See How Goodyear Launches Its Supersized, Super-Smart New Blimp

The new internal design Courtesy of Bernhard Gehring

In August, Goodyear launched a new blimp—and it can do a lot more than cruise over the Super Bowl. This dirigible incorporates some of the innovations that airship makers have been promising for a decade: a combination of speed and fuel efficiency that should make lighter-than-air crafts the future of shipping, travel, and even disaster response.

Brown Bird Design

Codesigned by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, Goodyear's new model combines the best elements of blimps (bags full of helium) and zeppelins (with rigid bodies). The resulting hybrid has a lightweight endoskeleton that frames out an inflatable 1.5-millimeter-thick polyester envelope. That structure maintains an aerodynamic shape and serves as a mount for its three engines. Old blimps, whose engines dangled from the gondola instead, needed forward momentum to take off and stay in the air. But pivoting engines fixed on the tail and either side of the ship mean this one can hover like a helicopter.

That dexterity, now co-opted by builders less storied than Zeppelin, means today's airships can do much more than preside over sports events. They can drop aid to remote areas when disaster strikes—no runway needed. And that semi-rigid construction means dirigibles will just get bigger and bigger. The world's largest airship is over 300 feet long, and builders tout future ships of more than 600 feet, large enough to carry twice the freight of a 747 using a fraction of the fuel. The cash from that ad slapped on the side? That's just gravy.