> New photographs of the world's longest aircraft have been released, before it is unveiled for the first time.

Isn't that what they call an oxymoron?

More interesting, we are told there's a helium shortage and filling 12 of those a year would take 10% of 2008 global production, before leaks…

Neil

P.s. Is it me or does the second photo look like a huge bottom?

If I go upstairs to the main bedroom I can see the hangers across a couple of fields, the airship was built and developed in America, its only been in Cardingdon Hangers for a couple of years when it was brought back from the USA.

Over the years there have been several different airships seen flying around from different companies, the GOODYEAR blimp for instance.

As an aside one of the hangers has just had several million spent on a complete refurbishment and re cladding.

Martin P

.

No that's an idiot gas welder…………………………

Oh well … might as well join in:

When we lived in Biggleswade [early 1970s], we lived next-door to a chap who had been one of the 'rivet-catchers' when they built those hangars.

MichaelG.

I don't think helium is used up, it's more or less inert. Catching the stuff is a different matter, and probably quite expensive.

A tautologism?

True!

I was questioning how you can show a picture of something before it's unveiled.

Congratulations to the BBC for two gratuitous abuses of the English language in one sentence!

Neil

It was originally a $500m dollar design contract for the US army, who then decided not to go ahead with it, and the airship and the rights were bought back by Airlander. Still think it would be a mite dodgy in a strong breeze!

Phil

One of our club members once gave us a talk about fitting new bearings to the hangar sliding doors. Pretty heavy those doors.

So! What is wrong with hydrogen………….

I think someone invented a non flammable version by mixing it with oxygen, might be a tad heavy though.

Got some photos of the hanger, and some aircraft that my Grandfather took when he visited Cardington late 1918, early 1919.

Ian S C

I well recall my first visit to Cardington and the way the size of those airship hangers completely distorted perception of distance based on normal sized structures. When you fist see them from the road they are about 6 times further away than you think. Shades of childhood "Are we nearly there yet Dad?"

We hired the Skyship 600 as a flying laboratory for a week straight after the James Bond film guys had finished with it. Still in film make up. Great experience. First time out I was unworried by sitting next to a big window with the glass taken out. Being shaken up and down whilst the ground crew fiddled with sandbags to get near neutral buoyancy was quaint. "This will be fun. Gonna be a nice gentle floaty-floaty ride." Yeah. Right. Not. Mr Pilot says "All got your seat belts on?" The ducted fans swivel into take off position, two big turbocharged Porsche motors spin up to maximum continuous power and the thing shoots off like a Tempest on full bore scramble take-off. Chours of Whaat the F…. or words to that effect from a the cabin. Assume Mr pilot has big "Gottem" grin.

Darned if I know how anybody can fly one though. It was so slow reacting that when turning, for example, the pilot would make the control demand for the right amount of time and pretty much have the controls back to the normal straight ahead position before it started to turn.

Clive.