As you can see, this little drone will greatly decrease the time needed to fix Airship hauls by scanning the outside and inside to find little pinholes that need to be repaired, and then automatically repairs them.
You don't really think about little holes on airships that much (honestly I didn't think about it until after watching this video), but one of the big advantages of these new airships over the old ones, is their ability to only lose a fraction of the helium in their envelope every year.
In the past Airships would need to top off the Helium every year as they would lose about 20% to the sky gods. These new airships only lose about 0.03% a year, meaning there is no need to top off at any point during the airships life circle... in theory.
However tiny pin holes put a hole in that theory, requiring huge amounts of maintenance in order to solve a seemingly tiny problem.
With these new drones Lockheed has solved this problem, showing that they are committed to bringing Airships back and that with a little pioneering innovative thinking you can solve seemingly impossible problems!
There is no doubt in my mind now that Airships are coming back, little things like this everyday remind me, we really have solved the issues with Airships:
The Hybrid Design, Thrust vectoring, fly by wire controls, buoyancy control, all of these things seemed impossible to the engineers of the 1920s, yet we have made the little steps bit by bit in the long process of solving these seemingly impossible problems.
I long for the day, that Airships become ordinary, I was born in an era when computers were just becoming a thing, and throughout my teenage years I could just take the technology for granted. I can't wait for the day when Airships are taken for granted, where getting on an Airship is no different then getting on a bus or walking into a casino. I just hope that day comes before I'm 60 years old.
It's sad to think that people like Count Von Zepplin, and so many others, envisioned that world where Airships ruled the skies and knew it was possible when everyone else said is wasn't. Yet those men and woman never got to see that world in it's full incarnation.
We are lucky enough to live in a time when we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
It's important to remember the people that got us here, rebels in their own time. They helped get us here, and they should be remembered for that.
Their can be no denying it now, the Second Golden Age of Airships is coming, are you ready?
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