Passenger airships utilized lightweight aluminum frames

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When you are building a flying luxury hotel, weight is everything. Historical rigid airships abandoned heavy steel for complex frames made of duralumin, an early lightweight aluminum alloy. They essentially built colossal, floating cathedrals out of the same material modern humans use to wrap leftover casseroles.

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Passenger airships utilized lightweight aluminum frames — STACKY / Transport

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Passenger airships utilized lightweight aluminum frames

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

Tony Jannus piloted the world's very first scheduled commercial airline flight in 1914, transporting a single paying passenger across Tampa Bay in a trip that lasted a mere twenty-three minutes.

French inventors launched the world's very first hot air balloon passengers in 1783, consisting of a highly confused sheep, a duck, and a rooster.

Thomas Fitzpatrick stole a single-engine plane from a New Jersey flight school in 1956 and landed it perfectly on a narrow Manhattan street right in front of a bar where he had been drinking.

Once, passengers could smoke onboard, and pilots navigated with stars like sailors.

Despite the universally famous name, what color is an airplane's indestructible "black box" actually painted?

Hot-air balloons once spied on enemy armies

A bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.