SKYSHIPS.org
- The Online Clubhouse for All Things Dirigible -
There is just something about Airships that grabs our Imaginations!
You might be a history buff or a science-fiction fan,
You might love vintage technology or you might be a visionary for fuel-efficient flight of the future...
In any case, if you love Vessels that Sail through the Sky, this website is for you!
There is an abundance of information about Airships on the Web--if you look hard enough, but if you are just looking for the history of flight, airships seldom appear, and when they do, they are treated almost as failed experiments and flights of fancy. Poorly understood, often overlooked, and mostly remembered for the disasters. The great achievements of human flight that were first made in airships have been largely ignored in favor of the airplane and are almost always left out of histories of flight.
Go ahead, try it, look for most "Firsts" in flight from any search engine, read the websites and see if airships are given their rightful place or just ignored completely!
Even so, airships have a hold on our imaginations in a way that defies that very dismissal. So, why not set the record straight and have a venue for a proper history of flight? Or even a venue for thoughtful discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of Lighter-Than-Air travel? Many of us wonder, "If Lighter-Than-Air(LTA) had had the same advantage of engineering and development that the fuel-intensive Heavier-Than-Air (airplanes and helicopters) Flight industry has had, where would we be now?"
This site is intended to be an "All About Airships" site, dedicated to that question, to helping people learn about airships and their history, and to understanding why powered flight has had the R&D advantage over LTA flight. For this, we need to understand the history, the achievements, the failures, the physics, and the economics involved. From there we can look into the possible futures for LTA flight. To get things started, this site will mostly be a personal blog, an information-pool and resource-roundhouse; collecting and digesting what I can find already out there. In time, it is my hope to gather the interest of others who share my passions about airships and establish a community of like-minded folks. The site should grow into a gallery with 'rooms' dedicated to major topics within the field. Each 'room' like a room in a museum or a science fair, to have its focus, with related exhibits and interesting displays, and on-going discussion forums, which occasionally get boiled down to form new displays and exhibits summarizing and explaining the ideas discussed. (to be fair, I say, "Aerostats to Zeppelins" so I can get my "A to Z" effect, but this site is really only dedicated to the Dirigible class of Aerostats.)
SkyShips.org is built as a Wiki, using PmWiki, which means members can comment and add articles and images using any web-browser from wherever they are located. I am delighted to welcome new members to be contributors and to join our discussions. At this point you just need to send me an email ask to join. I will be handling things manually, if things get so popular that I can't handle it I will set up automation, and all the additional security that will require.
Kirk Siqveland
Edmonds, Washington - USA
Kirk@Skyships.org