I just love them so much. Everytime I watch historical footage from the early 20th century I get very sad over the zepplins and blimps. I wish I could see them floating through my sky on a daily basis just doin stuff that isn't solely advertising. They are the closest we have to sky whales. I just love that they float around like that, very joyous and whimsical. Fucked up we don't make use of them anymore. I bet this makes them as sad as it makes me. Relatively low energy cost btw.
I've cried over this while drunk more than once. Think of me next time you call blimps useless technology
Also blimps are genuinely useful. Like how else could you float in place in the air long term? Helicopters will run out of fuel. Planes can't be motionless like that. It's just that we are very fossil fuel coded so we use helicopters for everything and shrug at the fuel use. Is it used for mass passenger movement? No. But weather balloons are kind of the same thing for example. The tech does still get used. Just not exactly as a blimp/zeppelin. Using them as motherships for drone swarms is something that's been explored recently I think.
Border patrol uses stationary/tethered blimps (or whatever they're actually called) that are jammed full of surveillance equipment all along the border with Mexico as well, to name another modern use
I've seen these personally and it saddens me greatly
Really, the amount of stuff we are wasting on seriously useless things, we don't need a new MacBook every year, we don't need crypto miners, we don't need these GPUs for llms, it is ridiculous. I wish we made better use of it
That last bit is an impure and unholy use of the gentle blimp