Slow Motion

Concorde never really took off, at least not as an economically viable mode of transport. It was always a folly brought about and continued by national and corporate pride posturing on the world stage. With its demise, perhaps there will be a return to a somewhat less urgent mode of travel - Zeppelin GmbH has applied for a certificate of airworthiness for its new airship, the Zeppelin NT.

In the 1930s, the 26 metre Zeppelins were the equivalent of Concorde. The Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg halved travel time between Europe and the Americas: New York was no longer four and a half days at sea, but two days in the comfort of an airship with a superb view. These leviathans of the skies were the culmination of years of trial and error. There had been airships, or more accurately, steerable balloons (in French, ballon dirigeable - hence the misnomer 'dirigible'), of one form or another, making precarious progress above the earth for about 80 years. Count Zeppelin was responsible for the building of the first rigid airship. Not a great inventor, engineer, nor businessman, he was, however, rich, well connected and a good leader. The 'Crazy Count' organised a specialised team to build a complex frame to hold balloons filled with hydrogen. His first effort took off on July 2, 1900 and remained airborne for 18 minutes.

After a few years, the Zeppelins stopped having regular accidents, and in 1909 the Count founded the worlds first commercial air transport company. Until the beginning of The Great War, four Zeppelins ran domestic services all over Germany. Airships of every description were built by most of the European powers, Russia, and Japan, but Germany was the only country to use rigid airships during the First World War. Originally flown for reconnaissance, by 1915 they had begun to conduct a bombing campaign over England, which, though terrifying to the population, was largely ineffective. In the 1920s, airships were seen as the transport of the future. The Graf Zeppelin circumnavigated the world while, in England, there were plans to link the Empire with a network of airship connections.

Boats are the oldest form of long-distance human transportation and throughout the ages nearly every vision of how the skies would be conquered involved extensions of nautical technology. The drawings of lighter-than-air craft by two 17th-century Jesuit fathers, de Lana and de Gusmão, are typical, involving sails, rudders, and a hull. Likewise, every effort was made to make the airship experience akin to that of travelling on an ocean liner. The advertising brochure for the Hindenburg stated 'Those who are accustomed to steamship travel will soon find themselves at home in an Airship.' They were equipped with luxurious cabins, a dining saloon, drawing room, reading and writing room, and, somewhat alarmingly considering the combustible nature of hydrogen, a smoking saloon. The pitch continues: 'The prophetic vision of Jules Verne has been realised... you are conducted inside the hangar, there is the majestic airship, you are dazzled by its immense size and the beauty of its silver grey form.' Though similar in colour, the new Zeppelin NT is somewhat more modest: it has twelve seats and an optional toilet.

Other, grander airships are in the pipeline. The Skycat, if it is ever realised, will be a revolutionary craft that combines a variety of modern technologies with the original lighter-than-air principle. This particular airship will come in three sizes: huge, immense and 'biggest aircraft ever to fly', the hubris of which sounds like an invitation to spectacular disaster.

The airship did once, and could yet again, combine the best aspects of planes and ships. The idea of spending a couple of days floating serenely above the earth in my own cabin is far more appealing than spending weeks on a boat surrounded by people I don't like (Dr Johnson believed that ship-board travel was like being in prison - with the added peril of drowning), or several miserable hours on an aeroplane. The speed of passenger travel in the future will, of course, be dictated by economics and therefore, for most, the seating arrangements will always be a choice between unsatisfactory degrees of discomfort. Airlines are currently touting the latest in luxury as being able to lie down in a 'bed' on long flights. In fact, this is merely an effort to compensate for the hot, dry-as-a-desert, germ-laden air, swollen ankles and barely achieved half-sleep. It is a far cry from 'an experience the enjoyment of which one will never forget' promised by the Hindenburg. It might be added that plummeting to the ground engulfed by flames would also be an experience one would never forget.

As the early 20th century promise of warp speed for all recedes into the distance, perhaps there is a market for unhurried airborne travel. Frantic corporate travellers will keep their extra few centimetres of leg room but the truly wealthy will flaunt their repose by passing a few days journeying in slippered luxury. (Rather like the Comte de Lautreamont who, to draw attention to his life of leisure, would take his pet lobster on weekday strolls through the Bois de Boulogne.) Modern life is infected by a sense of urgency borne by an obsession with speed. Faster is not necessarily better. Slower will be cooler.