January 23, 2021 • 46 mins
After newsreels captured the Hindenburg erupting in fire in 1937, the promising development of airship aviation was cut short. Today companies and militaries are taking another look at blimps and the unique qualities that may revive them. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, friends, have you ever flown into blimp? I haven't.
It's one of my goals, and on August I had neither.
But that's what we talked about and more in the
episode How Blimps Work coming up right now. Welcome to
Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios
(00:22):
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's with us,
so that makes this Stuff you should Know? How you doing?
I'm good man, this is I'm excited about this one.
Oh are you sure? Blimps? Yeah, because they have like
(00:43):
eight names, blimp, dirigible, zeppelin, yeah, airship yeah. Uh well
technically l t A I'm counting that lighter than airship, yeah,
which I think is ultimately lighter than airship. L t
A is the umbrella term for all of those things
which are slightly different. Yeah. I think an l t
(01:05):
A and an airship is all of them. The dirigible
is all of them. Zeppelin is rigid, and a blimp
is non rigid. Nice, and mostly we just said blimps.
These days, not a lot of rigid airships aren't there?
But would they? Would they constitute. Yeah, no, but there's
they can be semi rigid or non rigid, right, yeah,
and I think the future we'll talk about that obviously
(01:26):
at the end, but I think those are some of
those are more the semi rigid style, right. That's very huge. Yeah,
but they're made of some really lightweight but very strong
composite materials. Yeah. Boom so Chuck, Let's talk about the
history of blimps because I think when anybody thinks of blimps,
they think Handenburg, they think, they think the Handenburg and
(01:49):
then maybe can currently or right after the Good Year blimp. Yeah,
those are the two that really laid it on the
line for blimped him. Uh yeah, you know, want you
want to talk about the early history, I guess, and
then get to the tragedy. Yeah, because there wasn't that
much time in between the two to tell you the truth. Yeah,
(02:11):
I mean it all started, of course with hot air balloons,
because uh, they're not so different. In Sight three, a
couple of frenchees, brothers, Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michelle. They
said they were brothers, but they have different Last night,
I think Jacques Etienne is his first and middle name. Okay,
that makes sense. They all had three names, uh last name,
(02:32):
serial killer, mong Gulfier. They invented the hot air balloon
uh an unmanned hot air balloon in seventy three, and
then later that same year a French physicist last name
de Rosier had the first manned balloon flight. And they
were just floating around because that's what our balloons do.
(02:53):
You can go up and then if you're really good,
you can come back down. But left and right, that's
up to mother nature. That's right, which is a little scary,
although I think these days can they steer them at all.
We have a great article on this. You're you're subject
to the winds, to the the um was the god
of wind that you know, he comes out of the
(03:14):
cloud and blows wind. Yeah that guy. Yeah, you're you're
subject to his whim So if if you're headed towards something,
it's go over it or hit it. Yes, okay, And
you remember there was that terrible blo um hot air
balloon accident and I think Virginia last year earlier this year. Yeah,
like they hit a power line I think, and then
the basket caught fire and like they had to jump.
(03:36):
It was really bad. Um. But yeah, you can go
up and over and I imagine it's under if it's
like a power line, yeah, or a tunnel if you're
really good, or you're in a cartoon like the laugh Olympics.
That's something they do in there. But the I think
if you're really good, you could probably know where to
steer into the wind to maybe use use the wind.
(03:59):
But know, with a blimp, the big distinction is, aside
from its distinctive shape, is that you can maneuver like
a pro That's right, And that's what Henry uh Jaffar
did in eighteen fifty two when he finally someone said
we should steer these things and he built the first
powered airship and it was cigar field like the classic
(04:20):
shapes that we know and love now, had a propeller
like they have now, and a little engine although it
was a steam engine which they don't use now. Three
horsepower steam engine. Yeah, they're not huge engine still didn't
take a lot apparently, No, it really doesn't, um. And
those were rigid airships. Uh, it's a it's a metal framework.
(04:40):
And in nineteen hundred, count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, that name
sounds familiar, Zeppelin of Germany. Uh, and that's where they
got the name, of course, because I never understood the
led the lead well it was I think someone said
as a joke, you guys are gonna go over like
a led Zeppelin, or they did when they played on
the BBC. Is that it? But I take the A
out because the same reason you take the A out
(05:03):
of def Leppard. I've never understood that either, in the
same as you put a boom loud over Motley Crue.
This just makes it cool, you know, different differentiates you
gotta mispell something in your band. I think I was
just looking too deeply into it. It's the problem. Yeah,
L E A d Zeppelin would be weird. Yeah, but
I think like our paradigm would have adjusted. We would
(05:24):
think L E. D Zeppelin would be weird if we
were used to led Zeppelin with an A, or if
the Beatles was spelled B E T L E S. Yeah,
instead of their penny name. Very punny, all right, boy,
we get sidetracks so easy with music stuff. Not really
Zeppelin was I think people saw that coming before the
press play. Uh. So that was the rigid Airship, the
(05:47):
first one, and those have a metal framework and it
had tail fins and rudders had combustion engines and could
cruise about feet with up to five people. Yes, not bad.
You could bring the whole family as long as you encounter,
as long as you total no more than five, as
long as you paid off the captain. Well then you
just have to be a family four, that's right, because
(06:09):
the captain's got to sit somewhere, right. Yeah, they got
their little captain's chair. So everything was going quite swimmingly. Actually. Um,
around the turn of the twentieth century, there there was.
It was just widely assumed that we would have a
future where blimps zeppelins were just a regular feature of
the sky. Well they were up until the Hinderberg went down.
(06:32):
There were more than two thousand flights carried um tens
of thousands of passengers over a million miles. Like that
was air travel, we should say, ultra wealthy passengers at
the time. Um. The Hinderberg in particular was it was
high class. It was the pride of Nazi Germany, and
it was on its maiden voyage, wasn't it. It It was
(06:52):
almost called the Hitler by the way, was it really? Yeah?
But Hitler was like I don't want my name on
that thing. Really yet not that he like foretold the few. Sure,
he just didn't. I don't know. He just didn't want
to him named after an airship. He didn't believe um
Freud's idea that sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, yeah,
or a cigar shaped airship is just a cigar shaped
(07:13):
there and it crashed and burned too, So he was
probably pretty stoked that he didn't have his name on it. Yeah.
He very famously went who yeah when he heard the
news exactly. So, uh, we should probably stopped making light
of this nearly eighty year old tragedy because people did die,
you know. Yeah, I mean, should we tell the story?
(07:37):
All right? Well, it took off on May three, seven,
had thirty six passengers and six officers and crew members
and trainees, left Frankfort at about seven fifteen and then
crossed out over the Atlantic at about two am the
next day. It's not super fast travel. It was compared
to the ship travel at the time. It was about
(07:58):
it took about half the time to cross the Atlanta
because it did in a boat. Yeah, But compared to
what we're used to, you were just it was leisurely
um and apparently after reading more about the Hindenburgh it's
not as um, and I guess ship travel is sort
of the same way, like we're going to get there
when we get there, like we're heading, we're trying to
get there and then, but you never know what's going
(08:18):
to happen. Right, that's why they called them the leisure class.
That's right. Uh. It follows followed a northern track across
the ocean. Um eventually crossed uh into North America, over
the coast of Newfoundland and arrived in lake Hurst, New
Jersey about twelve hours late. And um, Germans, they're always late. Yeah,
(08:40):
they're famous for it. And basically arrived there at the
Naval air station and because of poor weather, the captain
and the commanding officer on the ground said, you know what,
the weather is not so great. Let's wait a little bit, um,
because I can fly around forever in those things. And
um he said, all right, well, the Jersey shore is nice.
Let's just go fly about that and tell everyone to
(09:01):
look around and look at all those old timey bathingsasically
they're up to the ankles and water. Um. By six pm,
conditions had improved and at six twelve he sent a
message sand it's suitable for landing, recommended landing. Now about
seven o eight, he finally pulled the blimp in. It
(09:21):
was a bit of a dodgy approach, but he eventually,
you know, got it down towards the ground pretty you know, uh, skillfully, which,
as we'll see, it's not as easy as you'd think.
Even though now easy, it's it's not in practice. No,
they dropped the landing lines and then things went south
like really fast. Yeah, but it was filled with hydrogen,
(09:43):
which is the lightest element, right, Yeah, and uh it's
also probably the most flammable or one of them. Yes,
inflammable was a big error at the time. Um, a
lot of blimps had caught on fire. This was not
the first X event, and uh there was you know,
people testified afterward because not everyone died. We'll get to
(10:06):
the numbers here at the end of the story. But um,
there was testimony that, um, it appeared as if gas
was pushing against the cover. Maybe it escaped from a
gas cell. The first visible flames appeared, and it varies,
but most of witnesses say that the first flames are
either at the top of the hall, uh, forward of
(10:26):
the vertical fin or between the rear port uh engine
in the port fin and they described it as a
mushroom shaped flour and it pretty much engulfed the tail
like right away, and it was able to remain steady
for a little while. Like people could start jumping out
at this point. Well, those are the people who died, correct, No,
that's what I always heard, or that's what I have heard,
(10:48):
is that the people who stayed in the gondola lived
and the people who jumped were the ones that died
because the flames, because hydrogen is light, they were burning upward.
