^ 6 Comments...

1. Tamayo
   April 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 am

   Perhaps the oddest thing about this is Kiyohara being permitted to smoke aboard an airship filled (almost certainly, given economic considerations) with gaseous hydrogen. (?)

2. RMG
   April 22nd, 2008 at 6:39 am

   Clearly they’re magic airships.

   EDIT: Or to put it a bit less flippantly, enough people in the Core Economic Zone smoke (imagine one of those American movies from the 1940s where plumes of cigarette smoke constantly drift lazily across the screen), and are adamant about not being told where they can and can not smoke, that airship lines have invested significant time and effort making airships safe to smoke in.

3. UVcatastrophe
   April 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   Today, as in the time of the Hindenburg, the largely non-flammable Helium is the preferred choice of lifting gas. The Graf Zeppelin only used hydrogen due to a U.S. embargo at the time, for instance.

4. raya
   April 22nd, 2008 at 2:28 pm

   This is beautiful, Ben.

5. Stig
   April 22nd, 2008 at 3:08 pm

   Very beautiful. Made more so by the contrast between her memories and the present.

6. Tamayo
   April 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 pm

   UV: helium is far, far more expensive than hydrogen. Both elements are light enough that over time, they escape from Earth’s gravity well into space; but while hydrogen, as was exemplified by Hindenburg, is highly reactive with other elements, helium has no Earthly-temperature chemical compounds. Consequently, hydrogen is abundant on Earth — crack water and you get it — while helium is only found trapped in certain rare kinds of rock.

   It is possible to protect against disasters such as the Hindenburg’s; that particular one was considered a fluke and a consequence of bad design. Hydrogen lift can be made very safe — but I personally would still not want to see an open flame such as a cigarette near a huge bag full of boom, and alarmist watchdog organizations of Takako’s would find much to cavil about.

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