Dreadnought HolidayPermit me to suggest the claim on Wikipedia that His Majesty's Airship Number One "provided valuable technical experience for British airship designers" is an overly sunny assessment of the featured predicament.
"You lad!"
"Yessir?"
"See that there?"
"Yessir?"
"Valuable technical experience."
"Are you sure, sir?"
"VERY VALUABLE."
"Yessir?"
"See that there?"
"Yessir?"
"Valuable technical experience."
"Are you sure, sir?"
"VERY VALUABLE."
Anyway, more photos of "valuable technical experience" in not randomly removing major structural elements from your lardy-arse airship (song with other traditional Barrow scenes) are available at the marvellous Sankey Archive - https://www.sankeyphotoarchive.uk/collection/
Did I mention this thing had already been sarcastically nicknamed "Mayfly" before it received its definitive answer?
Coprolite9000@DreadShips
I do like how it's a whole new class of ship - of the air, completely avoiding many of the hazards faced by traditional waterborne ships - yet still manages to beach itself on a sandbank.
I do like how it's a whole new class of ship - of the air, completely avoiding many of the hazards faced by traditional waterborne ships - yet still manages to beach itself on a sandbank.
Geoff 🏴@DreadShips I'm hearing that in the voices of Thompkinson's Schooldays.
"You boy, what are you making?"
"Scale model icebreaker sir!"
"On what scale?"
"1:1 sir!"
"Then it's not a model, is it? It's an icebreaker. Melt it down at once."
"Yes sir."
"And don't let me catch you doing it again. Silly boy..."
⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe@_thegeoff @DreadShips I don't understand why Ripping Yarns is all but forgotten. A genuine masterpiece.
Phil Haigh
David Cantrell 🏏@fishidwardrobe @_thegeoff @DreadShips it was recently repeated, and all but one episode (Across the Andes by Frog) was on iplayer, but only for a month. Next time it's repeated it will be at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007ls8p/episodes/guide
New-Cleckit Dominie@DreadShips The, er, popular economic principle that the value of something is how much it cost you to acquire?
60sRefugee@ncdominie @DreadShips In that case there should be a distinction between "value" and worth. 😛
random thoughts@DreadShips it will buff out.
Simon dē Gulielmō 🐧@DreadShips And that's how we invented the articulated airship!
@simonwilliamson @DreadShips
Also known as - the bendyblimp?
(Yes, someone will come along shortly to inform me of important differences between blimps and airships.)
@coprolite9000 @simonwilliamson they removed the keel in an attempt to lighten it - the difference between this and a blimp is perhaps thinner than you might imagine
Passenger@coprolite9000 @simonwilliamson @DreadShips
One of them is manufactured in Terfsbury-Upon-The-Blimp and the other is the generic term.
@coprolite9000 @simonwilliamson @DreadShips
(Yes, I do know the actual difference, but this was funnier.)
FeralRobots@DreadShips "Oooookay … don't do any of it like that then" *is*, I suppose, very valuable technical experience
James Smith 💾@DreadShips as my daughter’s school says, it’s a growth mindset! We learn best from our mistakes!
@DreadShips having said that, “valuable technical experience” is now going to replace “rapid unplanned disassembly” in my lexicon.
@Floppy bit of a segue, but I'm still buzzing about using precisely this argument to get Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell to tell the story of the radio telescope and the Australian microwave. Nothing more fun than a legend and genuine expert getting to tell one of the classic humorous stories from their field, and I'm delighted to report she absolutely nailed it.
@DreadShips ooh that sounds really good, where would a media consumer obtain such a thing?
@Floppy no idea! She was opening a lab and giving a lecture at our local posh school, and my eldest was invited to meet and have dinner with her as a token pleb, so I toddled along to the lecture.
They say not to meet your heroes but she's absolutely marvellous. My eldest and their mate were staggered by the amount of interest she had in them and their plans, and she's very funny too.
@DreadShips oh, that sounds amazing. I was hoping it was a podcast or something 😄
@Floppy sadly not - despite my wife's encouragement I'm convinced I've got a face for radio and a voice for Teletext, so...
BashStKid@DreadShips ‘it was a technical success’ is still a neon-lit figleaf for failure.
@DreadShips Tempted to opine that this is the result of a Naval Airship trying to ship air through its navel … I’ll get my coat.
Rui Malheiro@DreadShips "if you can't be a good example, maybe you can be a terrible warning".
Ian K Tindale@DreadShips textbook landing
Eh?!?@DreadShips
More than 100 years later they are claiming that each His Geniality space rocket blow up "provides valuable technical experience for Tech-Bros-ish spaceship designers", so what?
More than 100 years later they are claiming that each His Geniality space rocket blow up "provides valuable technical experience for Tech-Bros-ish spaceship designers", so what?
mossman@DreadShips is this just a staggering coincidence or were you also inspired by the Guardian's page of historical photos from Barrow-in-Furness which I was looking at just a couple of hours ago...?!
@mossman it reminded me of it, yes!
Steve@DreadShips Having read up on it, I feel bad for the poor thing; let down by some extremely questionable engineering decisions. Well, ‘engineering’ decisions - some seriously defective ideas in how to ‘add lightness’ here!
lopta@DreadShips They done broke it.
DharHPK@DreadShips The front fell off
FirefighterGeek 
@DreadShips "Mistakes were made"
swope@DreadShips learning things like SpaceX.
Peter Sullivan@DreadShips Well, it's TECHNICALLY correct. Which, as Futurama reminds us, is the best kind of correct.
Garrett Latimer@DreadShips I'm imagining a scene similar to the one with Caproni from The Wind Rises with the structural failure, crash, and taking the frustrations out on the cameraman.
@DreadShips I'm struck by how airships all seemed to use orthogonal frames rather than a trusswork or geodesic structure which would have been much stronger.
Ölbaum@DreadShips So you mean to tell me SpaceX didn’t even invent pretending a crash was not a failure?
ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘@DreadShips Did it ever actually get off the ground? I'm thinking not.
@anne_twain No, it didn't. Initially it was three tons overweight, so a programme of removing essential bits and pieces started. One piece lost was the keel, which almost certainly contributed to the airship essentially snapping in half when caught by a crosswind as they took it out of the shed.