Well it says here basically it was all depended on
where you were. If you were close to a means
of exit, you generally survived. Um, if you were deep
(11:10):
inside the ship, like in the power room along the keel,
or in the smoking room. They had a smoking room
in the Edinburgh. I'm supposed it wasn't all smoking with
a big blimpful of hydrogen. Oh yeah, yeah, I thought
it was not a good yet. They had apparently a
double um air locked door, one electric lighter and um
(11:32):
you were allowed to smoke as long as you put
it out before you left. And um, so like I said,
if you were in the smoking room on B deck,
you're in big trouble. Um. If you were one of
the nine men closest to the front of the ship,
you definitely didn't survive. Yeah. So out of the ninety
(11:52):
seven people on board sixty two survived. I think when
you see the footage, I mean you can watch it
on YouTube, it looks like, how on the world could
anyone survive it? Because it goes I mean it's fully
burned in less than a minute and on the ground. Yeah,
it went up fast. But sixty two to survive, thirteen
of the thirty six passengers and twenty two of the
sixty one crew. And there's still two guys alive today
(12:15):
checked as of two years ago. But they don't like
to talk about it. I can imagine. Yeah, there's one experience.
They're both named Verner Verner Franz and Werner Donor, the
two Verners, and one was a little cabin boy and
one was a passenger with his family, and uh, they
were contacted for like the you know, the ceremony. I
(12:36):
guess you don't call it an anniversary, I guess, uh memorial. Yeah,
it just sounds like a party, you know. But they said, no,
we're not coming. We don't like to talk about it. Yeah.
So it's been a long standing mystery exactly what happened.
And I found an article in the UK Independent from
two thousand thirteen about a study from that year that
(12:58):
found they said they they figured it out. They built
like scale models of the Hindenburg, which was like two
and a half football fields long by the way, They
were building scale models that were like like sixty ft long,
so good sized ones, and they tried to blow them
up because there was a rumor that it was sabotage.
You know that everybody hated the Nazis even then. Um
(13:19):
and uh. They tried all all manners stuff, and what
they finally figured out was that probably what happened was
from being in that stormy weather, that exterior the envelope
of the blimp became um electrified and when the ground
crew ran up and grabbed the cables, they completed the
current from the blimp to the ground, which caused a
(13:41):
spark which actually um ignited a hydrogen leak that fire
caused pushing out. Yeah. Yeah. One thing they say it
definitely isn't which they long thought it was, was the
actual fabric was like painted in this flammable stuff, and
that's not true. It was the standard fabric, Okay, it
was just a big balloon fill of hydrogen. Yeah, So
(14:06):
when that happened, UM, the future of blimps were just
pretty much like that was it for blimps. That wasn't
the immediate end. But as far as like commercial blimp travel,
that's tough for an industry to get over, so it
kind of fell on the wayside, although they did continue
on UM in a couple of forms. Up until the sixties.
(14:28):
The US government, especially the Navy, maintained blimps. One of
the UM I think that I guess the Air Force,
I don't know is the Navy, but one of the
branches of the U. S Military use blimps as UM
giant aircraft carriers of the air, not not the sea,
the air, which is pretty awesome. And apparently they had
(14:49):
them so you could connect like a light plane to
what's called like a trapeeze mechanism coming out of the
bottom of the blimps and just like hook your plane on,
climb up and say, hey, guys, where are we going?
Or you can take off from there too. What, yes,
how do you take off, you just drop. I think
you just released the hook from the trap peas and
(15:09):
started to free fall, and then you just go off
into the distance and go thanks for the ride, lady.
That sounds really weird. Um. And they had even bigger
plans that were never realized because the Navy scrapped the
program and I think nineteen two UM to have like
a landing strip on top of the blimp, so you
could have just like planes takeoff and land and then
(15:30):
be stored like in the blimp, which would have been
pretty awesome. Well, cargo airships are the wave of the future, perhaps,
so we'll see. Yeah. So, but that was the military
was involved in blimps for most of the first half
of the twentieth century and then um, our friends a
good Year came up with a blimp that has really
(15:51):
served them well. Like they were making blimps for the military,
and then um, they started using them for commercial purposes
and everybody he knows about good Year thanks to those blimps. Yeah,
and they're going to figure in here, of course, because
you can't talk about blimps a lot without a ton
of buzz marketing for good Year. Um. But you know
that's where they make their name. In fact, my in
(16:12):
laws almost wrote on the one based out of Akron
because that's where they're from, and they I think he
was going to put in a bid on a like
an auction bid to win a trip Nate, and I
think it never happened. The trip never happened. I think
he either lost the bid. I'll have to ask him,
but I don't think they ever wrote on the blimp. Okay,
I was gonna say the trip never happened. That doesn't
(16:34):
sound like the Good Year I know. No, No, they're
very They're like the Germans. So they've got there's three,
um Good Year blimps. Actually there's one and I believe Texas.
There's one in California. There's one in Ohio or is
it Florida California and Ohio is what it is. I'm sorry, Um,
the spirit of good Year, the Spirit of America, the
(16:55):
spirit of Innovation and Chuck. About the time this episode
comes out, Robin Roberts, the TV personality, is going to
be christening the newest member of the fleet, the wing
foot one. Nice. So they're gonna have four, yeah, because
there's a lot of sporting events there. Sure, and you
can't watch a big sporting event without hearing the words. Uh.
Aerial coverage provided by Goodyear and those shots. Man, they're
(17:19):
pretty great. They really are. Haven't been around forever. It
was I think an Orange Bowl in Miami where the
first one was broadcast and what like the sixties maybe
I don't know, something like that, and it changed America. Yeah,
well it um certainly gives them a lot of press
and saves well, I don't know about saves some money.
Haven't seen their balance sheet, but it's they don't just
(17:41):
spend money on that thirty second spot. They still do
to tie into the blimp. But it's great advertising for them. Yeah. Um.
They also were good sports in a movie called Black Sunday.
Did you ever see that movie? Of course I never
saw it. Um, but apparently the seventies they provided Um,
(18:01):
they provided some of the footage for the movie, and UM,
let their blimps be used, uh, and let their name
be used even like it wasn't like the the good
Wire blimp. You know, they didn't try to have to
change it just enough. They used good Year, which made
the whole thing even more terrifying and realistic. Yeah, they
wanted to kill everyone at the Super Bowl. That was
(18:22):
the plot, right, uh with a blimp right that shot darts,
which is weird. But it was written by the guy
who wrote Silence of the Lambs. Oh. Yeah, he's a
good writer. Have you ever read any of his books?
Oh he was the bookwriter. Oh no, I didn't know that. No,
I haven't read any of Silence of the Way. He
(18:43):
does very good research. Interesting guy. Um. Anyway, so good year,
good year in the military. After the Hindenburg. That was
the two cases of blimps. But like you said, there
is potentially a future for blimps, which we'll talk about.
But first, let's talk about how blimps work. Can enroll
after these messages. So you want to know how blimps work, buddy,
(19:20):
I do. They're pretty simple. This is the delight to
learn because it was like, oh, I thought that would
be just that little to it, and that's really kind
of the case, right yeah. Yeah, there's not like oh
and here's where it gets really hard. They're like the
pontoon boats of this guy. Yeah. Like the most complicated
thing on the blimp is probably the gyroscopic camera on
the front of it to film the football stadium. I
(19:42):
think you're right. Uh so, let's talk about the anatomy
of a blamp you have. You mentioned the envelope earlier.
That is the thing that you're looking at. That is
key big cigar shaped balloon. It's filled nowadays with helium.
It is that shape because of aero done amics, of course,
and they are super lightweight and super strong. Like you
(20:03):
were saying, neoprene to ply neoprene polyester generally, is that
what the envelopes made of. There's a company UM called
the I LC Dover Corporation. They make a lot of
skins UM and they use the same material that they
make UM space suits out of for NASA for blimps.
Too good enough for Neil Armstrong, Buddy, good enough for
(20:25):
my blimp. This is like all about Ohio. This one
oh is here? Ohio? Yeah, yeah, let have done that
so it was good here? No, No, I knew that, Um,
so were your in laws. That's right. The envelopes they
hold UM and it depends on the blimps for all
of these statistics, of course, but between sixty seven thousand
and two hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet of helium
(20:48):
and UM, it's not super The pressure is really low
inside point zero seven pounds per square inch. So that's
why if you shot a blimp, it wouldn't like fall, No,
just leak very slowly and you just land it and
patch it up. I guess, yeah, very slowly. Yeah. British
Ministry of Defense fired hundreds of bullets into an airship
(21:09):
just for fun, well, not to see what if it
would could be shot down in battle basically, and it
took many hours to deflate and land. So cool. And
they don't even deflate them, they just leave them that
way so that they're natural structure will not natural, but
their original structure UM prevents them from being shot down.
That's one big benefit. Because I was wondering about that.
(21:30):
I was like, you're just providing a target for every
teenager with a gun in any country that you hover
a blimp over. UM. Now I understand. But secondly, as
we'll see, it also has to do with the dynamics
of the flight of UM hovering in the atmosphere. UM.
