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The only way to travel: by blimp castle.
While airships in general are cool, the Cool Airship turns this Up to Eleven. Most of the time, it will have an impossibly cool design which would most likely be unable to fly in Real Life. Fortunately, fiction has Phlebotinum and/or hybrid designs (heavier-than-air airships that fly with some level of aerodynamic assistance from lifting bodies, wings, rotors, etc.) for that little problem. Cool Airships also tend to be exceptionally big, sometimes so big that they double as Airborne Aircraft Carriers or even airborne cities.
The Cool Airship is the preferred method of travel for Sky Pirates and technologically-savvy Nazis, and is extremely common in classic scientific romances and Steampunk. Technically, airships are far more Diesel Punk, with regards to both style and overall use, but they were actually invented in the Victorian era. The first airship flew in 1852 and was propelled by, you guessed it, a steam engine. Yes, that means blimps were around before the radio, On the Origin of Species, and the Lincoln administration.
It's worth noting that not all airships are Cool Airships. For instance, the Goodyear Blimp is definitely not a Cool Airship. Like the Cool Car and the Cool Plane, the Cool Airship is exceptionally cool. Furthermore, it has to be owned by a major character, or otherwise play a prominent role, such as acting as the setting for a major scene. For massive cool points, it should be appointed like the Titanic, with a casino, bar, and a sultry chanteuse on board for the entertainment of the passengers. Military or pirate vessels are known to carry an internal aircraft hangar and lots o' guns. Either way, any Cool Airship worth its salt usually boasts an Unnecessarily Large Interior* which is actually justified, in Real Life large airships need the vast hull space for weight distribution . It goes without saying that they are usually commanded by a Bad Ass of some sort.
Unfortunately, with the destruction of the Hindenburg in 1937, airships mostly died out in Real Life, so there are few examples in that category, with most modern airships being used for advertising, tourism and surveillance. See our Useful Notes on airships for more information on these craft and their history. Today, it's unlikely that they'll ever make a big comeback and overtake other aircraft, since modern jets are 4-5 times faster and helicopters are more nimble. Then again, even in their heyday airships were never common, seen more as the pinnacle or the titan of aircraft, something rare and newsworthy. However, there is a budding renaissance of Cool Airships being built and tested for niche applications, for example replacing cargo helicopters at ten times the range and a tenth the cost. This is largely fueled by the new development of hybrid(heavier-than-air) airship technology, which gives them much higher payloads, greater speed and more resistance to foul weather. Some other good examples of hybrid airships would be the LEMV and the Aeroscraft.
See Zeppelins from Another World for airships being used to help show the viewers that something is set in an Alternate Universe or Alternate History. The two can overlap, but Zeppelins from Another World are often just a background detail, and Cool Airships (including ones in Speculative Fiction) aren't always used to hint at an Alternate Universe setting. After all, some exist in Real Life.
A Sub Trope of Cool Ship, and so a Sister Trope of Cool Boat and Cool Plane. Related to the Square/Cube Law, Hollywood Density and Balloonacy, depending on how it falls on the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness. If it's a Living Ship, it's probably also a Living Gasbag.
See also Global Airship for the video game-specific variant.
And remember...IT IS NOT A BLIMP IT'S AN AIRSHIP!
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The Goliath and the Tiger Moth from Castle in the Sky.
- Arcus Prima from Simoun. Also an Airborne Aircraft Carrier.
- The thieves' airship in The Daughter Of Twenty Faces.
- The Silvana from Last Exile.
- Mazinger Z: Guru, Count Brocken's aerial fortress. It appears for first time at the episode 40.
- Great Mazinger: Mykeros and Demonika, Mykene army's flying fortresses and aerial carriers.
- The Gekko from Eureka Seven.
- Millennium of Hellsing fame have three airships - the two Graf Zeppelins, one of which withstood fire from Harkonnan 2, and the Hindenburg II, which dwarfed Buckingham Palace and contained an army of 1000 vampires.
- Chao Lingshen's airship in Mahou Sensei Negima!, which served as the stage for the final battle in the Festival Arc.
- When the group gets to the Magic World, there are cool airships everywhere, although they're somehow combined with the Flying Seafood Special. Haruna managed to get her hands on her own Cool Airship by drawing and selling dojinji to the lack of supply magic world and earned a fortune, and the Ala Alba uses it as their base.
