. The expansion of airship fleets and the growing (sometimes excessive) self-confidence of airship pilots gradually made the limits of the type clear, however, and initial successes gave way to a series of tragic rigid airship accidents.

The U.S. Navy eventually lost all three of its American built rigid airships: Shenandoah in 1925 and Akron and Macon in the early 1930s. All three ships crashed--two with great loss of life--when their structural elements failed in severe storm-related turbulence. Britain suffered its own airship tragedy in the 1930s when the R-101, a fatally flawed machine barely able to lift its own weight, crashed in France with the loss of all aboard.

The most spectacular and widely remembered airship accidence, however, is the explosion of the Hindenburg [see: Hindenburg disaster ] on 6 May 1937, which caused public faith in airships to evaporate in favour of faster, more cost-efficient (albeit less energy-efficient) airplanes.

Although airships abandoned carrying passengers, they continued to be used for other purposes. In particular, the US Navy built hundreds of blimps for use in World War II. The most successful application of these airships was for convoy escort near the US coastline. During the war some 532 ships were sunk near the coast by submarines. In contrast, none of the 89,000 or so ships escorted by blimps was lost to enemy fire.

Blimps continue to be used for advertising and as TV camera platforms at major sporting events.

Recently, several companies are again exploring the possibilities of airships with their potentially huge lifting capacities, near-VTOL capabilities, and potentially lower freight costs, though none has demonstrated the economic viability yet.

External links

General

Airship Home Page - the most comprehensive list of airship related websites. Also contains information on the most widely read airship mailing list.
Airship and Blimp Resources - This site focuses more on how to build your own airship with a particular focus on hot air airships (a.k.a "hotships")
The Airship Association - A British-based association for people solely interested in powered lighter-than-air aviation.
The Association of Balloon and Airship Constructors - Maintains an extensive technical library on airship technology old and new.

Manufacturers

Cargolifter a company developing a huge semi-rigid. The company ran into serious financial trouble in 2002. Its future remains uncertain.
Advanced Technologies Group a company developing a range of products such as UAV's - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, heavier-than-air airships and HAPS' - High Altitude Platform Stations for telecommunication
SkyStation a company focusing on the development of HAPS'

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Airship."

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Synonym: Airship

Synonym: dirigible (n). (additional references)

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Synonyms within Context: Airship

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Ship	Balloon; airship, aeroplane; biplane, monoplane, triplane; hydroplane; aerodrome; air balloon, pilot balloon, fire balloon, dirigible, zeppelin; aerostat, Montgolfier; kite, parachute.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Airship

English words defined with "airship": ballast, Blimp ♦ captain, car ♦ dirigible ♦ gondola ♦ nonrigid ♦ rigid ♦ sausage, sausage balloon, senior pilot. (references)

Specialty definitions using "airship": Cargo Lifter ♦ fineness ratio ♦ noe head, non-rigid airship ♦ Rigid Airship Design ♦ semi-rigid airship. (references)

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Modern Usage: Airship

Domain	Usage
Screenplays	I thought it would be a good idea, in this day and age of speed and thing like that, to build an airship. (Thunderbird Six; writing credit: Gerry Anderson; Sylvia Anderson)
Movie/TV Titles	Come Take a Trip in My Airship (1930) The Stolen Airship Plans (1912) Airship Disasters (2003)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Airship

Domain	Title
Books	Airship Technology (reference) Commercial Pilot Test Prep 2003: Study and Prepare for the Commercial Airplane, Helicopter, Gyroplane, Glider, Balloon, Airship and Military Competency FAA Knowledge Tests (Test Prep series) (reference) From Airship to Spaceship: Long Island in Aviation and Spaceflight (reference) R101: The Airship Disaster, 1930 (reference) The Great Texas Airship Mystery (reference) (more book examples)

Music	Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead (reference) (more classical music examples; more popular music examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Airship