So you've got the envelope, and the envelope also has
(21:51):
something called nose cone battons, which is basically like a
support structure for the nose the front of it. Just
the very very tip and it keeps the the the
the blimps front from being mashed in as it moves forward,
which is pretty smart. Yeah, I think I misspoke. The
nose cone is on just the very tip, and then
the batons are like the fingers that distribute the stress
(22:12):
over the front of the conetch. Okay, so they're like
the the the structure that comes out of the nose, right,
and then also on the nose as the mooring. Um
hook because you got to hook a blimp up to something. Yeah,
it's got a little spindle there and um, it's got
a little wheel under the tail rudder and that's basically
(22:33):
how it sits. You just tie it down, very simple. Um,
just like a balloon. That's right. So there's here's where
it gets a little craftier, like nineteen century crafty, but
still neat. Nonetheless, Um, there's something called balonetts, right, and
these are basically air bladders that are located within the
(22:54):
envelope and you inflate or deflate them depending on whether
you want the blimp to go up or down. If
you wanted to go up, you deflate these ballonets. You
wanted to go down, you inflate them. And the reason
that works is because you're inflating or you're inflating these
ballonets with air and helium, which blimps fly using now
(23:15):
is lighter than air. So more air means the blimps heavier,
so it goes down. Less air means it's lighter, so
it goes up. Yeah, it's pretty easy. It's sort of
like how a submarine operates. Um. And there's one in
the four and one in the aft. So that's how
you control your trim. You can just knows it up
or knows it down, filling up or deflating. That's the
(23:36):
pitch axis, that's right, or trim Okay, Well, the trim
is the levelness okay. And the axis where the nose
and the back go up and down, that's the trim axis.
Or no, the pitch axis right yeah, okay, no one
(23:57):
can see you not in agreement, okay, um chuck. Then
there's the caternary curtain and the suspension cables, which I
didn't get the caternary curtain really I understood. The suspension
cable is just fine. Uh. It's on the on the
inside about thirty off center. Um. And it basically if
(24:18):
you look, it sort of looks like the where you
attach the basket to the hot air balloon. They all, um,
you know, there's a number of these lines that run
down and I'll meet at a single point, um near
the gondola, right, and that's what you attach the gondola
to the blimp using right. Yeah. So basically, if if
you if the blimp envelope wasn't there, it would sort
(24:40):
of look like a hot air balloon. It would have
these lines that run up from the gondola a k.
A basket up to the top. So they would be
like the um vertical lines are the horizontal lines. Okay,
I understand exact amundo. Um. Then you've got the really
technical stuff, the flight control surfaces everything we've just described
(25:01):
as basically balloons, and then the structure that gives the
balloon it's shape, right, and then um, the flight control
services are basically a rudder and elevators and they're the
things that you can control to make the balloon tilt
upward or side to side. That's pretty much it. Yeah,
there's that one rudder on the top and bottom and
(25:23):
that controls your yaw and you do it with little
If you look at the captain's chair. He's got little
little foot pedals. It's like a clutch pedal you would
put in, push in, and um. On the bottom, very
bottom back of the rudder, there's something called a boost
tab and that's just a little additional sectioned off piece
of the rudder that's also controllable. It's like a little
(25:44):
mini rudder and um. It assists with the rudder I
think to make an even tighter turn. So if you
imagine just the smaller rudder as part of the main rudder,
just to give you that extra boost I guess when
you need to turn. Uh. And then there's two elevators
and a UM. If you are sitting in your little
captain's chair, imagine a car steering wheel placed vertically like
(26:07):
by your side. And that's just a wheel that you
turn up and turn down. It's really very basic. It
sounds like the Wizard of Oz to the curtain, like
all the machineries messing with and it looks very steampunky
when you look at it. Huh. So you steer up
or down with that wheel and uh, that's pretty much it.
(26:27):
Oh no, don't forget the engines. Oh well, yeah, I
mean as far as like driving this puppy. Yeah, the
flight control. Yeah, this is what separates it from hot
air balloons. Don't forget the engines, No, the hot the well, yeah,
the engines, but also the flight control services. But the
engines are turbo prop engines. Right, there's twin ones, which
means there's two, one on each side of the gondola
(26:49):
at the rear. And they're pretty cool because they propeled
the thing forward, but very cleverly. There's also something called
air scoops that are basically these funnels that face the
back of the turbo prop and they catch the vented
air out of the props and they use those to
(27:09):
inflate the ballonets. Yeah, it's called prop wash. This is
all the lingo I've learned. That's good stuff. Uh. And
the engines are just six cylinder engines. Like I said that,
you don't need a ton of power to power these things.
And you can go at about thirty to seventy This
says miles per hour, not knots. So how about that
(27:30):
and seventies cruising apparently, like fifty is where you want
to be get this. I did the calculations. So one
of the um one of the great advantages blimps have,
which is the reason we're even talking about these things,
anybody's talking about still making blimps, is that they can
stay aloft for days, weeks, even um, which gives them
(27:51):
a huge advantage over airplanes which have to stop and
refuel and stop and refuel. But going seventy miles per
hour chuck, a blimp NonStop at that rate could travel
the circumference of the Earth around the equator in fourteen days. Wow,
that enough fuel? Yeah, which I think it's not very hard. No,
(28:12):
they at thirty knots. The sky ship, which is just
one example, UM, consumes about eight gallons of fuel per hour,
so apparently during an entire week of operations it consumes
less fuel than a seven sixties seven commercial jet uses
to move away from the gate. So it's super green,
which is kind of cool. You can understand why cargo
(28:34):
companies are looking at them too. Yeah, and that's it
runs on av gas of course, not just regular old gas.
You couldn't pull it up to a gas station like
your car, because I think AV gas is still leaded,
or a lot of it is. Oh and that's the
dif that's not that cream. Yeah, true, but they're not
burning much of it. Uh, So let's see what else
(28:57):
is there. The valves, you've got to be able to
let air in and out. You also want to be
able to air in and out of the envelope itself
in case things become too pressurized. You don't wanted to pop. Yeah,
that's true. So you've got your air valves for the
um for the bladders inside, and they are underneath, uh
to tow up front, two in the back. And then
(29:17):
you have your helium valve and you can either vent
it and you don't have to do this much because
you should have it pretty like the pressure set um.
But if something does happen, you can either manually do
it or it's set to automatically release. And if you
look at the Goodyear blimp, it's sort of in the
y of a year. Wow little it just looks like
a little gas cap. You really know you're blimps? Man? Well,
(29:40):
I mean I went to the good Year site. It's awesome.
You can like there's all sorts of animated gifts and
or is it gifts? I never could yeah? Yeah, graphic interface. Yeah,
but there is a correct way. I just don't know
what it is. Well, the guy who created gifts says,
he pronounces it Jeff. Oh. It kind of throws a
(30:00):
wrench in the works, but I disagree with him. Morgellons
give the Goodyear blimp. Gondola, which is where we are now,
is twenty two point seven five ft long. It is
aluminum on welded steel frame, and that's where everyone rides. Um.
(30:21):
Depending on your blimp, it's gonna hold up to well.
It depends on how big the blimp is, but usually
you don't see a blimp with more than twelve passengers
or so. Yeah, and it's not even necessarily passengers. The
gondola can also be the place where it holds all
of the surveillance equipment to depending on what you use
it for. Or it can also be the massive cargo hold. Yeah,
and you've got your communications up there, your flight surface controls,
(30:44):
any KNAB equipment, UM propeller controls. That's where all the
there's there's not much else to it besides what what
you got there in the gondola. What's funny is UM,
I always thought blimps were basically like know, you you
get the blimp in the air and it takes off,
and then that's it, but it's it's at least with
(31:07):
good Year. It's kind of like, um got helicopter parents
almost because when the blimp. When you see the blimp,
if you look around, you'll also find a ground crew
with a bus, uh eighteen wheeler and a bunch of
vans that follow it everywhere because I guess those things
break down. Yeah, and apparently the pilots to their f
(31:30):
A certified and Goodyear pilots also have another training program.
But the pilots are even it's all sort of everyone
is cross trained. It sounds like to work on the
ground or make repairs and um yeah, it's like a
little self contained unit all just traveling around together like
a like anato chasers right. Oh, and you talked about
(31:51):
um the end. You know, if they just took off
and floated around, if the engines did stop, that's exactly
what you're doing. You're basically a hot air balloon at
that point, so you lose control of the flight service controls. Yeah, well,
I mean if it's they call it a free balloon,
so it's buoyant um and it's kept aloft obviously, But
if they lose all the power, then all you can
(32:14):
do is ascend and descend because I think I guess
the rudders and the elevators are also powered mechanisms. I got,
it's not just attached to a cable, attached to a
pedal attached to a wheel. That the guys next to
it sounds like it is though, And as far as
weather goes, they compare it to roughly operating is about
as similar as a helicopter. Like we can fly in
(32:35):
bad weather, um, but we try to avoid super bad weather. Yeah.
I don't blame them, sure, because I mean that's not fun.
You want to be above the Rose Bowl in like
seventy degree weathers. Yeah, So coming up, we're gonna talk
about how blimps fly, and then also the feature of
blimps and if there is such a thing after this,
(32:58):
so chuck. The way blimps flies pretty simple and beautiful
and elegant, if you ask me. Yeah. Yeah, So you
(33:20):
have helium, right, which is they used to use hydrogen.
Helium slightly heavier than um hydrogen, but not that much more.
You don't notice a difference, I would guess. Yeah, I
mean you get why they use hydrogen. They weren't dummies, right,
It was lighter than air. The lightest of all the
gases of all the elements from what I understand, um.
And when hydrogen blew up, they said, okay, not hydrogen.
(33:43):
What else do we have? And they said, well, helium works,
and so they started using helium. And helium has a
lift of lift capacity of point seventy pounds per square
foot right, which is one point one kilograms per square
meter um, which means it can lift a pretty decent
(34:03):
amount of wait for just a little bit amount, And
since they're filling these balloons with hundreds of thousands of
cubic feet or cubic meters of these um of helium,
they can look tons and tons of weight, and they
do it by just simple physics. Since helium is lighter
(34:23):
than air. As long as the helium has enough lifting
power to lift whatever the envelope and the gondola and
all of the mechanisms way, then it will rise more
than the air. It will rise into the air. It's
called positive buoyancy. And what you want as a blent
pilot is neutral buoyancy. So that's why you're gonna control,
like we talked about your air bladders to uh get
(34:47):
that thing where it's Once you've got your cruising altitude.
