re: Fascinating Information about WWI German War Zeppelins (WWI factoid thread)

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I'm sure you will correct me if Im wrong, but WWI ended in 1917.

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OMG. Just stop. Didn't you say earlier you would put your history knowledge up against anyone's?

Somebody watched NOVA the other day.

The funny thing is you guys act like I'm a complete moron because I was off by a couple of years on dates that I pulled off the top of my head. I'm not a history professor, nor am I current history student. I do have a degree in history though and thus have a general knowledge of a broad subject. I didn't look any of the dates up. I was generalizing when I said two decades. I've been out of college since 1997 and thus don't always recall with exact specificity all dates. However, I'm sure you will keep making fun of me and that's fine, it's the Internet.

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The funny thing is you guys act like I'm a complete moron because I was off by a couple of years on dates that I pulled off the top of my head. I'm not a history professor, nor am I current history student. I do have a degree in history though and thus have a general knowledge of a broad subject. I didn't look any of the dates up. I was generalizing when I said two decades. I've been out of college since 1997 and thus don't always recall with exact specificity all dates. However, I'm sure you will keep making fun of me and that's fine, it's the Internet.

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I don't think you're a moron, and even if you were there's nothing wrong with not knowing something. It turned out that 480 was just joking, but nobody other than you tried to bash him about the Nazi comment. In doing so, you also made a gaffe in regards to correct history, while telling someone else to pick up a book.

If you're going to criticize someone's lack of history knowledge, then make damn sure you don't state an historical inaccuracy in doing so. As you said, this is the internet and you're not going to get away with it.

Edit: And hopefully you learned your lesson.

Thanks for lightening the mood Sid. That's pretty funny.

Sounds good to me


Back on the subject of dirigibles and lighter-than-air gases, didn't the US helium reserve liquidation (or attempted) cause a big shortage of helium? I think I remember someone on the poli board criticizing that move a while back, and the fact that a great amount of helium was just released into the atmosphere and subsequently escaped the atmosphere.

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The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States holding over 1 billion cubic meters (1E9 m3) of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome[1] reservoir. The reserve was established in 1925 as a strategic supply of gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Space Race and Cold War.

The facilities were located close to the Hugoton and other natural gas fields in southwest Kansas and the panhandle of Oklahoma, plus the Panhandle Field in Texas.[2] The natural gas in these fields contains unusually high percentages of helium, from 0.3% to 2.7%; they constitute the largest source of helium in the United States. The helium is separated as a byproduct from the produced natural gas.

After the Helium Acts Amendments of 1960 (Public Law 86–777), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field.[3] This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified.

By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve.[4][5] The resulting "Helium Privatization Act of 1996" (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to start liquidating the reserve by 2005.[6]

By 2007, the federal government was reported as auctioning off the Amarillo Helium Plant. The National Helium Reserve itself was reported as "slowly being drawn down and sold to private industry."[7] However by early 2011, the facility was still in government hands. In May 2013, the House of Representatives voted to extend the life of the reserve under government control.[8]

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Color

Hell yeah I watched NOVA! One of my favorite tv shows. The Zeppelin episode was great. Full of surprises.

Was cool about this talk of Zeppelins, is that Good Year and other blimp advertising firms are moving to the zeppelin.

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Goodyear is about to succeed where the American military has failed. Rigid airships, also known as zeppelins, seem perpetually stuck in the past, associated more with the optimism of the 1920s and then the fiery doom of the Hindenburg crash. Now, it looks like Goodyear will have their first zeppelin flying in 2014.

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LINK


Also, it wasn't necessarily the hydrogen that doomed the Hindenburg, but the highly flammable "fabric dope" that the fabric was painted with to make it air tight. Had it been made of a flame retardant material, the flames would only be possible at points where the hydrogen has contact with oxygen.

But that event more than any other ruined public perception of Zeppelins. They were a marvel for their times and it is interesting looking into them.

Damn guys, I don't post very much, but I actually have some WWII knowledge, I don't know if I should start a thread for it.