How do they get blimps from event to event?

October 26, 2008 7:00 PM

How do they get blimps from event to event?

I am watching the world series and I saw the goodyear blimp. How does the goodyear blimp get from event to event? Does it just fly very very slowly starting on Monday so that it arrives at it's next destination by the following Saturday?

I originally thought that they might deflate a blimp, ship it to where it needs to be and then re inflate it. But from what I have seen on the goodyear website or the metlife website that does not seem to be the case.

Can anyone tell me specifically how a blimp gets around the country?

posted by remthewanderer to travel & transportation (23 comments total)

they fly
posted by patnok at 7:13 PM on October 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I would imagine that they fly. Furthermore blimps are not that slow, they aren't like hot air balloons they have their own means of propulsion. Back in the days of Zepplin's they could get across the Atlantic in a few days, so they can probably do 30 or 40 mph.
posted by BobbyDigital at 7:13 PM on October 26, 2008

There is more than one Goodyear blimp.
posted by ctmf at 7:14 PM on October 26, 2008

I don't know about the Goodyear blimp, but I scored a ride on a blimp that was touring Australia, last year, and I asked the same thing.

The blimp blokes told me that the blimp came to Australia all deflated, by ship. From the US. Then they re-inflated it with blimp gas* at an airfield in Melbourne. At some point they put massive skins on it with the sponsor's name and logo. Then if flew (floated?) up Australia's east coast stopping at towns all the way up as far as Cairns.

There was a ground crew of engineers and support crew that drove behind/underneath the blimp in 4WDs and a big RV-style van and helped tether it / maintain it when it reached each destination.

I also remember the sponsor had hired the blimp, not bought it. And when the tour was over, it would be either re-hired by them, or hired by another Australian company, or deflated and shipped back to the US.

*I cannot, for the life of me remember what the gas was. I do remember, after mentioning the unmentionable, they reassured me that it was definitely not hydrogen.

Bonus blimp trivia. You have to be a pilot first, to fly a blimp. Then, according to Captain Blimp, go to special airship training school.
posted by t0astie at 7:16 PM on October 26, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Combination of 1 and 3.

I have seen, personally, the blimps fly into town the day or two before an event, seen it 'parked' waiting, and seen it fly out of town after the event.

I've also seen the Goodyear blimp, on TV, somewhere else, while I could see it out the window in town.
posted by paisley henosis at 7:17 PM on October 26, 2008

they fly there. I know this because I was at a military airshow in central MA, when the blimp from the Patriots game decided to stop in on his way back from the game. He landed and then took off again. The whole thing was pretty random.
posted by smalls at 7:18 PM on October 26, 2008

Yes, the fly from place to place. Slowly. They also know where the Goodyear stores are along the way, and will do a circle or two around them before continuing their trip.
posted by beagle at 7:23 PM on October 26, 2008

Oh. And here you go. On the Goodyear Blimp website, mysteriously buried half way down the Crew page:

''Each modern blimp is staffed with an air and ground crew consisting of 4 pilots, a public relations manager, and at least 16 ground crew, including aircraft mechanics, electronic technicians and riggers. With three specially equipped ground-support vehicles, the crew is almost self-sustaining in the field in regard to operation and maintenance. Moving from city to city, the caravan travels by highway as the blimp flies to its next engagement.''
posted by t0astie at 7:25 PM on October 26, 2008

Thanks for all the great answers! GO PHILLIES!
posted by remthewanderer at 7:30 PM on October 26, 2008

@tOastie

The Hindenburg disaster was caused by the flammable aluminum paint, not by the hydrogen.
posted by kenliu at 8:38 PM on October 26, 2008

That is true. The Hindenberg didn't explode; it burned. A burning blimp will crash, regardless of what it's inflated with. The fact that the inflating gas all caught fire as it was leaving the wreckage certainly didn't help, but it wasn't the cause of the disaster.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 PM on October 26, 2008

Blimps aren't necessarily all that slow. The WWII K-class blimp could do 58 mph. (They were used for anti-submarine patrol.)

The M-class blimps could do 80 mph, but they only built four of those.
posted by Class Goat at 9:08 PM on October 26, 2008

Sorry for confusion. I was lost in merry memories of my blimp ride and not writing very clearly. So fun! Anyway. I wasn't saying hydrogen caused the Hindenburg disaster. Altho, you know, it can't have helped. Just that they use... something else now.

And via Google, it seems the one I went on was filled with helium.