- Gaiking: The Legend of Daiku-Maryu, the ship being the titular Daikuu Maryuu. The Daichi Maryuu and the Tenkuu Maryuu are also examples, though the Daichi is more like a Cool Tank. And they're all shaped like dragons.
- Lawrence III's airship Hikoukyuu from Pokémon 2000 and Zero's Megarig from Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior; also the Battle Pyramid (inhabited by Frontier Brain Brandon) most likely qualifies as an airship. All three of these crashed in pursuit of a Legendary Pokémon, no less.
- In Pokémon Special, there's the Team Rocket Airship that can turn into a stadium with a push of a button. Giovanni probably designed it that way specifically for his rematch with Red.
- And Team Rockets' Meowth-shaped hot air balloon, which just happens to be their main form of transportation. However, after they Took a Level in Badass in the Best Wishes anime, they abandoned the Meowth balloon and replaced it with a simple purple hot air balloon with a stylized Team Rocket "R" insignia on it.
- Code Geass has quite a few. The Ikaruga, the Black Knights' Airborne Aircraft Carrier, the Sky Fortress Damocles, the Avalon, which is Britannia's Airborne Aircraft Carrier, and there's also the fact that the above carriers are a standard part of Britannia's military.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! gives us Seto Kaiba's airship, which bears◊ resemblance◊ to your stereotypical blimps or semi-rigid frames (although, considering what it was capable of, it was probably rigid). The gondola on the bottom was large and comfortable enough to host the Battle City finalists and their friends, as well as Kaiba and his employees. There was also a lift which took people to the top of the airship, where a large duelling arena was installed, notable for having Tristan and Duke almost fall of the edge. Yup, children's card games are just that important.
- Hellywood from Now and Then, Here and There is a prime example of this trope. It also leads to the possibility that the world that this show is set in is actually a dystopian steam punk world, since this beast of an airship flies on water! But probably (and hopefully) not.
Comic Books
Film
- The titular school in Sky High levitates, and constantly moves around to keep villains form attacking it.
- Franky's flying RAF base 'Manta Station' in Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.
- Three guesses about which airship it is in the Czech film The Stolen Airship
- In Stardust, Captain Shakespeare pilots a flying ship, called the Caspartine. Literally. Like a sea ship that flies. It also harvests lightning.
- The Luxembourg from The Rocketeer.
- The Hyperion, the airship that carried the expedition in Island at the Top of the World.
- Valentine's flying, possibly sentient Tower from MirrorMask.
- Have to watch again to double check but didn't it just jump really high not fly?
- Indiana Jones and his dad escape from one in The Last Crusade.
- Made all the cooler because it's a REAL Cool Airship, the Hindenburg.
- Max Zorin's airship from A View to a Kill may look like a boring old blimp, but does yours unfold from a construction shack and come with an integrated deathtrap? Max even gets to make a Bond One-Liner.
- Lee Scorsby's marvelously baroque transport in The Golden Compass surely qualifies here.
- The Great Race - Professor Fate has an exceptionally small Cool Airship - two-person, pedal-powered - this troper seriously wants one.
- The C-21 Dragon Gunship from James Cameron's Avatar.
- The 2011 version of ''The Three Musketeers'' has a definitely cool British airship based (in-story) on a Leonardo da Vinci design. Cardinal Richelieu's forces get an ever bigger one near the end of the film and use it to combat the former that the musketeers had hijacked. Both ships crash eventually, but The Stinger reveals Buckingham is back for a vengeance with a whole armada of airships.
- Al Oft the Lightyear blimp from Cars.
- Ratigan's pedal-powered blimp from The Great Mouse Detective, as well as the Union Jack and sardine can-made blimp used by the heroes.
- The Gyro-evac from Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
- Sid Cighwind's new airship, the Shera, in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
- The Skyship One from the Thunderbirds Spin-Off movie Thunderbird 6 is a variation. Designed by Brains, it travels just like a regular airship but uses Anti Gravity instead of buoyant gas.
Literature
- The ship of Eärendil, Vingilot, becomes a Cool Airship in J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Silmarillion.
- Kenneth Oppel's books, Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber, are the very embodiment of this trope: they take place in an alternate history in which airships never lost popularity, despite the Hindenburg incident, thanks to the new element 'hydrium'. This changes technological advancement to an enormous extent (for better or worse being extremely subjective) and airships and ornithopters are now several hundred times more popular than any sea-going vessel. The main character (Matt Cruse, a name which immediately screams "adventure/romance novel") starts out aboard the Aurora, an incredibly luxurious, enormous airship. Later on in Skybreaker, a very low-class ship is shown, and then another high-price ship that can also reach incredible altitudes. In the same book, the plot centers around an absolutely immense derelict airship.
