The giant hangar poised for an aviation revolution

"Flying an airship is unlike flying any other aircraft because it's lighter than air and floats, instead of sinks, when you put the power at idle," says Andrea Deyling, a pilot and director of airship operations of Brin's airship company, LTA Research. In the first half of the 20th Century, Akron in Ohio, was known as the "Rubber capital of the world" because it was home to great American tyre manufacturers such as one time arch-rivals Goodyear and Firestone, and it soon became a centre of airship development thanks to the connections between the two industries. Akron University grew on the back of the tyre and airship manufacturing industry, and its College of Engineering and Polymer Science is one of the top faculties of its kind in the United States. The USS Akron was the first airship built in the Airdock. One of Weston's first stops as CEO was the last place airships were manufactured in the USA, and he spent a week in the archive of the University of Akron. Driven in part by the same desire to access deep knowledge about the airship industry, LTA has been working with University of Akron's College of Engineering and Polymer Science since 2017. For now, airship hangars like the Airdock are all that remains of the brief golden age of the airship, drawing people with their massive size and their poignant sense of history - or a faint echo of the 30 years at the turn of the 20th Century when airships dominated books, magazines, movies, art, and design.