In a plane you fly, in the Graf you voyage., A use for zeppelins Options

[Snow_Fox]

Ever since 1st ed SR I have wondered about lighter than air crafts. Not the blimp drones that can hang in air forever but the zeppelins. The great airships hinted at along the way but which seem to have died out by 4th ed.

Even before the Hindenberg BBq in 1937 airships were losing out to airplanes for technology but if there hand't been ww2 it might have carried on.

Zepp' are slower than planes so you don't take them for speed travel, a top speed of around 98 MPH really can't compete with planes in a get to a from b in time
So my thought was when do you take a trip where the speed doesn't matter? The answer is a luxery cruise. In RL the Costa Concordia was supposed to loop around the sites of the western med. In the US cruise ships loop the Carib or down the west coast of Mexico or up through Alaska.

No one really goes anywhere fast it's the voyage that counts. Zeps could follow similar ocurses but also not be limited to coasts. a cruise of great CSA cities springs to mind, or through coasts generally too choppy for cruises-from Denmark to Brittany and bakc through the UK comes to mind.

At it's height the Hindenberg could carry 50 passengers nad had a crew of 60-80. Crewmen worked 4 hours on 8 hours off. When it was destroyed the Zeppelin company was working on 2 new ships that had capacity of 50 % more.

Individual 'state' rooms were small. little wider than a sofa and a desk. The sofa at night owuld be turned into 2 bunks, one above the other. The idea is most people would spend time not in their closet, I mean cabin, but in the lounges, dining room or bar. Weight had to be saved in a lot of odd ways but modern metals should go even further. I can give more stats if needed but the lounge in the 3rd Indianna Jones film was pretty good.

what do you think? Beyond answering the old issues raised it could be a whole new area for runs, a whole new industry- ship designes, tricks for lightening equipment, luxery commodeties, courses for ships, and so forth.