AIRSHIPS

The skies have always fascinated humankind, and the dream of flight has been pursued by scientists, inventors, and engineers through the ages. More than a century after the heyday of aircraft pioneers such as the Wright Brothers and Santos-Dumont, we tend to think of the air as being conquered, an old-hat technology. But new innovations relating to flight are constantly being researched, and aspects of our atmosphere that are still only very tenuously explored. The age of flight, it seems, is only just getting started.

Airships include rigid and non-rigid craft, and are also called blimps, zeppelins, and dirigibles. They are among humanity's oldest and most dependable air travel technologies, and many believe that the advantages they offer will lead to their resurgance in the near future.