You just want to be at the same level you
yet and you want to fill it up by blowing
exhaust into your air scoops which fill up your balonets.
And the higher you get into the atmosphere, the less
pressure there is, which means the higher up you could
float conceivably, So you want to make sure you get
(35:07):
that air in so you don't just float away, and
you achieve is it negative buoyancy or neutral buoyancy? You said, yeah,
that's what you want. And then when you want to land,
you did you just the opposite um You fill it
up with even more air and then you make the
blimp heavier than the helium inside can lift and it
just slowly comes down to the ground. And I mean
(35:28):
that's it. That's how blimps rise and fall. Yeah, it
is pretty simple. And when they're on the ground, they
just tie it to that little spindle. You've got your
little wheel under the rear. You got a little tractor
to tow it around, maybe a hanger. And uh, that's
the life of a blimp. And it, like I said,
they don't inflate and deflate these. I'm sure it's a
time and expense. Uh, and I think they're running out
(35:52):
of helium too. Didn't we learn that? Yeah, do you
know much about that? Well, we we covered it, and uh,
the I probably the Mars Turbine episode Mars Turbine. Well,
I read a really interesting article and I think the
New Republic, I can't remember. I found it online last night,
and um, it's about the helium shortage and why we
(36:13):
have a helium shortage. And apparently the US has had
a reserve, a strategic helium reserve since in a cave
in Texas, and apparently during the Clinton era, the government said,
let's make some money off of this, or let's make
our money back off of it, so they passed it
all that said, start selling this stuff off Bureau of
(36:35):
Land Management, but only make enough money off of it
to recoup whatever we've put into it over the years,
which is like one billion dollars. So they started selling it,
and by setting the price artificially, they created an artificial market.
Because this is like eight of the world's helium reserves
(36:55):
in this cave in Texas. So whatever the BLM was
selling it for, that's how much the market value was.
But it was artificial, so you had artificially cheap helium
flooding the market, which had a two pronged effect. One,
it led to these scarcities that we're running into now
because they just started selling it off in a fire
sale the private industry. But the other more positive effect
(37:16):
it had was that it spurred all of this technological
innovation because nuclear magnetic resonance, the technology behind m ri
I superconductivity UM molecular analysis, uses helium two super cool
magnets to turn them into superconductors, right, So you need
(37:38):
helium for that. So all these industries were using this
helium from the Bureau of Land Management to like advanced
technology by leaps and bounds, which is one of the
big reasons why we are where we are right now
technologically speaking because of helium. But now we're starting to
run out. There's I think nine billion cubic feet of
(37:58):
helium left in the reserve of in Texas, which is
about a third of what they had when they started
selling it off in the nineties, which would be fine
if we just clamped it out and said, okay, this
is a reserve again. But instead, for some reason, the
government just doubled down and issued another decree to the
beer of lamb. Management is like, keep selling this stuff.
Let's just get rid of all of it for no
(38:18):
good reason. I don't understand why. Interesting, like it made
sense in the nineties maybe, and it had all these
great effects, but now it's like, okay, we understand that
helium is literally irreplaceable. As the article put it, like
there's once there's no helium. There's no helium, Like we
can't go get it anywhere else for manufacturer, and we
have no technology to recycle it. I wonder what the
(38:39):
reason is. I guess money private industry has a lot
of interest in it, and there's good interest to like
using it for m RIS or pharmaceutical research or that
kind of parties. Well that's the thing. So med, the
med and pharma sectors used of helium worldwide. Welding uses
seventeen percent because they use heli in the weld. Party
(39:02):
balloons equals eight percent of worldwide helium use. I have
a feeling that party balloons are going to go the
way of the dinosaur very soon, if they haven't already.
And half of that is the stoner kid who operates
the helium tank just talking funny. Yeah, So that's the
helium shortage. That's the skinny on it. So that I
wonder if there's any other gas they could use for blimps.
(39:26):
I don't know. It seems like a giant waste. Or
I wonder if they couldn't, like do like a hybrid
so it's fueled by hot air like a balloon. Huh,
probably wouldn't. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either.
H Well, I guess we are at the future then
in the future, and depending on who you ask, the
(39:50):
future of airships is either super exciting and awesome and
when you look at these they are, or it's not
going to be funded enough to really um, there's not
a lot of money being pumped into it. Well, the
government was for a little while with the Afghanistan war.
The Department of Defense was like, give us new blimps.
We want these things now. And all these companies ran
(40:12):
in and we're like, here's your blimps, here's your blimps,
give us some money. The problem is is the whole
program got scrapped because nobody could fulfill the enormous orders
the d D was placing four helium Well that makes sense, uh,
And the military is interested because they basically, um, could
be uh a satellite function as a satellite like a
(40:33):
ten thou fot satellite. Yeah, pretty much. Um. There are
people doing it though. Lockheed Martin has a pet one
UM that is super cool looking. It is a try hall.
If you look at it from the front, it looks
sort of like three blimps squashed together. Um. And it
has four big it looks like feet these disc shaped
(40:54):
cushions that apparently for landing and these are also cool.
There's um an the one in California from Worldwide Aeroscorp
called the Dragon Dream. Yeah, and it's different look and
it sort of looks like a whale shark. Did you
see it. It's a single hull, I guess, but it's
sort of kind of flattened out. Um. Yeah, it looks
like a whale shark. They they actually submitted that design
(41:16):
to the d o D and when the d D
scraped the program. Um, they bought their design back because
they want to go commercial like cargo carrier with it. Yeah.
And they're in trouble though because the Dragon died well
it had a roof collapse and a hangar. Yeah, and
they don't know if they have the money to even
fix it. And then continue, well, they have another model
(41:36):
called the mL eight sixties six that it sounds like
they're putting their energy into. It's supposedly can carry two
and fifty tons, which is more than twice the cargo
payload of a cargo seven seventy s twice. And again
you mentioned how little fuel it takes to power these things.
So it'll take a little while for you to get
(41:57):
your package, But the company shipping it as going to
spend too much money delivering it. I still say, if
it's a military like to use as a cargo plane,
I know you can't shoot a hole in it, but
what if you launched a surface to air missile at it?
You know, it's still pull a helium. That's it doesn't
sound like I don't know. They're so high up there
you can't the fact that we have satellites and drones.
(42:21):
It seems to me like the surveillance uses of blimps
or preposterous, especially considering that we could be using that
helium for medical purposes instead. You know, I agree you
got anything else on blimps? Got nothing else? Um, I
got one other thing. If you were fascinated by the
um the way blimps float. I think it's cool for
(42:43):
some reason. I did a brain stuff video about that.
You can calculate how many balloons it would take, like
regular party balloons to lift yourself into the sky, and
I made a video about it. So you go to
a brain stuff show dot com and check it out. Uh.
And if you want to read this article, you can
(43:04):
go to how stuff worst dot com. Type in how
blimps work and it will bring it up. And I said,
how stuff works, I think So that means it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh sterilizing addicts.
Remember that Old One did a show on whether or
not it's legal to sterilize addicts. It turns out it is, Yeah,
(43:25):
and that's the thing. Uh. And this is from someone
who had a personal uh stake in it. Um. It's long,
but I'm gonna edit it in my head as I go. Hey, guys,
just recently listen to your podcast and sterilation sterilization of
addicts had a personal story to share. Um. Until my
mother is a fully recovered heroin addict and I'm grateful
(43:46):
just to be alive. Until I was six, she was
only an alcoholic. However, drug addiction set in fast. My mother,
brother and myself, along with whatever scumbag boyfriend she had
at the time. We're constantly on the run from the police,
looking for shelter and searching for food. My father is
an upper middle class blue collar worker who always had
a sound home environment. When my mother was sent to
prison when I was ten, I was sent to live
(44:07):
with my father. Always had food, to shower and clean clothes.
Was never in fear for being homeless. UH. I live
with my father for three years until I finally ran away.
Once I regained contact with my mother, my father, even
with his financial support, instability was never there, even though
he was only a few feet away. My mother, even
while on drugs, always listened and always cared about my
thoughts and feelings, and that was what was important as
(44:30):
a child. My mother eventually overcame her addictions cold turkey
because she could see it was damaging to me and
my brother. She's been clean for eleven years now and
as an amazing mother, an amazing grandmother to my nephew.
I like to believe that seeing the harder side of
life made me appreciate UH such things and be more
humble and responsible. UH and fearful of what could happen
(44:52):
if I slipped or did not take care of myself.
I don't want to be the poster child for children
of addicts. Whoever, I do believe that we are all
and control of our own lives. Uh. And that is
anonymized as Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, Corney Jake seven, Yeah,
he said, yeah, you can read it, and I said,
all anonymious anonymous size it is there some sort of
(45:15):
name anonymizer on the internet now, he said, please do
just make it something awesome like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh.
That's great and that's a cool PS. I've been secretly
wanting Jerry to be the Tyler Dirton of your podcast.
What that even means? Like made up? But like we
think she's real, but she's not. Okay, are you real, Jerry?
(45:36):
Jerry says, no, Nope, that answers that Cornelius Jacobs the
seventh and you read the Roman numerals correctly, Chuck this time,
good going be I. I UH. If you want to
get in touch with me and Chuck to tell us
any story like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, UM, please do
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
(45:58):
You can join us on Facebook, dot com, m slash
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to Stuff podcast at how Stuffworks dot com and is
always go to our cool home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios How stuff Works. For more
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:23):
H
Hi, friends, have you ever flown into blimp? I haven't.
