https://www.noemamag.com/the-seductive-vision-of-green-aviation/

Picture yourself in an airship pushing into the northern latitudes. From the vantage of a barstool in the center of a luxurious lounge, you look through panoramic windows to see an Arctic vista scroll past. The ride is as smooth as a cruise liner cutting through a mirror sea. Above you is a white canopy, the base of the great bladder of gas keeping you airborne. Down below, a huge oval shadow glides across the pack ice.

I disembarked from this flight of fancy and came back to reality in an industrial estate on the outskirts of the town of Bedford, a couple hours north of London. For now, the airship of my imagination sat disassembled in front of me — an engine, the top section of a tail fin, a salubrious sample cabin.

Hybrid Air Vehicles calls it the Airlander: a colossal, state-of-the-art dirigible that was originally conceived as a military surveillance platform for the U.S. Air Force. That idea was scrapped as America de-escalated its operations in Afghanistan, but by then a new application for airships was emerging. Aviation is the most energy-intensive form of transport, and in recent years the industry has come under intense scrutiny for its environmental footprint. Unlike a passenger airplane, a passenger airship — buoyant and slow — doesn’t have to burn much fuel to stay in the air.

“We’ve completely normalized flying in an aluminum tube at 500 miles an hour, but I think we’ve got some big changes coming,” said Tom Grundy, an aerospace engineer and HAV’s CEO, who was showing me around the research facility.

Many of the scientific principles behind Grundy’s airship are a throwback to a bygone age, when Goodyears and Zeppelins carried affluent clientele around America and Europe and occasionally between the two. Other aspects are cutting-edge. The cambered twin hulls will be inflated with 1.2 million cubic feet of inert helium, not flammable hydrogen like most of the Airlander’s interwar forebears. The skin, a composite of tenacious, space-age materials, is barely a tenth of an inch thick but so strong that there is no need for any internal skeleton. Grundy handed me a handkerchief-sized off-cut. “You could probably hang an SUV off that,” he said. When it goes into production later this year, it will be the world’s largest commercial airliner: around 300 feet long, nearly the length of a soccer field.

But arguably its key selling point — the reason HAV resuscitated a mode of aerial transport once thought to have gone down in flames with the Hindenburg — is that it’s green. Even powered by today’s kerosene-based jet fuel, the total emissions per kilometer from its four vectored engines will be 75% less than a conventional narrow-bodied jet covering the same distance. The Airlander of course is much slower. A maximum velocity of under 100mph means that it’s never going to compete directly with jet airliners. “We tend to think of it as sitting between the air and ground markets — a railway carriage for the skies,” Grundy told me.

“When it enters service, perhaps as soon as 2026, the Airlander will offer premium, multi-day cruises to hard-to-reach places like the Arctic Circle.”

A 100-seat cabin designed for regional travel has already attracted orders from carriers in Spain and Scotland. The prototype we were sitting in, with a futuristic carbon-fiber profile and wine glasses dangling above a wraparound bar, is the central section of another configuration called the “expedition payload module.” When it enters service, perhaps as soon as 2026, it will offer premium, multi-day cruises to hard-to-reach places like the Arctic Circle. Behind the communal lounge, a central corridor will lead to eight double ensuite bedrooms. “You’ll even be able to open the windows,” Grundy said.

I'm from the US in Delft for work and am free tomorrow without plans. I'm terrible traveling by myself and often don't don't do too much. I have walked around Delft. Any recommendations for what to do?

I'm trying to compile a good list of foods that would travel well. I'm trying to avoid anything heavily processed with commercial preservatives (no Goldfish or fruit snacks, etc.)

These foods should keep for at least a day in standard outdoor temperatures. Also, they should not get physically fucked up by being in a backpack all day.

So far, I've got these:
Rucksack Sandwich (Baguette, salami, butter, pickles)
Scones
Granola (inline with avoiding preservatives, this can be easily made at home)
GORP mix

P.S.
Shoutout to Squeeze in Marfa, TX for the rucksack sandwiches.

I'm trying to put together a small amount of kitchen equipment that I can take with me when we travel. And I'm looking for suggestions. I've been stung by holiday let kitchens before missing seemingly small but essential items.

So far I've got:

• Digital scales
• Good sized chopping board
• Sharp knife + sharpening stone
• Peeler
• Tongs
• Measuring spoons
• Small jars of salt, sugar, and oil
• Coffee grinder (yes it is essential)

Edit (community suggestions)

• Swiss army knife
• Probe thermometer

Any recommendations on other things you've missed in holiday houses before?

The rules are you have a magic remote, and you are immediately transported to a location of your choice. You can use it as many times you want, but it will only go to the one location. Where do you put it?

I am taking a trip soon to London and will possibly be adding a couple days in Paris. It's been a hot minute (few years) since visiting the UK and would like to solicit some timely advice and tips. One thing that comes to mind: How important is it to carry cash? Would I need to pay London and Paris street vendors or any shops with cash or will a card with no exchange fees suffice? While we will of course be visiting some tourist attractions like museums, most of our time will be taken up with book stores, record shops, food and coffee shops.

So in the last 12 months I've been to Japan, Reykjavik, Paris, and London by myself, and a couple of more countries with a friend (Brussels, Madrid, Seville, Paris^2, London^2, Reykjavik^2) and I just wanted to jot down some thoughts, tips, and maybe try to answer any questions that people might have about solo traveling.

A full disclaimer, I'm an Asian guy who's relatively tall and broad in stature. The only reason I want to mention this is because I understand that non-masculine presenting people might have different experiences in general, especially when it comes to safety and perception. I'm not saying everywhere is dangerous nor that you should be afraid wherever you go, but I've never had to worry too much about walking alone at night nor being alone in a bar with only a couple of people. My other point of privilege is that I have a job that gives me a lot of PTO and requires me to take vacation even, which makes it easier for me to arrange these things.

