Desperate for Depression Era jobs, the communities of Santa Clara, Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco raised 476,066 dollars to
purchase 1000 acres of land in the fertile Santa Clara Valley and put their community in the running for the
first West Coast base for rigid airships. On February 20th, 1933, President Hoover signed the
bill that authorized the Navy to accept the Mountain View property. Half of the five million dollars appropriated for construction went to the
building of
Hangar One, the eventual
home of the
USS Macon.
Sunnyvale Naval Air Station, commissioned on April 4th, 1933, was renamed
Moffett Field after the death of RAdm William Moffett in the crash of the airship USS Akron.
On February 12th, 1935, the
USS Macon ditched off Point Sur, effectively ending the Navy's rigid airship program.
posted by oneirodynia
on Feb 12, 2006 -
22 comments
Robot planes may make phone towers obsolete "...it's a "Stratellite", and its makers believe it will revolutionise the broadband and wireless industry; if it ever gets off the ground.
Wisconsin communications company Sanswire on Tuesday unveiled its almost-finished prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed to fly in the stratosphere 21km above the earth and send broadband and cellphone signals to an area the size of Texas."
This in my opinion is an example of truly innovative technology.
posted by jaydedx
on Apr 13, 2005 -
25 comments
The Death of a Dirigible - "The airship Shenandoah, nose to her high mooring mast, was floating gracefully with the variable breezes. Her twenty gas bags were about 91% full; her tanks loaded with 9,075 pounds of water and 16, 620 pounds of gasoline..."
I was fascinated by this account of the disaster that befell the Navy airship 'Shenandoah', marking the beginning of the end of the era of rigid bodied airships.
[ Via a comment on /. ]
posted by GriffX
on Aug 6, 2002 -
14 comments
