From the outside the airship looks like a flying elephant, wings, big ears, a trunk and all of the other things that make it look like that animal. However, inside, suspended by a twisted phalanx of steel cables, is monstrous metal cylinder with a hole large enough for a small plane to fly through. It’s not exactly a single structure, but 50 cells, resembling a giant 28-sided motion picture film reels, riveted together. Then each of them are further divided into six wedges, which hold the gas bags.
Unlike the air transports of old, where one giant gasbag would keep the craft aloft, this one has three hundred.
It’s expensive, and will require constant maintenance, but offers a degree of unmatched safety.
The 25-foot wide passageway running through the center of its entire length suspends a 12-foot wide maintenance highway equipped with two Travelators moving from stern to stem and stem to stern.
A slide resistant catwalk separates the moving ramps.
The motorized ladders hoist a four-foot square, rubberized steel platform, along a three track 175-foot vertical route. The rider is secured in a tubular framed, waist high red mesh cage with an automatic magnetic locking safety fence. The operator controls the speed of ascent and decent through a tulip shaped lever.
This elaborate network of moving ladders and catwalks allows all portions of the gas cells to be readily accessible to crewmembers checking for leaks or performing repairs.
Pointing to the vast jungle of cables, gas silos, water ballast bags, and assorted hoists and pulley, Hatch says with an ironic chuckle “this is a mischievous monkey’s paradise.”
The Clockwork Prodigy skips ahead of Hatch a few paces to be the first to get to the Travelator. Steadying herself by grasping the curved handrail, she squats over the terminal plate, examining the shallow channeled metal steps unfold from under the brass toothed comb.