- Robur's airship from Jules Verne's novel Robur the Conqueror. First published in 1886, it is possibly the ur-example.
- Would Pushpaka Vimana in Ramayana count as an ur-example? The book does not spare words in describing the "sun-equaling" splendor of this magical aerial vehicle which is "as fast as thought", capable of going anywhere at the pilot's will and is also apparently sentient enough to understand spoken commands.
- Though Albatross is not a lighter-than-air airship like most of these examples - it is a huge multi-propeller helicopter. The viability of heavier-than-air craft was disputed back then, and such a dispute is part of the plot, with Robur showing his ship is superior to any silly balloon.
- Every single novel in the Timeline Wars series by John Barnes involves a Cool Airship. The fact that the second book is named Washington's Dirigible is sort of a clue; that book ends with a climactic battle on the airship.
- Tarzan at the Earth's Core. The 0-220, the airship used by an expedition to travel to the hollow center of the Earth through the North Pole entrance. Instead of hydrogen or helium, it used vacuum tanks for lift. There's a complete description at the end of Chapter 2.
- The Hieronymus Bosch, the luxury airship that carries the scientific mission to the Amazon in A Season For Slaughter, the fourth book in David Gerrold's The War Against The Chtorr series.
- According to The Areas of My Expertise, President Hoover spent the better part of the 1930s on his hoveryacht in the Caspian Sea. In the sequel, John Hodgman rides around in a zeppelin called The Hubris, given to him as a gift by Emo Phillips.
- From the Warhammer Fantasy adventures of Gotrek And Felix, the Spirit of Grungni, built by dwarf engineer turned Slayer Malakai Makaisson to fly into the Chaos Wastes. An airship, armed with gatling guns yet, in a world where most fighting is still done with sword and bow is cool indeed.
- Any and every sky ship from The Edge Chronicles probably fits this trope, more or less looking like a typical pirate ship except capable of flight, and usually with a crew made up entirely of badasses.
- The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock has one.
- In the 1981 book Megalodon by Robin Brown, the protagonists have to transport a sperm whale thousands of miles to their base of operations in the Pacific. They discover that the only aircraft big enough is a MK-10 Low-Altitude Helium Dirigible tank transporter. While the vessel itself turns out to be quite cool, it's agreed by all concerned that the addition of an underslung sixty-foot whale elevates it to Crowning Moment of Awesome status.
- The Victoria from Jules Verne's first published novel, Five Weeks In A Balloon, is cool because it is capable of having its altitude controlled without losing gas or ballast, and therefore of staying aloft for five weeks to explore the heart of Africa. It's kept aloft by a combination of heat and hydrogen gas. The other characters point out how dangerous this is, but Ferguson, the inventor, is willing to take the risk. (The Other Wiki's page on the book has an entire section about how the balloon's mechanism as described by Verne is scientifically impossible.)
- Rudyard Kipling's "With the Night Mail" was set on an airship which got its lift from "Fleury's Gas," energized by "Fleury's Ray." This provided much more lift than hydrogen or helium, allowing the airship to be built with a more rigid structure and thus hit higher speeds. As in 210 knots at one point. (USS Macon maxed out at 76 knots.)
- Robert Rankin's novel, Retromancer, and the recent The Japanese Devil Fish Girl both feature different cool airships. The first plays music designed to herald the arrival of the ship by scaring the shit out of people.The chapter that features the airship attacking New York has diagrams as a chapter picture. The second crashes and burns. The second is touted as a fine example of British engineering. Make of that what you will.
- '70s novel A Game of Titans pits the Real Life Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev against the USAF nuclear-powered airship Grand Eagle. The airship carries a contingent of Harriers. It also has cruise missiles and lasers.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories include airships lifted by 'Ray Tanks'.
- The Arthur C. Clarke novella "A Meeting with Medusa" features a couple of Cool Airships. The story opens with the protagonist as captain of a 1500-foot-long helium-filled dirigible, intended to serve as a flying luxury cruise ship. Unfortunately, the Queen Elizabeth IV is destroyed in a freak accident during a test flight over the Grand Canyon. The action then flashes forward to seven years later, with the protagonist now about to embark on a voyage in the story's second Cool Airship, a nuclear-fusion-powered hot-hydrogen balloon—that will be dropped into the atmosphere of Jupiter.