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Photo Album: Airship

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Makes its first trial flight, at Cardington, England, 23 June 1921. Note that the airship already wears U.S. markings.Credit: NAVY.		Rescue party cutting into the fabric hull covering, near the tail, in an effort to save airmen trapped in the wreckage, "scarcely one-half hour" after the airship broke up, exploded and crashed into the Humber River at Hull, England.Credit: NAVY.
	Conducts initial operations with her Curtiss F9C-2 "Sparrowhawk" aircraft, over New Egypt, New Jersey, 7 July 1933. The two planes, visible below the airship, were piloted by Lieutenant D. Ward Harrigan and Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Frederick N. Kivette.Credit: NAVY.		It was the first great airship ever seen, I think, in our valley.Credit: Library of Congress.
	Rescuer Einor Lundborg (at left) with survivors of the crash of the airship Italia (left to right) Francesco Behounek, Giuseppe Biagi, Natale Cecioni, near crash site in Arctic.Credit: Library of Congress.		Group of men boarding an airship.Credit: Library of Congress.
	American Clipper. Airport and airship.Credit: Library of Congress.		Canadian scenes. Airship no. R-100.Credit: Library of Congress.
	Berkeley Cal., looking east, from 1000 ft. elevation, from Lawrence Captive Airship, Nov. 24, 1908.Credit: Library of Congress.		Unburned district of San Fransisco [sic] looking northeast from Lawrence Captive Airship, 2200 ft. elevation.Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Airship

"Airship" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 97.01% of the time. "Airship" is used about 67 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	97.01%	65	41,645
Noun (proper)	2.99%	2	245,945
Total	100.00%	67	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Airship

Expression using "airship": Rigid Airship Design. Additional references.
Hyphenated Usage
	Beginning with "airship": airship-related.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Airship

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day	Expression	Frequency per Day
airship	142	airship goodyear	3
airship element filled hindenberg	25	airship garland kuja	3
hindenburg airship	16	navy airship	3
zeppelin airship	11	rc airship	3
hindenberg airship	9	zepplin airship	3
airship design	7	airship german	2
airship blimp	7	airship history	2
come take a trip in my airship	6	airship management services	2
airship blimp controlled remote	5	airship blimp c outdoor r	2
airship model	4	airship fantasy final garland ix kuja	2
rigid airship	4	airship r101	2
airship altitude high	4	airship scifi	2
10 airship fantasy final	4	airship dirigible	2
9 airship fantasy final	4	airship fantasy final	2
airship floyd pink	3	21st airship century	2
airship fantasy	3	airship r100	2
airship fantasy final password x	3	10 airship code fantasy final	2
airship fantasy final x	3	r c airship	2
airship control remote	3	airship element filled hindenburg	2
airship shenandoah	3	airship modern	2
airship fantasy final ix	3	the airship picture	2
radio controlled airship	3
		the airship picture	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Airship

Language		Translations for "airship"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Arabic		‏منطاد ذو محرك. (various references)

Bulgarian		въздушен кораб, дирижабъл (dirigible, ship). (various references)

Chinese		飞艇, 飛船 (spaceship). (various references)

Czech		vzducholoï (dirigible). (various references)

Danish		luftskib. (various references)

Dutch		luchtschip (air-ship). (various references)

Farsi		سفینه ء هواءی , بالون (Balloon, Zeppelin). (various references)

Finnish		puolijäykkä ilmalaiva (semi-rigid airship), jäykistämätön ilmalaiva (blimp, non-rigid airship). (various references)

French		dirigeable (air-ship), ballon dirigeable. (various references)

German		Luftschiff (dirigible). (various references)

Greek		πηδαλιοχούμενο, αερόστατο (aerostat, balloon), αεροσκάφοσ (aircraft). (various references)

Hungarian		léghajó (balloon, blimp, ship, zeppelin). (various references)

Indonesian		zepplin. (various references)

Italian		dirigibile (dirigible). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		飛行船 (blimp). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		ひ�"うせ�" (blimp). (various references)

Korean		비행� . (various references)

Manx		lhong aer. (various references)

