Lightning is thought to have struck the hydrogen-filled dirigible.
Although airships made notable advances as military and passenger vehicles in the first half of the 20th century, gains in the capabilities of conventional aircraft coupled with a series of airship disasters (the best-known being the explosion of the hydrogen-filled dirigible Hindenburg in 1937) caused enthusiasm for them to fade.
For example, Rinaldo began over a decade ago as the Founder, Chief Designer and Chief Technical Officer of H2 Clipper, which has developed a revolutionary, highly-patented, hydrogen-powered dirigible which utilizes advanced aeronautical, clean energy, and materials technologies.
Such a craft, said the board, would protect powder plants, bases, other vital shore stations from attack and should be very effective against dirigibles whose hydrogen content made them particularly vulnerable.
Two months before aviator Alberto Santos-Dumade made his 1901 flight around the Eiffel Tower in a homemade dirigible, his balloon lost hydrogen and crash landed, leaving the Brazilian-born aviator dangling from the side of the Trocadéro Hotel.
The first manned hot-air balloon, the first hydrogen balloon, and the first functional dirigibles had all been launched in France.
Germany built diesel-powered hydrogen-filled airships, or dirigibles, such as the Hindenburg, which flew North Atlantic schedules between Europe and the United States during the summer months.
The fire was officially attributed to a discharge of atmospheric electricity in the vicinity of a hydrogen gas leak from the airship, though it was speculated that the dirigible had been the victim of an anti-Nazi act of sabotage.
Hydrogen was once used for inflating lighter-than-air vessels, such as dirigibles and balloons, but now helium is generally used because it is nonflammable.
To replace just America's surface transportation with cars and trucks running on fuel cells powered by hydrogen, America would have to produce 230,000 tons of the gas -- or enough to fill 13,000 Hindenburg dirigibles -- every day.