- Jonathan Howard's Johannes Cabal The Detective has one with a murder mystery onboard. It also doubles as an aircraft carrier, with gryoscopic small fliers on its flat top.
- The Leviathan from the eponymous novel, is a basically a flying whale whose entire onboard systems are also an ecosystem.
- The Ketty Jay from Retribution Falls
- The eponymous vessel in The Voyage Of The Jerle Shannara series is one of the coolest of the Magitek airships the Rovers have started piloting in the 130 years since the previous Shannara saga.
- The Clementine, from the novella of the same name by Cherie Priest. In fact her whole Clockwork Century series is chock-full of cool airships.
- The Mark Twain from The Long Earth. Not only can it fly, it can also "step" between parallel Earths at a great pace. It also has a great deal of laboratories and robots for its AI captain, Lobsang, to experiment with.
- Chanters Of Tremaris features an ancient spaceship that was landed, converted into a city, and abandoned.
- Jack Vance's Durdane trilogy, The Amome (aka The Faceless Man), The Brave Free Men and The Asutra, features passenger airships tethered to dollies on fixed ground tracks, thus making them an odd hybrid of airship and train.
- The Argo II in The Heroes of Olympus, is a flying Greek trireme. While the ballistae that fire exploding bolts are cool, the best feature is the control systems, which include a keyboard and monitor, aviation controls of a Lear jet, a dubstep soundboard, and a Wiimote.
Live Action TV
Real Life
- The Hindenburg is an example. Stunningly luxurious, it was a massive commercial airship made for Trans-Atlantic voyages. It was-and remains to this day- the largest and most spacious aircraft ever built(the A deck alone had more floor space than an entire Airbus A380).The Hindenburg boasted a dining room served by four chefs from gourmet restaurants, a bar with a glass floor, promenades with huge tilted windows that could be opened in flight, staterooms reminiscent of the sleeping car on a luxury train, a double grand staircase, a smoking lounge inside its own airlock, a small library and writing room, a huge stylized mural of the world with moving ships and Zeppelins that tracked the journey of the airship, and even a piano lounge. It also carried unusual cargo, such as live animals and even a luxury car. In 1936, it was the fastest and most comfortable way across the Atlantic, and was considered the airship to end all airships. Unfortunately, it was filled with extremely flammable Hydrogen instead of the inert Helium it was designed for.
- The Graf Zeppelin is the memetic god of this trope. Built in the late '20s, she was a prototype airship intended to train crews and test the viability of a transoceanic airliner, something that had never been built before. To illustrate her focus on prototyping rather than commercial operations, she carried a mere 20 passengers in Pullman-style luxury, contrasted with the crew of 40 or more. However, the Graf Zeppelin ended up going on spectacular adventures she had never been designed for; she circumnavigated the globe several times faster than the airplanes before her, she went on a journey to the North Pole, she explored remote and uncharted areas, she visited cities and monuments around the world, eventually she would settle into the first commercial transatlantic route, flying from Rio to Berlin. After more than a decade of service, she was the most successful Zeppelin of all time, flying more than a million miles and transporting tens of thousands of passengers in perfect safety, despite being filled with hydrogen.
- The US Navy operated six rigid-hulled airships, all but two of them were lost in a variety of accidents or bad weather. Three of the better known to this day are the USS Macon, USS Los Angeles and USS Akron, which were also Airborne Aircraft Carriers.
- While none of the rigid-hulled airships stayed in service long enough to serve in World War II, a wide variety of non-rigid blimps served in maritime patrol duties throughout the war, keeping an eye out for German U-Boats that preyed on Allied shipping. They were spectacularly successful, and had the best mission readiness of any air unit in the military at the time. A large part of what made them effective was the lack of German airpower in the Atlantic.
- In fact, in the modern day, airship-like balloons called aerostats are used as floating radar towers. Essentially a blimp without engines, they are tethered to the ground, allowed to rise up to about 15,000 feet above the ground, and scan for aircraft or ground vehicles for hundreds of miles in all directions. Unlike an Airborne Early Warning System plane, they don't need fuel or crew to stay aloft, so they are very cost effective as long as you don't need to move them.
