Airship

An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air boat-like vehicle which is able to soar through the air via one of multiple propulsion devices. The airship has been used throughout history for transportation of passengers, transportation of cargo and fishing for flying fish. 
== Etymology ==
The word airship is a conjunctive form of the two English words "air" meaning gaseous substance and "ship" meaning large vessel that floats.
Some people prefer to refer to the airship as an airboat or skyship because they think the proper name airship is not up to their standards.
== History ==
First mention of the airship dates back to the 12th century in China, at the time some philosophers theorized that if one were to equip a typical vessel with the mythical unobtainium one could produce a ship that flew trough the air, however, the unavailability of said material at the time blunted further research in this matter.
It wouldn't be until the 16th century that the moors, plotting to conquer Spain, devised an alternate source of energy in the form of Dilithium crystals, material of which they found plenty on old Egyptian ruins, some theorize it was left there by aliens who visited Earth in ancient times. On the course of a few years the Moor Airship fleet laid siege to the Spanish region and much of continental Europe. When all seemed lost some random guy noticed that Queen Isabella of Castile shat bricks of dilithium, this quickly evened the field for Europeans who came up with an airship fleet of their own. The conflict culminated on the Battle of Lepanto, an epic 5 days airship battle fought over the skies of the Mediterranean. The result of said battle was the complete obliteration of all airships on both sides and the decease of everybody who was ever involved in the construction of these vessels. 
In the years following the Battle of Lepanto the Holy Inquisition would brand human flight a heresy punishable by death, so it was that the knowledge of airship craftsmanship was lost for the next centuries.
In the 19th century, fascinated with the stories of flying ships, the Wright brothers set foot on reviving the long lost technology using the then popular steam engine as power source. After many years of research their first airship, rightfully named airship one, was tested. This airship unfortunately crashed after the left brothers showed up hammered after a night of epic partying. Even though the test ended in a crash, the event was viewed as a success as the airship maintained flight for 23 seconds. After further research, airship two was designed. This time, before the air captain could give the vehicle a command, he had to lift one leg, recite the alphabet backwards then walk a straight line. This solution worked at first until the boom in which the number of airships flying at a time exponentially increased. Due to the increasing traffic and the incredibly long time to get the damn airship to do what you wanted it to do, there were many mid air airship collisions. This problem was solved by the invention of the blowtest device where an air captain had to blow a tube and a sober, drunk or too drunk reading would appear. This system still remains in service today.
When in 1852 Commodore Matthew Perry visited Japan on board the Enola Gay Airship, the cultural shock on the Japanese population prompted the Emperor of Japan to end the closed doors policy. In order to make the Japanese get used to this technology, Japanese game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi was commissioned to produce games that prominently featured airships, so was the Final Fantasy video game franchise born.
== Casino Airships ==
In the years of the alcohol prohibition in the United States some American entrepreneurs would use airships for the purpose of smuggling, as the airships flew over the major American cities they would drop barrels of rum from the deck to down below where the sober waited, this practice came to be known as rum-flying. Since the other major activity of these American entrepreneurs was gambling, it came as a natural progression the introduction of casino airships during the second part of the 1920's, these would pick up people from United States, and fly them over to international waters or in some cases outer space, where they could gamble and drink alcohol at their leisure, safeguarded from the law enforcement agencies.
The use of casino airships came to an abrupt end in 1929 when Al Capone accidentally crashed his airship into Wall Street, thus causing World War II, this event is known as Black Tuesday.
== Role In World War II ==
During World War II Adolf Hitler ordered German scientist Led Zeppelin to come up with a type of flammable airship that could fly over to America and self-detonate, Zeppelin's prototype worked on helium but that wasn't flammable enough, so a revision was ordered which used the more flammable element hydrogen; however, production of zeppelins was increasingly costly so in the end only two airships were produced, of these two only one successfully caught fire in American territory causing some minor damage, this combined with the realization by Hitler that Zeppelin did not liked them Nazis that much after all caused them to put him on a black list and to publicly deny the very existence of zeppelins, thus the project was abandoned.
== Modern Use ==
Today, the primary function of airships is to transport cargo and fish. Due to its slow speed, the airship is no longer used to transport passengers. There have been talks from the Swiss Army about possibly purchasing some airships to protect swiss airspace which will keep the country safe from smugglers trying to steal the recipe for swiss cheese and the blueprints for the swiss army knife.
== Airpirates ==
The airship's use for cargo transportation and air fishing cause a fully loaded airship to be worth millions of dollar. As a result, criminals who have become known as Airpirates have gathered to board airships. After boarding an airship, these pirates will either hold the crew hostage or commandeer the airship and steal its cargo. This is especially the case in air fishing airships as a flying ship is sure to fetch a rather high price at any fish market. Since these acts of piracy mainly occur in international air, there is no one country taking charge of enforcing anti-airpiracy laws. According to international anti-airpiracy laws, the maximum sentencing for a convicted airpirate is a two year prison sentence with a cellmate named Bubba who has what many refer to as a third leg. Along with the prison sentence, the airpirate must the register as registered airpirate offender also known as a RAO.
Category:Transportation
Category:Flying machines
Category:Victorian era