“What’s most intriguing about the 1925 crash of USS Shenandoah, America’s first rigid airship, is that the most modern state-of-the-art flying machine of the

Jerry Copas adds a new dimension with powerful images. The USS Shenandoah was a 680-foot-long rigid airship and the pride of the American Navy

The world’s largest aircraft returned to the skies since its last crash landing in August and flew for three hours today. The $33 million hybrid airship, which is part blimp, aircraft, and helicopter and is the length of a football field, took off over Bedfordshire, in England.

The French company Voliris made the smallest hybrid airship, which showed success with piloted test flights and landed in the Guinness Book of World Records. Now the company is moving on to make similar but larger airships to carry 40-foot containers and cargo up to 30 tons in areas with no infrastructure.

Amazon’s patent for floating warehouses suspended beneath giant blimps at 45,000 feet–and deploying drones from that altitude to deliver your packages–was approved last December. But before we discuss aviation rules and restrictions for deliveries by drones, how does Amazon plan to keep the airship, with its giant warehouse, afloat in the thin air?