- Modern hybrid airships being built, like the examples in the page description. These are just the tip of the iceberg, eventually the companies building them are going to scale up to large airships that will be used as cargo ships, cruise liners, firefighting ships, and long-endurance surveillance vessels.
- Some cool hybrid airships of note that are about to be flight tested from around 2013-2015 are the Lockheed-Martin "Skytug," which serves the same role "as a supersized cargo helicopter, but at a tenth the cost," the HAV "Airlander 50" cargo ship, the solar-powered "Solar Ship," and the "Aeroscraft" variable-buoyancy airship.
- The Norge. in 1926, it became the first ever aircraft of any kind to make the grueling, dangerous trek to the North Pole in an epic exploration of uncharted lands. The Norge itself was a relatively small semi-rigid airship, unlike the leviathan Graf Zeppelin which later explored the Arctic, which makes the feat even more impressive.
- The British R34, though fairly plain compared to some fictional examples and, going by accounts from its crew, somewhat unpleasant to live on, nonetheless deserves a mention here due to its place as one of the unsung heroes of aviation history. It was the first ever aircraft to fly east-to-west across the Atlantic, making it from East Fortune in Scotland to Mineola, Long Island after 108 hours of flying against the prevailing wind and putting up with a stowaway, terrible weather and troublesome engines.
- R34 was longer than a dreadnought battleship. Her unofficial name? "Tiny." She also had a resident tabby kitten named "Whoopsie" and the sailors liked playing jazz on the ship's gramophone. I wouldn't call her "fairly plain"!
- There used to be a Californian firm that owned an authentic Zeppelin and would allow its customers to pilot it (after some training, naturally.) Sadly, they've now gone out of business - their Zeppelin failed to secure an advertiser, their primary source of revenue. The airship is being shipped back to Germany. On the bright side, Goodyear is currently building three authentic Zeppelins of a similar type.
- Ron Paul, one of the 2012 candidates for the republican nomination leased a Skyship 600 for his campaign, one of the largest, fastest, most luxurious blimps on the market. It is essentially the private jet of blimps, and definitely a Cool Airship.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Mystara has a lot of these and most of the world was introduced via travel logs of one. Bonus points for having a sourcebook named simply Top Ballista.
- Forgotten Realms magocracy Halruaa has levitating sailing skyships.
- Eberron has elemental airships, where elemental creatures are trapped in a crystal maze engine.
- Magic: The Gathering had The Weatherlight, a flying ship that could travel across the planes, and also served as the centerpiece in an epic plan to protect the world from extraplanar invasion.
- There was also its flying rival, The Predator.
- "Airlords of the Ozarks," an adventure for Twilight 2000, had the players, having returned to the U.S.A., recruited to investigate what turned out to be a neo-fascist movement using airships for raids to build a power base.
- Space 1889 has many of these, usually of flying battleship variety. Some of them are actually regular navy ships modified for aerodynamics and fitted with anti-gravitic propulsion.
- Ditto for the Sky Galleons of Mars, a tabletop game based on Space 1889.
Video Games
- The Kirov airship from the Red Alert series, sporting shark-decals and dropping extremely devastating bombs on the enemy.
- A Global Airship is a frequent feature of RPGs, often it will be an actual Cool Airship.
- The Final Fantasy games have all had airships right from the very first game. Having said that, some are a lot more notable than others:
- Final Fantasy IV introduced Airships as an actual dungeon area that you can walk on. While you don't actually walk on the decks of your airship for anything but storyline purposes; the armed airship fleet is what enables Baron to become to most powerful nation in the game and gather the crystals from other places. Cid's Airship, the Enterprise is a basic model but his second airship, The Falcon, gets a giant drill on the front to bore through the earth. Even better is the Whale Ship, while technically a Cool Starship only ever travels to the moon and otherwise behaves just like the airship as well as a portable inn & item storage
- Final Fantasy VI has Setzer's Blackjack, which not only is a speedy airship but also doubles as a flying casino (sadly no minigames) and bachelor pad. The second airship found in the game, The Falcon, is faster but significantly less stylish.
- Final Fantasy X has an airship that looks more Cool Starship than airship. You can walk it's corridors containing many characters or just use the GPS navigation system to get around the game world (no manual flying, sorry).