Pig Latin		airshipay

Portuguese		dirigível (air-ship, controllable, dirigible, flying man, operated, ship), aeronave (aeroplane, aircraft, airplane). (various references)

Romanian		aeronavã, dirijabil (dirigible, navigable). (various references)

Russian		воздушный корабль, дирижабль (blimp, dirigible). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		vazdušna lađa (dirigible), dirižabl (blimp, dirigible). (various references)

Spanish		dirigible (blimp, dirigible, guidable, ship), aeronave (aircraft). (various references)

Swedish		luftskepp (dirigible). (various references)

Turkish		zeplin (aerostat, dirigible, Zeppelin), uçak (aero, aeroplane, aircraft, airplane, craft, kite, plane). (various references)

Ukranian		дирижабль (dirigible). (various references)

Vietnamese		khí cầu (aerostat, balloon). (various references)

Welsh		awyrlong. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Airship

Derivations
	Words beginning with "airship": airships. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Airship" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: airshed, airshot, Ai'sha, ardship, Eimskip, fireship. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Airship"

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "airship" (pronounced e"rshi'p)
4	-r sh i' p	premiership, starship, warship.
3	-sh i' p	ambassadorship, apprenticeship, authorship, battleship, bipartisanship, brinkmanship, brinksmanship, censorship, chairmanship, championship, citizenship, companionship, conservatorship, consulship, craftsmanship, dealership, dictatorship, directorship, distributorship, draftsmanship, editorship, entrepreneurship, fellowship, flagship, friendship, gamesmanship, generalship, governorship, guardianship, gunship, hardship, headship, horsemanship, internship, interrelationship, judgeship, kingship, kinship, leadership, Lightship, marksmanship, membership, musicianship, ownership, partisanship, partnership, professorship, proprietorship, readership, receivership, relationship, ridership, salesmanship, scholarship, showmanship, spaceship, speakership, sponsorship, sportsmanship, statesmanship, steamship, stewardship, township, trusteeship, upmanship, viewership, workmanship.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Airship

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-h-i-i-p-r-s"
	-1 letter: parish, raphis.
	-2 letters: aphis, apish, hairs, harps, pairs, paris, rishi, sharp, spahi.
	-3 letters: airs, hair, haps, harp, hasp, hips, iris, pair, pars, pash, phis, pias, pish, raps, rash, rasp, rias, rips, sari, ship, shri, spar.
	-4 letters: air, ais, ars, ash, asp, hap, has, hip, his, pah, par, pas, phi, pia, pis, psi, rah, rap.
	Words containing the letters "a-h-i-i-p-r-s"
	+1 letter: airships, hairpins, parchisi.
	+2 letters: parchisis, pharisaic, vampirish, vicarship.
	+3 letters: airmanship, aphorising, aphoristic, hairpieces, hairspring, hesperidia, pharisaism, sapphirine, vicarships.
	+4 letters: airmanships, antiphrasis, aphrodisiac, artisanship, biographies, diaphoresis, diastrophic, diphtherias, epigraphies, epigraphist, graphitizes, hairsprings, interparish, misphrasing, parishioner, periphrasis, pharisaical, pharisaisms, pharyngitis, physiatrist, preachifies, primateship, psychiatric, traineeship, xiphisterna.
	+5 letters: ailurophiles, antistrophic, aphrodisiacs, artisanships, brinkmanship, cardinalship, chairmanship, coprophilias, diaphoretics, diastrophism, dictatorship, discographic, epigraphists, guardianship, hairsplitter, hyperkinesia, ideographies, imperishable, imperishably, intrapsychic, misanthropic, necrophilias, parishioners, parochialism, partisanship, patriarchies, periphrastic, physiatrists, physiocratic, planispheric, prehistorian, primateships, psychiatries, psychiatrist, relationship, rhapsodizing, scintigraphy, serigraphies, spearfishing, traineeships, transhipping, triumphalism, triumphalist, vibraharpist, vibraphonist.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.