The Blimp Capn'* had some interesting airship trivia about how the Hindenburg was using hydrogen because the Nazi's had bought all the helium and caused a critical helium shortage, forcing airships in the US to use hydrogen instead.

No idea if that's true or not.

*Best. Job. Title. Ever.
posted by t0astie at 11:04 PM on October 26, 2008

T0astie, I think you have that story backward.

The Hindenburg was a German airship. It used hydrogen because the US was the world's sole source of helium and refused to sell any to Germany.
posted by Class Goat at 11:10 PM on October 26, 2008

FYI, the aluminum paint theory only recently became widely known -- all my life it was presumed that the hydrogen was to blame. The Hindenburg disaster virtually eliminated the commercial airship market overnight (not that it had ever been a smashing success, mind you) because everyone feared them, even the ones using helium. The Goodyear blimps were pretty much the only game in town for a long, long time, then Fuji started showing up, and then all of a sudden they were everywhere.

They do fly from place to place. I have no memory of the event or destination, but one of them was flying -- for no apparent reason other than "through" -- over my non-metropolis city a couple of years ago. There was some generic message running like "Happy Holidays ///// Goodyear". I imagine they didn't need to actually fly over my town to get where they were going, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a deliberate slight detour for the extra goodwill.

Along the same lines as t0astie's Aussie story, though, the Zeppelin NT that will become a tourist airship in the Bay Area is going to be sent over by dock ship. Unlike a blimp, a Zeppelin is semi-rigid.
posted by dhartung at 12:20 AM on October 27, 2008

Class Goat: Ah! Is that what it was? Everything he told me was filtered through an internal loop of OMG!Blimp!I'mgoingintheBLIMP!
posted by t0astie at 1:44 AM on October 27, 2008

I don't think it's surprising that airships are sent by ship to overseas locations. I think a lot of the US Navy blimps had been lost at sea, in storms, and there's no particular reason for a commercial outfit to fly them over oceans, where they can't land if there's a problem.

Also, the (powered) range of modern blimps probably isn't sufficient for an ocean crossing. They're flying billboards, and the design assumption probably is that they can refuel frequently.
posted by chengjih at 5:56 AM on October 27, 2008

I also rode on a blimp once - the Fuji blimp, to be precise. The cap'n smoked a cigarette during the flight, which conjured up Hindenburgian visions in my head...
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:25 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

And via Google, it seems the one I went on was filled with helium.

Very few gases are lighter than air. Fewer still are signficantly lighter than air—you're pretty much limited to hydrogen or helium as your choices. The densities of hydrogen and helium are 7% and 14% that of air, respectively. All other lighter-than-air gases (at least that I can think of off the top of my head) are at least 50% as dense as air.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:28 AM on October 27, 2008

The goodyear blimp is actually pretty speedy.

The usual cruising speed is thirty-five miles per hour in a zero wind condition; all-out top speed is fifty-three miles per hour on the GZ20. As to cruising range: the ship can carry enough fuel to fly for twenty- four hours, although it rarely does so. When traveling cross-country the blimps fly wherever they go, and the crews try for an eight-hour day, or about 300 air miles.

In less than 12 hours they can do Chicago to Toronto, which isnt bad. Its 9+ hours by car or truck, so there's little incentive to take it apart and drive it around. Your not really saving any time, especially when you consider how long it takes to dismantle and pack one of these things.

Also the Zeppelins of the 1930's could do 80+ mph.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:57 AM on October 27, 2008

All other lighter-than-air gases (at least that I can think of off the top of my head) are at least 50% as dense as air.

And all of them are either explosive, poisonous, or horribly corrosive. Things like methane, hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrogen fluoride...

Actually, a good choice would be steam, gaseous hydrogen oxide. The problem is that keeping it gaseous requires a lot of energy.

As a practical matter, the only reasonable choices are hydrogen, helium, and hot air.
posted by Class Goat at 8:32 PM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The Goodyear blimp "Eagle" moors in Carson, CA (here and here). It ties to that tall pole in the middle of the circle. You can get a good view of the take offs and landings from the 405 freeway. The Fuji blimp in the area flies out of Long Beach airport (on the side nearest Spring St, I think). I've seen it fly right over my office building several times - it was very surreal and disconcerting the first time.
posted by Horselover Fat at 9:36 PM on October 27, 2008

Acetylene is also lighter than air, by about 11%. Now that would make for a nervous ride...
posted by Class Goat at 6:41 PM on October 28, 2008