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Updated: May 26, 2025
The NON-RIGID type, on the other hand, can be quickly deflated, and the parts of the car and engine can be readily transported to the nearest balloon station when occasion requires. In the SEMI-RIGID type of air-ship the vessel is dependent for its form partly on its framework and partly on the form of the gas envelope.
Spencer gave up in despair, and let the monster air-ship drift with the wind over the northern suburbs of the city until a favourable landing-place near Barnet was reached, where he descended. The Spencer air-ships are of the non-rigid type. Spencer air-ship A comprises a gas vessel for hydrogen 88 feet long and 24 feet in diameter, with a capacity of 26,000 cubic feet.
His experiments were made at the same time as those of Santos-Dumont, and he could not be ignorant of the measure of success which the younger man was attaining with the non-rigid balloon. But it was a fact that all the serious accidents which befell Santos-Dumont and most of the threatened accidents which he narrowly escaped were fundamentally caused by the lack of rigidity in his balloon.
So far as the French effort is concerned the Bayard-Clement type is the best example of the non-rigid system; it is represented in Germany by the Parseval class. The Gross airship has been definitely adopted as a military machine by the German authorities, and figures in the "M" class.
The North Sea type of non-rigid was capable of travelling over 20 hours at full speed, or forty hours at cruising speed, and the number of non-rigids belonging to the British Navy exceeded that of any other country. It was owing to the incapacity apparent or real of the British military or naval designers to produce a satisfactory rigid airship that the 'N.S. airship was evolved.
The one and only attempt to out-Zeppelin the Zeppelin resulted in disaster to the craft before she took to the air, while the smaller craft carried out upon far less ambitious lines were not inspiritingly successful. Latterly the non-rigid system has been embraced exclusively, the craft being virtually mechanically driven balloons.
A good type of the non-rigid air-ship is that built by Major Von Parseval, which is named after its inventor. The Parseval has been described as "a marvel of modern aeronautical construction", and also as "one of the most perfect expressions of modern aeronautics, not only on account of its design, but owing to its striking efficiency."
The nearest to a solution of this problem, so far, consists in the mast carrying a swivelling cap; this has been tried in the British service with a non-rigid airship, which was attached to a mast in open country in a gale of 52 miles an hour without the slightest damage to the airship.
An upward or downward inclination is, as we have seen, effected by the ballonets, but in cases of emergency these compensators cannot be deflated or inflated sufficiently rapidly, and a large movable weight is employed for altering the balance of the vessel. In this country the authorities have hitherto favoured the non-rigid air-ship for military and naval use.
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