- Skies Of Arcadia has all kinds of airships, but by far the coolest of the Cool Airships is the Delphinus, a Super Prototype battleship that your characters steal about halfway through the game. In a world where the majority of airships resemble old wooden sailing ships or World War I-era destroyers, the Delphinus is a sleek and angular death machine based on WWII-era battleships and armed to the teeth with cannons, magic cannons, torpedoes, and a Wave Motion Gun to make the Yamato green with envy. Crew must also be recruited from around the world to man this fortress.
- The Airship Captain in Nox is, well, The Captain of a Cool Airship.
- Wild Arms 3 features A quest to find and defeat a mystical dragon which actually turns out to be a giant flying, sleek, mechanical aircraft from the past , possibly also a transforming giant robot.
- An extremely prominent example of this trope is found in Wolfenstein. The Zeppelin used by the occult-Nazis is like a dark, gritty, realistic version of kilometer-long Castle Wulfenbach, the page image. Naturally, it's also an Airborne Aircraft Carrier, and becomes a literal example of Zeppelins from Another World as it tears open a rift to another dimension.
- Orgrim's Hammer and the Skybreaker, airships used by Horde and Alliance as bases of operation in Icecrown in the new expansion to World of Warcraft are pretty cool. The Hammer is a larger, more badass version of the zeppelins Horde uses for transportation, while the Skybreaker is essentially a large ship with propellers fitted on it (and kept aloft by Rule Of Cool alone). Both of them participate in the siege on Icecrown Citadel.
- More ships of the same models appear in Deepholm in the Cataclysm expansion, the Horde's having been shot down when the Alliance's was taken over by cultists. Another Alliance airship is in the final battle with Deathwing, chasing him when he flees to the Maelstrom. It gets shot down and crashes onto the Wandering Isle, bringing the peaceful Pandaren race into the Alliance/Horde war.
- The Pact airships of Guild Wars 2, built to shoot down dragons and the Pact flagship, an immense airship built with significantly higher tech equipped with a Wave Motion Gun that chases down one of the Big Bad dragon lords of the game in a sequence that is entirely [[Cataclysm original.]]
- Super Mario Bros 3 has an airship run for the Koopalings' fortresses! It's also the source of one of the most epic themes in the series. Several of the game worlds also feature standalone airship levels that will appear on the map after some time.
- Crimson Skies features flying airships, heroic pilots in tiny planes and a world centered around air commerce and piracy. The two videogames focus on protagonist Nathan Zachery, leader of the Fortune Hunters, who steals a flying airship named the Pandora early on and uses it as home base and a flying carrier for the rest of his adventures. Other groups are seen with their own cool airships.
- Drakkengard doesn't give the player a cool airship, since they ride atop a dragon, however later air battles feature enemy airships which must be destroyed section by section, engine by engine.
- Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere has the UI-series blimps; the UI-4052 Cralias (misspelling of Clarias, genus of catfish), which was hijacked by a terrorist group carrying a bioweapon, and the infinitely cooler UI-4053 Sphyrna (named after a genus of hammerhead sharks), which is a heavily armed and armored Flying Aircraft Carrier. It became the symbol of a late game terrorist organization and its de facto moving HQ. All endings require you to destroy this beast, and it houses two of the game's most powerful (read: toughest to beat) planes: the Wave Motion Gun-equipped MacGuffin plane X-49 Raven and the Big Bad's Super Prototype UI-4054 Aurora. Part of the difficulty downing the blimp is that, unlike other airborne things in game, you need to target its weapons systems, sub-engines and finally main engine for it to go down, at least for the current mission.
- The Gravship air-unit chassis of Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri may not immediately appear to be an airship...until you realize that it's a heavier-than air airship using Anti Gravity as a replacement for helium. Look at the model: giant ducted fans on either side—just like a real airship. At this point it becomes really impressive.
Webcomics
- The page image is Castle Wulfenbach, mobile fortress, administrative center and war machine of the Wulfenbach Empire in Girl Genius. It's roughly a kilometer long, has an entire fleet of additional airships to support it, and some of the people who work there haven't set foot on the ground in years.
Western Animation
- Disney's TaleSpin is a notable example for the Cool Airship called the Iron Vulture used by the Air Pirates & Don Kannarde. Functions as a battleship & flying carrier in several episodes. Often has to be infiltrated by the heroes for one reason or another.
- The Dredgible in Drak Pack
- The Excellsior of the "Skytanic" episode of Archer. The captain of which even constantly corrects Archer that "it's a rigid airship!"
AIRSHIP!
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