It's one of my goals, and on August I had neither.
But that's what we talked about and more in the
episode How Blimps Work coming up right now. Welcome to
Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios
(00:22):
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's with us,
so that makes this Stuff you should Know? How you doing?
I'm good man, this is I'm excited about this one.
Oh are you sure? Blimps? Yeah, because they have like
(00:43):
eight names, blimp, dirigible, zeppelin, yeah, airship yeah. Uh well
technically l t A I'm counting that lighter than airship, yeah,
which I think is ultimately lighter than airship. L t
A is the umbrella term for all of those things
which are slightly different. Yeah. I think an l t
(01:05):
A and an airship is all of them. The dirigible
is all of them. Zeppelin is rigid, and a blimp
is non rigid. Nice, and mostly we just said blimps.
These days, not a lot of rigid airships aren't there?
But would they? Would they constitute. Yeah, no, but there's
they can be semi rigid or non rigid, right, yeah,
and I think the future we'll talk about that obviously
(01:26):
at the end, but I think those are some of
those are more the semi rigid style, right. That's very huge. Yeah,
but they're made of some really lightweight but very strong
composite materials. Yeah. Boom so Chuck, Let's talk about the
history of blimps because I think when anybody thinks of blimps,
they think Handenburg, they think, they think the Handenburg and
(01:49):
then maybe can currently or right after the Good Year blimp. Yeah,
those are the two that really laid it on the
line for blimped him. Uh yeah, you know, want you
want to talk about the early history, I guess, and
then get to the tragedy. Yeah, because there wasn't that
much time in between the two to tell you the truth. Yeah,
(02:11):
I mean it all started, of course with hot air balloons,
because uh, they're not so different. In Sight three, a
couple of frenchees, brothers, Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michelle. They
said they were brothers, but they have different Last night,
I think Jacques Etienne is his first and middle name. Okay,
that makes sense. They all had three names, uh last name,
(02:32):
serial killer, mong Gulfier. They invented the hot air balloon
uh an unmanned hot air balloon in seventy three, and
then later that same year a French physicist last name
de Rosier had the first manned balloon flight. And they
were just floating around because that's what our balloons do.
(02:53):
You can go up and then if you're really good,
you can come back down. But left and right, that's
up to mother nature. That's right, which is a little scary,
although I think these days can they steer them at all.
We have a great article on this. You're you're subject
to the winds, to the the um was the god
of wind that you know, he comes out of the
(03:14):
cloud and blows wind. Yeah that guy. Yeah, you're you're
subject to his whim So if if you're headed towards something,
it's go over it or hit it. Yes, okay, And
you remember there was that terrible blo um hot air
balloon accident and I think Virginia last year earlier this year. Yeah,
like they hit a power line I think, and then
the basket caught fire and like they had to jump.
(03:36):
It was really bad. Um. But yeah, you can go
up and over and I imagine it's under if it's
like a power line, yeah, or a tunnel if you're
really good, or you're in a cartoon like the laugh Olympics.
That's something they do in there. But the I think
if you're really good, you could probably know where to
steer into the wind to maybe use use the wind.
(03:59):
But know, with a blimp, the big distinction is, aside
from its distinctive shape, is that you can maneuver like
a pro That's right, And that's what Henry uh Jaffar
did in eighteen fifty two when he finally someone said
we should steer these things and he built the first
powered airship and it was cigar field like the classic
(04:20):
shapes that we know and love now, had a propeller
like they have now, and a little engine although it
was a steam engine which they don't use now. Three
horsepower steam engine. Yeah, they're not huge engine still didn't
take a lot apparently, No, it really doesn't, um. And
those were rigid airships. Uh, it's a it's a metal framework.
(04:40):
And in nineteen hundred, count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, that name
sounds familiar, Zeppelin of Germany. Uh, and that's where they
got the name, of course, because I never understood the
led the lead well it was I think someone said
as a joke, you guys are gonna go over like
a led Zeppelin, or they did when they played on
the BBC. Is that it? But I take the A
out because the same reason you take the A out
(05:03):
of def Leppard. I've never understood that either, in the
same as you put a boom loud over Motley Crue.
This just makes it cool, you know, different differentiates you
gotta mispell something in your band. I think I was
just looking too deeply into it. It's the problem. Yeah,
L E A d Zeppelin would be weird. Yeah, but
I think like our paradigm would have adjusted. We would
(05:24):
think L E. D Zeppelin would be weird if we
were used to led Zeppelin with an A, or if
the Beatles was spelled B E T L E S. Yeah,
instead of their penny name. Very punny, all right, boy,
we get sidetracks so easy with music stuff. Not really
Zeppelin was I think people saw that coming before the
press play. Uh. So that was the rigid Airship, the
(05:47):
first one, and those have a metal framework and it
had tail fins and rudders had combustion engines and could
cruise about feet with up to five people. Yes, not bad.
You could bring the whole family as long as you encounter,
as long as you total no more than five, as
long as you paid off the captain. Well then you
just have to be a family four, that's right, because
(06:09):
the captain's got to sit somewhere, right. Yeah, they got
their little captain's chair. So everything was going quite swimmingly. Actually. Um,
around the turn of the twentieth century, there there was.
It was just widely assumed that we would have a
future where blimps zeppelins were just a regular feature of
the sky. Well they were up until the Hinderberg went down.
(06:32):
There were more than two thousand flights carried um tens
of thousands of passengers over a million miles. Like that
was air travel, we should say, ultra wealthy passengers at
the time. Um. The Hinderberg in particular was it was
high class. It was the pride of Nazi Germany, and
it was on its maiden voyage, wasn't it. It It was
(06:52):
almost called the Hitler by the way, was it really? Yeah?
But Hitler was like I don't want my name on
that thing. Really yet not that he like foretold the few. Sure,
he just didn't. I don't know. He just didn't want
to him named after an airship. He didn't believe um
Freud's idea that sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, yeah,
or a cigar shaped airship is just a cigar shaped
(07:13):
there and it crashed and burned too, So he was
probably pretty stoked that he didn't have his name on it. Yeah.
He very famously went who yeah when he heard the
news exactly. So, uh, we should probably stopped making light
of this nearly eighty year old tragedy because people did die,
you know. Yeah, I mean, should we tell the story?
(07:37):
All right? Well, it took off on May three, seven,
had thirty six passengers and six officers and crew members
and trainees, left Frankfort at about seven fifteen and then
crossed out over the Atlantic at about two am the
next day. It's not super fast travel. It was compared
to the ship travel at the time. It was about
(07:58):
it took about half the time to cross the Atlanta
because it did in a boat. Yeah, But compared to
what we're used to, you were just it was leisurely
um and apparently after reading more about the Hindenburgh it's
not as um, and I guess ship travel is sort
of the same way, like we're going to get there
when we get there, like we're heading, we're trying to
get there and then, but you never know what's going
(08:18):
to happen. Right, that's why they called them the leisure class.
That's right. Uh. It follows followed a northern track across
the ocean. Um eventually crossed uh into North America, over
the coast of Newfoundland and arrived in lake Hurst, New
Jersey about twelve hours late. And um, Germans, they're always late. Yeah,
(08:40):
they're famous for it. And basically arrived there at the
Naval air station and because of poor weather, the captain
and the commanding officer on the ground said, you know what,
the weather is not so great. Let's wait a little bit, um,
because I can fly around forever in those things. And
um he said, all right, well, the Jersey shore is nice.
Let's just go fly about that and tell everyone to
(09:01):
look around and look at all those old timey bathingsasically
they're up to the ankles and water. Um. By six pm,
conditions had improved and at six twelve he sent a
message sand it's suitable for landing, recommended landing. Now about
seven o eight, he finally pulled the blimp in. It
(09:21):
was a bit of a dodgy approach, but he eventually,
you know, got it down towards the ground pretty you know, uh, skillfully, which,
as we'll see, it's not as easy as you'd think.
Even though now easy, it's it's not in practice. No,
they dropped the landing lines and then things went south
like really fast. Yeah, but it was filled with hydrogen,
(09:43):
which is the lightest element, right, Yeah, and uh it's
also probably the most flammable or one of them. Yes,
inflammable was a big error at the time. Um, a
lot of blimps had caught on fire. This was not
the first X event, and uh there was you know,
people testified afterward because not everyone died. We'll get to
(10:06):
the numbers here at the end of the story. But um,
there was testimony that, um, it appeared as if gas
was pushing against the cover. Maybe it escaped from a
gas cell. The first visible flames appeared, and it varies,
but most of witnesses say that the first flames are
either at the top of the hall, uh, forward of
(10:26):
the vertical fin or between the rear port uh engine
in the port fin and they described it as a
mushroom shaped flour and it pretty much engulfed the tail
like right away, and it was able to remain steady
for a little while. Like people could start jumping out
at this point. Well, those are the people who died, correct, No,
that's what I always heard, or that's what I have heard,
(10:48):
is that the people who stayed in the gondola lived
and the people who jumped were the ones that died
because the flames, because hydrogen is light, they were burning upward.
