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by LargoLasskhyfv 297 days ago
Actually it wasn't about the hydrogen that much. More like the hull painted with flammable stuff. With todays materials it couldn't have burned like that. So any airship design of today NOT using hydrogen is wasting buoyancy, and a rare (on earth) element, which could be put to use for more important things.

Out of irrational fear...
2 comments
stickfigure 297 days ago
Also, remember that half the people on the Hindenburg walked away from the incident. Jetliner passengers do not usually fare so well in crashes.
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Fade_Dance 297 days ago
I actually didn't know that. TIL.
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Qwertious 297 days ago
FWIW it was about hydrogen - the Hindenburg was designed around Helium (and thus didn't have various safeties around hydrogen) but due to embargoes against Nazi Germany they couldn't get the necessarily helium, so they filled it up with hydrogen against the original spec.
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LargoLasskhyfv 296 days ago
Yes. But still the paint burned first. And the hydrogen didn't explode, there was no "Knallgas". Even in all that chaos, the opportunity to mix in the right ratio with air to enable that, didn't arise. It just flared off.

One could even argue that all that flaring off generated some lift by updraft, making it crash softer, more slowly.

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maxbond 296 days ago
Hydrogen is not picky about fuel air mixture; it will explode at any concentration between 4% and 74% (in air). I rewatched the footage and it sure looks like an explosion to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OetzoO3Csj4

The thermite paint hypothesis is interesting but a bunch of hydrogen airships exploded. The Hindenburg was partly made from metal recovered from the R101. The R101 exploded on her maiden voyage.

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LargoLasskhyfv 296 days ago
At 24 seconds in, that looks indeed fast. But still not what one would expect of "Knallgas" going boom.
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maxbond 296 days ago
We might expect it to look differently, but it would appear that that's exactly what a hydrogen explosion looks like. By what means do you believe the camera, at least a hundred meters away, shakes?
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LargoLasskhyfv 296 days ago
Did it shake by a blast? Or was it just hastily turned around, to catch the flames?

I've watched many videos about that in the past, even ones where there were overlays with 3d-point-clouds.

Not in the mood to analyze this one further. Have doubts about it being really 'real time', conversion errors, whatver.

Maybe our understanding of 'explosion' is different. By explosion I mean something coming apart fast in an instant, with a bang, things flying away, shockwave.

That wasn't that, more like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflagration

Caused by whatever. Very likely propagated by the flammable paint on the hull. Like a flash fire.

Which was my initial point.

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