The airship is a paradox: an obsolete piece of technology for a century ago that has nevertheless been the face of the future for the last fifty or so years. And it looks like it’s on the cusp of a comeback:

Massive new aircraft the Airlander 10 is unveiled

The multi-lobed British craft is helium-filled and 300 feet long. It will be able to carry 48 people, and the company is hoping to make a dozen a year by 2018. The cost and upcoming end of availability of helium might be  tad problematic

A decade ago DARPA and the US Army were looking at a similar, but larger, heavy-lift airship under the “Walrus” program. Sometime around 2005-2006, ATK and NASA were looking down the road towards the post-Shuttle future for the Shuttle booster rockets, including five-segment rockets for the Ares I and Ares V. Some of the redesigns for the booster segments would have weighed a bit more than standard Shuttle booster segments. The problem there was that the existing road transport system – needed to haul the segments from the Promontory facility down I-15 to a the railhead forty or so miles south – was already at the limit theDepartment of Transportation would allow on the highway. So… NASA wanted alternate ideas. I proposed the obvious: use a Walrus heavy-lifter to carry segments straight from Promontory to Cape Canaveral. It would have had more than enough lift capacity and would have been faster than the truck & train. Plus: I just wanted to see a thousand-foot-long airship floating over my house. Who wouldn’t? Obviously that didn’t happen; ATK management looked at me like I was insane. Something about “you want to fly millions of pounds of solid rocket fuel through the sky over populated areas potentially though storms” or some such whiny nonsense. I understand the final solution for dealing with the highway overloading issue was something along the lines of “la-la-la I can’t hear you.”

Shrug.