> The real danger of allowing smoking on a hydrogen airship — and the reason it was strictly confined to the closely monitored smoking room — was the risk of a fire;
I'd say... contrary, allowing smoking in a dedicated controlled place was the safer option. The real danger was not allowing smoking because if you ban smoking, people will smoke no matter if it's banned - and back then, there were a looooot more smokers, so a loooooot more opportunities for someone to behave utterly braindead.
That's also why every modern airplane to this day has ashtrays in the lavatory. There WILL be someone smoking at some point, and better provide them with a safe option to discard the butt than risk having the person throw the butt in the trash bin where it can set the waste ablaze.
Ah. I always thought it was because of flexibility and timespan of airplane use, but it sounds like you are right! Thanks. TIL.
https://simpleflying.com/why-airplnes-ashtrays-lavatories
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2026/04/28/airplane-as...
There’s a video on the first link of a landing in Belgrade that’s deeply funny. “We departed late and arrived early, A Boeing 737 would never be able to do that”
“Why are you reading out numbers to me like I am an old man”
> The real danger was not allowing smoking because if you ban smoking, people will smoke no matter if it's banned.
This same concept is why full prohibition never works. People who want to do something will find a way and it often comes at the cost of being more harmful to society than if they were allowed to do it in a controlled environment.
That's always what I've said too, so I'm now proposing to put all the "want to be murderers" together with folks who want suicide assistance. Make one move, get two results or whatever they say.
Your reply is reasonable. I've always thought the biggest problem to almost anything is human. We sometimes make the most thoughtless decisions and justify them with the flimsiest of excuses. We marvel at the stubbornness of two year-olds, then ignore ourselves.
> I've always thought the biggest problem to almost anything is human.
Makes sense, "problem" is a human invention and without humans on the planet, there wouldn't really be any problems anymore.
> "The real danger of allowing smoking on a hydrogen airship - was the risk of a fire"
Maybe. They had diesel engines, 240 Volt and 24 Volt electric generators, 200 Watt battery powered radio transmitter, backup radio transmitter, a 5.7 million candle power searchlight, an electric oven and hob galley. It's not like there were no risk of heat or combustion anywhere else on the airship.
The real danger was using hydrogen to float the airship.
No, the passengers were in a gondola off the bottom of the airship, the lift gas was concentrated at the top of the airship, some 100 feet above, above an asbestos ceiling. The real dangers were:
- being early in the days of flying. One airship disaster (the British R101) was the airship being extended, not tested carefully, and rushed into service for a political deadline. Another had the vents sealed shut so it hit its altitude ceiling. The Graf Zeppelin was one of the safest aircraft ever flown - a million miles without accident in the 1930s when aeroplanes were crashing a lot. Even the Hindenburg disaster killed 35 people, most of its passengers and crew survived.
- Using cow intestines stitched together by hand to make the Hydrogen lift cells. The stitching leaves holes which could let air mix with the lift gas.
- Many airship accidents were related to mooring, and having humans grab onto mooring lines and having humans try to pull a 7 million cubic foot balloon against the wind and that going wrong.
If we can now do high pressure Hydrogen powered cars, tanks of it in gas stations in urban areas and Hydrogen powered aircraft, and people think that can be safe, we ought to be able to achieve room temperature and pressure airship lift gas with it more safely than they could in the 1920s.
From another page on the site:
"The passenger accommodation aboard Hindenburg was contained within the hull of the airship (unlike Graf Zeppelin, whose passenger space was located in the ship’s gondola)."
https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/interiors/
if cigarettes can destroy the airship you got bigger problems.
I believe real problem was the lighters. Not the cigarettes. And hydrogen was not that risky. Problem was more so that the envelop was too burnable.
Make it illegal. No rational person would through their life away just to smoke.
Feels like this may run into a no true scotsman but this is demonstrably false if you look at the number of marijuana smokers in countries where they impose severe penalties (up to life) on them
I suspect that may be caused by poor enforcement allowing people to gamble with their life.
What if an irrational person was aboard.