On May
6, 1937, a zeppelin called the Hindenburg
blew up and crashed in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people perished.
It was the most state-of-the-art, fastest, and most luxurious way to travel
overseas at the time. It made 10 successful sea crossings the year before, but
on this day, something went wrong. The hydrogen used to keep the craft afloat
ignited and sent the ship down in a massive fireball. Fifty-six people managed
to escape with their lives.
Although helium had been known to be
safer than hydrogen, the latter was chosen because it allowed the ship to
maneuver easier. However, this choice ended up being the wrong one. The
engineering community realized that hydrogen-filled airships were no longer the
safest way to travel – even a small gas leak can lead to disaster. Thus,
airship travel quickly dissipated.
This failure has already shaped the
present – there are currently no airships in service that are made for
passenger transport. This is partly because airplanes are now more efficient.
Also, society regards hydrogen with a lot more caution. Every time I think of
the element, I think of the Hindenburg disaster.
This is interesting because it shows a bit of human psychology. Why didn’t
engineers just replace the hydrogen with helium and just sacrifice the
mobility? People still ride on cruise liner ships on the ocean after the Titanic disaster. Why didn’t engineers
think passengers wouldn’t ride on safer helium airships? Was it because the Titanic accident was clearly avoidable
while the Hindenburg failure was
unforeseen and unpredictable? The fear factor may have a big role in this case –
fire is apparently scarier than water, falling is apparently scarier than
drowning.
It is worth noting at this point
that airship advances were not completely abandoned. Regardless of what
disaster happens, society goes back and fixes the problem and continues with
the project. Humanity is a race of risk-takers. We all advance knowing that
loss of life is possible. We all advance knowing that failure may happen. Even
when it does happen, we recover, fix the problem, learn from the mistakes made,
and continue on. This makes me wonder – what price do we actually put on a
human life when we consider carrying out our projects for progress? This aspect
of humanity leads us to think that we are willing to die to advance our technology and make
life easier. It’s sort of an ironic existence.