Well it says here basically it was all depended on
where you were. If you were close to a means
of exit, you generally survived. Um, if you were deep
(11:10):
inside the ship, like in the power room along the keel,
or in the smoking room. They had a smoking room
in the Edinburgh. I'm supposed it wasn't all smoking with
a big blimpful of hydrogen. Oh yeah, yeah, I thought
it was not a good yet. They had apparently a
double um air locked door, one electric lighter and um
(11:32):
you were allowed to smoke as long as you put
it out before you left. And um, so like I said,
if you were in the smoking room on B deck,
you're in big trouble. Um. If you were one of
the nine men closest to the front of the ship,
you definitely didn't survive. Yeah. So out of the ninety
(11:52):
seven people on board sixty two survived. I think when
you see the footage, I mean you can watch it
on YouTube, it looks like, how on the world could
anyone survive it? Because it goes I mean it's fully
burned in less than a minute and on the ground. Yeah,
it went up fast. But sixty two to survive, thirteen
of the thirty six passengers and twenty two of the
sixty one crew. And there's still two guys alive today
(12:15):
checked as of two years ago. But they don't like
to talk about it. I can imagine. Yeah, there's one experience.
They're both named Verner Verner Franz and Werner Donor, the
two Verners, and one was a little cabin boy and
one was a passenger with his family, and uh, they
were contacted for like the you know, the ceremony. I
(12:36):
guess you don't call it an anniversary, I guess, uh memorial. Yeah,
it just sounds like a party, you know. But they said, no,
we're not coming. We don't like to talk about it. Yeah.
So it's been a long standing mystery exactly what happened.
And I found an article in the UK Independent from
two thousand thirteen about a study from that year that
(12:58):
found they said they they figured it out. They built
like scale models of the Hindenburg, which was like two
and a half football fields long by the way, They
were building scale models that were like like sixty ft long,
so good sized ones, and they tried to blow them
up because there was a rumor that it was sabotage.
You know that everybody hated the Nazis even then. Um
(13:19):
and uh. They tried all all manners stuff, and what
they finally figured out was that probably what happened was
from being in that stormy weather, that exterior the envelope
of the blimp became um electrified and when the ground
crew ran up and grabbed the cables, they completed the
current from the blimp to the ground, which caused a
(13:41):
spark which actually um ignited a hydrogen leak that fire
caused pushing out. Yeah. Yeah. One thing they say it
definitely isn't which they long thought it was, was the
actual fabric was like painted in this flammable stuff, and
that's not true. It was the standard fabric, Okay, it
was just a big balloon fill of hydrogen. Yeah, So
(14:06):
when that happened, UM, the future of blimps were just
pretty much like that was it for blimps. That wasn't
the immediate end. But as far as like commercial blimp travel,
that's tough for an industry to get over, so it
kind of fell on the wayside, although they did continue
on UM in a couple of forms. Up until the sixties.
(14:28):
The US government, especially the Navy, maintained blimps. One of
the UM I think that I guess the Air Force,
I don't know is the Navy, but one of the
branches of the U. S Military use blimps as UM
giant aircraft carriers of the air, not not the sea,
the air, which is pretty awesome. And apparently they had
(14:49):
them so you could connect like a light plane to
what's called like a trapeeze mechanism coming out of the
bottom of the blimps and just like hook your plane on,
climb up and say, hey, guys, where are we going?
Or you can take off from there too. What, yes,
how do you take off, you just drop. I think
you just released the hook from the trap peas and
(15:09):
started to free fall, and then you just go off
into the distance and go thanks for the ride, lady.
That sounds really weird. Um. And they had even bigger
plans that were never realized because the Navy scrapped the
program and I think nineteen two UM to have like
a landing strip on top of the blimp, so you
could have just like planes takeoff and land and then
(15:30):
be stored like in the blimp, which would have been
pretty awesome. Well, cargo airships are the wave of the future, perhaps,
so we'll see. Yeah. So, but that was the military
was involved in blimps for most of the first half
of the twentieth century and then um, our friends a
good Year came up with a blimp that has really
(15:51):
served them well. Like they were making blimps for the military,
and then um, they started using them for commercial purposes
and everybody he knows about good Year thanks to those blimps. Yeah,
and they're going to figure in here, of course, because
you can't talk about blimps a lot without a ton
of buzz marketing for good Year. Um. But you know
that's where they make their name. In fact, my in
(16:12):
laws almost wrote on the one based out of Akron
because that's where they're from, and they I think he
was going to put in a bid on a like
an auction bid to win a trip Nate, and I
think it never happened. The trip never happened. I think
he either lost the bid. I'll have to ask him,
but I don't think they ever wrote on the blimp. Okay,
I was gonna say the trip never happened. That doesn't
(16:34):
sound like the Good Year I know. No, No, they're
very They're like the Germans. So they've got there's three,
um Good Year blimps. Actually there's one and I believe Texas.
There's one in California. There's one in Ohio or is
it Florida California and Ohio is what it is. I'm sorry, Um,
the spirit of good Year, the Spirit of America, the
(16:55):
spirit of Innovation and Chuck. About the time this episode
comes out, Robin Roberts, the TV personality, is going to
be christening the newest member of the fleet, the wing
foot one. Nice. So they're gonna have four, yeah, because
there's a lot of sporting events there. Sure, and you
can't watch a big sporting event without hearing the words. Uh.
Aerial coverage provided by Goodyear and those shots. Man, they're
(17:19):
pretty great. They really are. Haven't been around forever. It
was I think an Orange Bowl in Miami where the
first one was broadcast and what like the sixties maybe
I don't know, something like that, and it changed America. Yeah,
well it um certainly gives them a lot of press
and saves well, I don't know about saves some money.
Haven't seen their balance sheet, but it's they don't just
(17:41):
spend money on that thirty second spot. They still do
to tie into the blimp. But it's great advertising for them. Yeah. Um.
They also were good sports in a movie called Black Sunday.
Did you ever see that movie? Of course I never
saw it. Um, but apparently the seventies they provided Um,
(18:01):
they provided some of the footage for the movie, and UM,
let their blimps be used, uh, and let their name
be used even like it wasn't like the the good
Wire blimp. You know, they didn't try to have to
change it just enough. They used good Year, which made
the whole thing even more terrifying and realistic. Yeah, they
wanted to kill everyone at the Super Bowl. That was
(18:22):
the plot, right, uh with a blimp right that shot darts,
which is weird. But it was written by the guy
who wrote Silence of the Lambs. Oh. Yeah, he's a
good writer. Have you ever read any of his books?
Oh he was the bookwriter. Oh no, I didn't know that. No,
I haven't read any of Silence of the Way. He
(18:43):
does very good research. Interesting guy. Um. Anyway, so good year,
good year in the military. After the Hindenburg. That was
the two cases of blimps. But like you said, there
is potentially a future for blimps, which we'll talk about.
But first, let's talk about how blimps work. Can enroll
after these messages. So you want to know how blimps work, buddy,
(19:20):
I do. They're pretty simple. This is the delight to
learn because it was like, oh, I thought that would
be just that little to it, and that's really kind
of the case, right yeah. Yeah, there's not like oh
and here's where it gets really hard. They're like the
pontoon boats of this guy. Yeah. Like the most complicated
thing on the blimp is probably the gyroscopic camera on
the front of it to film the football stadium. I
(19:42):
think you're right. Uh so, let's talk about the anatomy
of a blamp you have. You mentioned the envelope earlier.
That is the thing that you're looking at. That is
key big cigar shaped balloon. It's filled nowadays with helium.
It is that shape because of aero done amics, of course,
and they are super lightweight and super strong. Like you
(20:03):
were saying, neoprene to ply neoprene polyester generally, is that
what the envelopes made of. There's a company UM called
the I LC Dover Corporation. They make a lot of
skins UM and they use the same material that they
make UM space suits out of for NASA for blimps.
Too good enough for Neil Armstrong, Buddy, good enough for
(20:25):
my blimp. This is like all about Ohio. This one
oh is here? Ohio? Yeah, yeah, let have done that
so it was good here? No, No, I knew that, Um,
so were your in laws. That's right. The envelopes they
hold UM and it depends on the blimps for all
of these statistics, of course, but between sixty seven thousand
and two hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet of helium
(20:48):
and UM, it's not super The pressure is really low
inside point zero seven pounds per square inch. So that's
why if you shot a blimp, it wouldn't like fall, No,
just leak very slowly and you just land it and
patch it up. I guess, yeah, very slowly. Yeah. British
Ministry of Defense fired hundreds of bullets into an airship
(21:09):
just for fun, well, not to see what if it
would could be shot down in battle basically, and it
took many hours to deflate and land. So cool. And
they don't even deflate them, they just leave them that
way so that they're natural structure will not natural, but
their original structure UM prevents them from being shot down.
That's one big benefit. Because I was wondering about that.
(21:30):
I was like, you're just providing a target for every
teenager with a gun in any country that you hover
a blimp over. UM. Now I understand. But secondly, as
we'll see, it also has to do with the dynamics
of the flight of UM hovering in the atmosphere. UM.
So you've got the envelope, and the envelope also has
(21:51):
something called nose cone battons, which is basically like a
support structure for the nose the front of it. Just
the very very tip and it keeps the the the
the blimps front from being mashed in as it moves forward,
which is pretty smart. Yeah, I think I misspoke. The
nose cone is on just the very tip, and then
the batons are like the fingers that distribute the stress
(22:12):
over the front of the conetch. Okay, so they're like
the the the structure that comes out of the nose, right,
and then also on the nose as the mooring. Um
hook because you got to hook a blimp up to something. Yeah,
it's got a little spindle there and um, it's got
a little wheel under the tail rudder and that's basically
(22:33):
how it sits. You just tie it down, very simple. Um,
just like a balloon. That's right. So there's here's where
it gets a little craftier, like nineteen century crafty, but
still neat. Nonetheless, Um, there's something called balonetts, right, and
these are basically air bladders that are located within the
(22:54):
envelope and you inflate or deflate them depending on whether
you want the blimp to go up or down. If
you wanted to go up, you deflate these ballonets. You
wanted to go down, you inflate them. And the reason
that works is because you're inflating or you're inflating these
ballonets with air and helium, which blimps fly using now
(23:15):
is lighter than air. So more air means the blimps heavier,
so it goes down. Less air means it's lighter, so
it goes up. Yeah, it's pretty easy. It's sort of
like how a submarine operates. Um. And there's one in
the four and one in the aft. So that's how
you control your trim. You can just knows it up
or knows it down, filling up or deflating. That's the
(23:36):
pitch axis, that's right, or trim Okay, Well, the trim
is the levelness okay. And the axis where the nose
and the back go up and down, that's the trim axis.
