e space and lifting power of this airship would
be for it to carry a crew of about 20, a useful load of 200 passengers
or 150 tons of merchandise, and 50 tons of petrol, which would give it
a non-stop run of about 5,000 miles.

Airship travel would undoubtedly be expensive. The gas alone to
maintain such a vessel as described is expected to cost about $30 an
hour, which, added to the original investment for the ship and its
house and the wages of the crew and the 200 or more skilled men at
each station, would come up to a high figure. At the same time, the
airship would not afford the element of very high speed which is so
certain to justify any expense which may have to be put into the
airplane. Nevertheless, with the improvements that are sure to come,
with the ability to reach places not touched by other methods of
travel, the freedom from all the delays, inconveniences, and expense
of trans-shipment, this preliminary charge will be largely compensated
for.

Those who sponsor the airship urge that it will be used almost
exclusively for long-distance flights beyond the range of the ordinary
airplane and very little for short local flights. For transatlantic
travel, for instance, it is being particularly pressed, as ships even
of to-day have all the capacity for such a voyage, without the dangers
which might surround an airplane if its sustaining engine power were
to give out.

There are several records which would easily justify it. Besides the
flight across the Atlantic by the R-34 and the four-day trip of the
German airship from Bulgaria to Africa and back, a British airship
during the war stayed up for 50 hours and 55 minutes, and another,
just after the armistice, stayed up for 61 hours. An American naval
dirigible a short time after the armistice made a flight from New York
to Key West, 1,200 miles, at 40 miles an hour, for 29-1/2 hours, with
one stop at Hampton Roads. As an example of some of the difficulties
of airship travel, this landing was possible only after the ship had
circled the town and dropped a message asking the people to go to a
large field near by and catch the dirigible drag-net when it
approached the ground. Even at that, however, the time of less than a
day and a quarter for what is usually a very arduous train trip from
New York down the coast to Florida gives some indication of the
possibilities of this method of travel when properly developed.

Practically all the new airships contempl