Or no, the pitch axis right yeah, okay, no one
(23:57):
can see you not in agreement, okay, um chuck. Then
there's the caternary curtain and the suspension cables, which I
didn't get the caternary curtain really I understood. The suspension
cable is just fine. Uh. It's on the on the
inside about thirty off center. Um. And it basically if
(24:18):
you look, it sort of looks like the where you
attach the basket to the hot air balloon. They all, um,
you know, there's a number of these lines that run
down and I'll meet at a single point, um near
the gondola, right, and that's what you attach the gondola
to the blimp using right. Yeah. So basically, if if
you if the blimp envelope wasn't there, it would sort
(24:40):
of look like a hot air balloon. It would have
these lines that run up from the gondola a k.
A basket up to the top. So they would be
like the um vertical lines are the horizontal lines. Okay,
I understand exact amundo. Um. Then you've got the really
technical stuff, the flight control surfaces everything we've just described
(25:01):
as basically balloons, and then the structure that gives the
balloon it's shape, right, and then um, the flight control
services are basically a rudder and elevators and they're the
things that you can control to make the balloon tilt
upward or side to side. That's pretty much it. Yeah,
there's that one rudder on the top and bottom and
(25:23):
that controls your yaw and you do it with little
If you look at the captain's chair. He's got little
little foot pedals. It's like a clutch pedal you would
put in, push in, and um. On the bottom, very
bottom back of the rudder, there's something called a boost
tab and that's just a little additional sectioned off piece
of the rudder that's also controllable. It's like a little
(25:44):
mini rudder and um. It assists with the rudder I
think to make an even tighter turn. So if you
imagine just the smaller rudder as part of the main rudder,
just to give you that extra boost I guess when
you need to turn. Uh. And then there's two elevators
and a UM. If you are sitting in your little
captain's chair, imagine a car steering wheel placed vertically like
(26:07):
by your side. And that's just a wheel that you
turn up and turn down. It's really very basic. It
sounds like the Wizard of Oz to the curtain, like
all the machineries messing with and it looks very steampunky
when you look at it. Huh. So you steer up
or down with that wheel and uh, that's pretty much it.
(26:27):
Oh no, don't forget the engines. Oh well, yeah, I
mean as far as like driving this puppy. Yeah, the
flight control. Yeah, this is what separates it from hot
air balloons. Don't forget the engines, No, the hot the well, yeah,
the engines, but also the flight control services. But the
engines are turbo prop engines. Right, there's twin ones, which
means there's two, one on each side of the gondola
(26:49):
at the rear. And they're pretty cool because they propeled
the thing forward, but very cleverly. There's also something called
air scoops that are basically these funnels that face the
back of the turbo prop and they catch the vented
air out of the props and they use those to
(27:09):
inflate the ballonets. Yeah, it's called prop wash. This is
all the lingo I've learned. That's good stuff. Uh. And
the engines are just six cylinder engines. Like I said that,
you don't need a ton of power to power these things.
And you can go at about thirty to seventy This
says miles per hour, not knots. So how about that
(27:30):
and seventies cruising apparently, like fifty is where you want
to be get this. I did the calculations. So one
of the um one of the great advantages blimps have,
which is the reason we're even talking about these things,
anybody's talking about still making blimps, is that they can
stay aloft for days, weeks, even um, which gives them
(27:51):
a huge advantage over airplanes which have to stop and
refuel and stop and refuel. But going seventy miles per
hour chuck, a blimp NonStop at that rate could travel
the circumference of the Earth around the equator in fourteen days. Wow,
that enough fuel? Yeah, which I think it's not very hard. No,
(28:12):
they at thirty knots. The sky ship, which is just
one example, UM, consumes about eight gallons of fuel per hour,
so apparently during an entire week of operations it consumes
less fuel than a seven sixties seven commercial jet uses
to move away from the gate. So it's super green,
which is kind of cool. You can understand why cargo
(28:34):
companies are looking at them too. Yeah, and that's it
runs on av gas of course, not just regular old gas.
You couldn't pull it up to a gas station like
your car, because I think AV gas is still leaded,
or a lot of it is. Oh and that's the
dif that's not that cream. Yeah, true, but they're not
burning much of it. Uh, So let's see what else
(28:57):
is there. The valves, you've got to be able to
let air in and out. You also want to be
able to air in and out of the envelope itself
in case things become too pressurized. You don't wanted to pop. Yeah,
that's true. So you've got your air valves for the
um for the bladders inside, and they are underneath, uh
to tow up front, two in the back. And then
(29:17):
you have your helium valve and you can either vent
it and you don't have to do this much because
you should have it pretty like the pressure set um.
But if something does happen, you can either manually do
it or it's set to automatically release. And if you
look at the Goodyear blimp, it's sort of in the
y of a year. Wow little it just looks like
a little gas cap. You really know you're blimps? Man? Well,
(29:40):
I mean I went to the good Year site. It's awesome.
You can like there's all sorts of animated gifts and
or is it gifts? I never could yeah? Yeah, graphic interface. Yeah,
but there is a correct way. I just don't know
what it is. Well, the guy who created gifts says,
he pronounces it Jeff. Oh. It kind of throws a
(30:00):
wrench in the works, but I disagree with him. Morgellons
give the Goodyear blimp. Gondola, which is where we are now,
is twenty two point seven five ft long. It is
aluminum on welded steel frame, and that's where everyone rides. Um.
(30:21):
Depending on your blimp, it's gonna hold up to well.
It depends on how big the blimp is, but usually
you don't see a blimp with more than twelve passengers
or so. Yeah, and it's not even necessarily passengers. The
gondola can also be the place where it holds all
of the surveillance equipment to depending on what you use
it for. Or it can also be the massive cargo hold. Yeah,
and you've got your communications up there, your flight surface controls,
(30:44):
any KNAB equipment, UM propeller controls. That's where all the
there's there's not much else to it besides what what
you got there in the gondola. What's funny is UM,
I always thought blimps were basically like know, you you
get the blimp in the air and it takes off,
and then that's it, but it's it's at least with
(31:07):
good Year. It's kind of like, um got helicopter parents
almost because when the blimp. When you see the blimp,
if you look around, you'll also find a ground crew
with a bus, uh eighteen wheeler and a bunch of
vans that follow it everywhere because I guess those things
break down. Yeah, and apparently the pilots to their f
(31:30):
A certified and Goodyear pilots also have another training program.
But the pilots are even it's all sort of everyone
is cross trained. It sounds like to work on the
ground or make repairs and um yeah, it's like a
little self contained unit all just traveling around together like
a like anato chasers right. Oh, and you talked about
(31:51):
um the end. You know, if they just took off
and floated around, if the engines did stop, that's exactly
what you're doing. You're basically a hot air balloon at
that point, so you lose control of the flight service controls. Yeah, well,
I mean if it's they call it a free balloon,
so it's buoyant um and it's kept aloft obviously, But
if they lose all the power, then all you can
(32:14):
do is ascend and descend because I think I guess
the rudders and the elevators are also powered mechanisms. I got,
it's not just attached to a cable, attached to a
pedal attached to a wheel. That the guys next to
it sounds like it is though, And as far as
weather goes, they compare it to roughly operating is about
as similar as a helicopter. Like we can fly in
(32:35):
bad weather, um, but we try to avoid super bad weather. Yeah.
I don't blame them, sure, because I mean that's not fun.
You want to be above the Rose Bowl in like
seventy degree weathers. Yeah, So coming up, we're gonna talk
about how blimps fly, and then also the feature of
blimps and if there is such a thing after this,
(32:58):
so chuck. The way blimps flies pretty simple and beautiful
and elegant, if you ask me. Yeah. Yeah, So you
(33:20):
have helium, right, which is they used to use hydrogen.
Helium slightly heavier than um hydrogen, but not that much more.
You don't notice a difference, I would guess. Yeah, I
mean you get why they use hydrogen. They weren't dummies, right,
It was lighter than air. The lightest of all the
gases of all the elements from what I understand, um.
And when hydrogen blew up, they said, okay, not hydrogen.
(33:43):
What else do we have? And they said, well, helium works,
and so they started using helium. And helium has a
lift of lift capacity of point seventy pounds per square
foot right, which is one point one kilograms per square
meter um, which means it can lift a pretty decent
(34:03):
amount of wait for just a little bit amount, And
since they're filling these balloons with hundreds of thousands of
cubic feet or cubic meters of these um of helium,
they can look tons and tons of weight, and they
do it by just simple physics. Since helium is lighter
(34:23):
than air. As long as the helium has enough lifting
power to lift whatever the envelope and the gondola and
all of the mechanisms way, then it will rise more
than the air. It will rise into the air. It's
called positive buoyancy. And what you want as a blent
pilot is neutral buoyancy. So that's why you're gonna control,
like we talked about your air bladders to uh get
(34:47):
that thing where it's Once you've got your cruising altitude.
You just want to be at the same level you
yet and you want to fill it up by blowing
exhaust into your air scoops which fill up your balonets.
And the higher you get into the atmosphere, the less
pressure there is, which means the higher up you could
float conceivably, So you want to make sure you get
(35:07):
that air in so you don't just float away, and
you achieve is it negative buoyancy or neutral buoyancy? You said, yeah,
that's what you want. And then when you want to land,
you did you just the opposite um You fill it
up with even more air and then you make the
blimp heavier than the helium inside can lift and it
just slowly comes down to the ground. And I mean
(35:28):
that's it. That's how blimps rise and fall. Yeah, it
is pretty simple. And when they're on the ground, they
just tie it to that little spindle. You've got your
little wheel under the rear. You got a little tractor
to tow it around, maybe a hanger. And uh, that's
the life of a blimp. And it, like I said,
they don't inflate and deflate these. I'm sure it's a
time and expense. Uh, and I think they're running out
(35:52):
of helium too. Didn't we learn that? Yeah, do you
know much about that? Well, we we covered it, and uh,
the I probably the Mars Turbine episode Mars Turbine. Well,
I read a really interesting article and I think the
New Republic, I can't remember. I found it online last night,
and um, it's about the helium shortage and why we
(36:13):
have a helium shortage. And apparently the US has had
a reserve, a strategic helium reserve since in a cave
in Texas, and apparently during the Clinton era, the government said,
let's make some money off of this, or let's make
our money back off of it, so they passed it
all that said, start selling this stuff off Bureau of
(36:35):
Land Management, but only make enough money off of it
to recoup whatever we've put into it over the years,
which is like one billion dollars. So they started selling it,
and by setting the price artificially, they created an artificial market.
Because this is like eight of the world's helium reserves
(36:55):
in this cave in Texas. So whatever the BLM was
selling it for, that's how much the market value was.
But it was artificial, so you had artificially cheap helium
flooding the market, which had a two pronged effect. One,
it led to these scarcities that we're running into now
because they just started selling it off in a fire
sale the private industry. But the other more positive effect
(37:16):
it had was that it spurred all of this technological
innovation because nuclear magnetic resonance, the technology behind m ri
I superconductivity UM molecular analysis, uses helium two super cool
magnets to turn them into superconductors, right, So you need
(37:38):
helium for that. So all these industries were using this
helium from the Bureau of Land Management to like advanced
technology by leaps and bounds, which is one of the
big reasons why we are where we are right now
technologically speaking because of helium. But now we're starting to
run out. There's I think nine billion cubic feet of
(37:58):
helium left in the reserve of in Texas, which is
about a third of what they had when they started
selling it off in the nineties, which would be fine
if we just clamped it out and said, okay, this
is a reserve again. But instead, for some reason, the
government just doubled down and issued another decree to the
beer of lamb. Management is like, keep selling this stuff.
Let's just get rid of all of it for no
(38:18):
good reason. I don't understand why. Interesting, like it made
sense in the nineties maybe, and it had all these
great effects, but now it's like, okay, we understand that
helium is literally irreplaceable. As the article put it, like
there's once there's no helium. There's no helium, Like we
can't go get it anywhere else for manufacturer, and we
have no technology to recycle it. I wonder what the
(38:39):
reason is. I guess money private industry has a lot
of interest in it, and there's good interest to like
using it for m RIS or pharmaceutical research or that
kind of parties. Well that's the thing. So med, the
med and pharma sectors used of helium worldwide. Welding uses
seventeen percent because they use heli in the weld. Party
(39:02):
balloons equals eight percent of worldwide helium use. I have
a feeling that party balloons are going to go the
way of the dinosaur very soon, if they haven't already.
And half of that is the stoner kid who operates
the helium tank just talking funny. Yeah, So that's the
helium shortage. That's the skinny on it. So that I
wonder if there's any other gas they could use for blimps.
(39:26):
I don't know. It seems like a giant waste. Or
I wonder if they couldn't, like do like a hybrid
so it's fueled by hot air like a balloon. Huh,
probably wouldn't. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either.
H Well, I guess we are at the future then
in the future, and depending on who you ask, the
(39:50):
future of airships is either super exciting and awesome and
when you look at these they are, or it's not
going to be funded enough to really um, there's not
a lot of money being pumped into it. Well, the
government was for a little while with the Afghanistan war.
The Department of Defense was like, give us new blimps.
We want these things now. And all these companies ran
(40:12):
in and we're like, here's your blimps, here's your blimps,
give us some money. The problem is is the whole
program got scrapped because nobody could fulfill the enormous orders
the d D was placing four helium Well that makes sense, uh,
And the military is interested because they basically, um, could
be uh a satellite function as a satellite like a
(40:33):
ten thou fot satellite. Yeah, pretty much. Um. There are
people doing it though. Lockheed Martin has a pet one
UM that is super cool looking. It is a try hall.
If you look at it from the front, it looks
sort of like three blimps squashed together. Um. And it
has four big it looks like feet these disc shaped
(40:54):
cushions that apparently for landing and these are also cool.
There's um an the one in California from Worldwide Aeroscorp
called the Dragon Dream. Yeah, and it's different look and
it sort of looks like a whale shark. Did you
see it. It's a single hull, I guess, but it's
sort of kind of flattened out. Um. Yeah, it looks
like a whale shark. They they actually submitted that design
(41:16):
to the d o D and when the d D
scraped the program. Um, they bought their design back because
they want to go commercial like cargo carrier with it. Yeah.
And they're in trouble though because the Dragon died well
it had a roof collapse and a hangar. Yeah, and
they don't know if they have the money to even
fix it. And then continue, well, they have another model
(41:36):
called the mL eight sixties six that it sounds like
they're putting their energy into. It's supposedly can carry two
and fifty tons, which is more than twice the cargo
payload of a cargo seven seventy s twice. And again
you mentioned how little fuel it takes to power these things.
So it'll take a little while for you to get
(41:57):
your package, But the company shipping it as going to
spend too much money delivering it. I still say, if
it's a military like to use as a cargo plane,
I know you can't shoot a hole in it, but
what if you launched a surface to air missile at it?
You know, it's still pull a helium. That's it doesn't
sound like I don't know. They're so high up there
you can't the fact that we have satellites and drones.
(42:21):
It seems to me like the surveillance uses of blimps
or preposterous, especially considering that we could be using that
helium for medical purposes instead. You know, I agree you
got anything else on blimps? Got nothing else? Um, I
got one other thing. If you were fascinated by the
um the way blimps float. I think it's cool for
(42:43):
some reason. I did a brain stuff video about that.
You can calculate how many balloons it would take, like
regular party balloons to lift yourself into the sky, and
I made a video about it. So you go to
a brain stuff show dot com and check it out. Uh.
And if you want to read this article, you can
(43:04):
go to how stuff worst dot com. Type in how
blimps work and it will bring it up. And I said,
how stuff works, I think So that means it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh sterilizing addicts.
Remember that Old One did a show on whether or
not it's legal to sterilize addicts. It turns out it is, Yeah,
(43:25):
and that's the thing. Uh. And this is from someone
who had a personal uh stake in it. Um. It's long,
but I'm gonna edit it in my head as I go. Hey, guys,
just recently listen to your podcast and sterilation sterilization of
addicts had a personal story to share. Um. Until my
mother is a fully recovered heroin addict and I'm grateful
(43:46):
just to be alive. Until I was six, she was
only an alcoholic. However, drug addiction set in fast. My mother,
brother and myself, along with whatever scumbag boyfriend she had
at the time. We're constantly on the run from the police,
looking for shelter and searching for food. My father is
an upper middle class blue collar worker who always had
a sound home environment. When my mother was sent to
prison when I was ten, I was sent to live
(44:07):
with my father. Always had food, to shower and clean clothes.
Was never in fear for being homeless. UH. I live
with my father for three years until I finally ran away.
Once I regained contact with my mother, my father, even
with his financial support, instability was never there, even though
he was only a few feet away. My mother, even
while on drugs, always listened and always cared about my
thoughts and feelings, and that was what was important as
(44:30):
a child. My mother eventually overcame her addictions cold turkey
because she could see it was damaging to me and
my brother. She's been clean for eleven years now and
as an amazing mother, an amazing grandmother to my nephew.
I like to believe that seeing the harder side of
life made me appreciate UH such things and be more
humble and responsible. UH and fearful of what could happen
(44:52):
if I slipped or did not take care of myself.
I don't want to be the poster child for children
of addicts. Whoever, I do believe that we are all
and control of our own lives. Uh. And that is
anonymized as Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, Corney Jake seven, Yeah,
he said, yeah, you can read it, and I said,
all anonymious anonymous size it is there some sort of
(45:15):
name anonymizer on the internet now, he said, please do
just make it something awesome like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh.
That's great and that's a cool PS. I've been secretly
wanting Jerry to be the Tyler Dirton of your podcast.
What that even means? Like made up? But like we
think she's real, but she's not. Okay, are you real, Jerry?
(45:36):
Jerry says, no, Nope, that answers that Cornelius Jacobs the
seventh and you read the Roman numerals correctly, Chuck this time,
good going be I. I UH. If you want to
get in touch with me and Chuck to tell us
any story like Cornelius Jacobs the seventh, UM, please do
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
(45:58):
You can join us on Facebook, dot com, m slash
Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
to Stuff podcast at how Stuffworks dot com and is
always go to our cool home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios How stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:23):
H
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