I started solo traveling this year, at the advice of my therapist. The one thing he mentioned a couple of times was that he noticed that his patients with anxiety seemed to make a lot of good progress while abroad by themselves, so I took his advice. My first "solo trip" was actually only 24 hours, in London. It was after a week-ish long trip that I last minute joined with a friend who was going to Spain on a work trip.

My first kinda tip/observation comes here. If you're looking to try and spend some time solo tripping, a quick way to do it is that if you already have a trip planned with friends or family, you can always build in a "long layover" to somewhere along the way at the beginning or end of a group trip. I know that Iceland Air does this on their site for you, and Reykjavik is an amazing place with amazing people. I find myself sometimes sorting for 20+ hour layovers just for this.

In London, I learned the biggest thing about traveling by myself that I really loved - that I could do anything, go anywhere, and not have to worry about the needs and wants of other people. Not that my travel companions are bad or not fun, but there's always something in the back of your mind of, "are these people enjoying it?" whereas by yourself you only need to worry about "am I enjoying it?" and that is a major relief.
I find that I've been able to discover more about myself, the things I want to do and see. I didn't feel beholden to hit all the major tourist traps. In fact, I actually ended up in the Fashion and Textile museum. I've always loved fashion and thought that it would be more about that aspect of things, but when I went it was during an exhibit on quilting. The ticket seller looked at me funny and asked if I was sure I wanted to go into the exhibit, and I soon realized why, I was the youngest person there by a couple of decades, sticking out like a sore thumb. But honestly, it looked pretty interesting so I went through.

I learned another thing that day, if you are interested and polite, people are generally very receptive to that. I walked through the exhibits, and it felt like at every quilt I stopped at, a British grandma would come up to me and ask me what my interest in quilting is, what I knew about it, and what I thought about the quilt. I knew absolutely 0 things about anything I was looking at, and they were all super happy to explain to me things about patterns, specific designs on each piece, why each piece was special, and so on. I learned a lot that day, and got to talk to a lot of grandmas and hear their stories and their interests. One was an engineer, who told me that the best engineers loved both arts and engineering, which still sticks with me now.

My next trip was a couple of months later to Reykjavik and Paris. I booked a trip very last minute, within two weeks of the actual flight, iirc. But I figured if I was spending New Year's by myself at home, I might as well... not. I learned about the Iceland Air thing here, btw, effectively giving me two vacations in one. I spent New Years with a group of people I met on the plane, who graciously invited me to party with them, which was amazing.

The thing I learned about my New Year in Iceland is that even though I was there for myself, doing the things that I wanted to do, it was okay to say yes sometimes to things that make you uncomfortable. I'm an introvert in general, with a lot of anxiety about pleasing people and making sure other people are happy. I'm sure others can relate. But being able to spend New Years with a group of people that I have met that same day was incredible because I realized that, yes, these people liked me, and yes, these people I probably will never see again, which lets me truly, honestly be myself without putting up a front because at the end of the day, if they knew who I was and they didn't like me, it's not like I'll ever have to deal with them again. Luckily, I'm still in contact with a couple of them and would love to visit them in the future, but your mileage may vary haha.

In Paris, I learned that it was okay to cancel plans and lay in your hotel room even though there are things you wanted to do. I got a bit sick from partying too hard in Iceland, so I ended up staying in for a night and then some, missing a tour I booked at the Paris Catacombs (which I still haven't gone to even after going back to Paris a second time later in the year), but honestly it was very relaxing. As someone who likes to plan a bit before I leave, missing out on reservations made me learn that I didn't have to stick to the script all the time, it was okay and I'll still be okay. It wasn't the end of the world, though I was out a couple of dollars (I recognize this privilege though, so if you're tight on money please don't listen to me here), but I was getting healthy and happy and didn't need to push myself to do everything, something that I had to unlearn from my prior experiences with travel.

That brings me to Japan, which I just came back from yesterday. I spent 10 days there and chatted and drank with locals, spent time by myself in an onsen (completely naked with a bunch of strangers btw), and got a new tattoo! I'm not sure if I learned anything too specific just yet, though I'll probably need to sit and think about it for a bit. But maybe the lesson might be that I don't have to take a lesson from everywhere I went.

With alllll that being said, I'd love to answer any questions people might have, encourage people who might want to go solo traveling at least once, and give a place for other people to share their experience as well!

My university friends and I (and everyone's significant others, so about ~15 people) are planning a big catch-up trip, which will also be the first time to the country where I live for all of them. Planning has been a little higher friction than I expected, because we want to coordinate travel times to specific cities ("let's spend 4 days in City A, then all go to City B" etc), but people also have specific activities only they want to do (scuba, theme parks, etc) within each city. However, there's way too much to choose from and there's no way we'll do everything that everyone wants to do.

So right now to gauge interest in specific cities and attractions within them, we are just using a private Facebook group where people just make an idea as a post and people vote by liking it, and people can discuss the place in the comments. Things that we have fully decided are just placed on a spreadsheet. This process works but it doesn't feel great.

I've also explored Wanderlog, and I really like the fact that you can easily search for stuff and then place it on a map, but unfortunately its UI doesn't really support "branching" trips where some people will do different things on a given day.

What tools/processes have you had success with when trying to coordinate a big group trip?

In a few weeks, I'll be making a short trip (3 days) to Palo Alto, working in the Stanford Medical Center area.

I'm hoping for some local or experienced insight into "don't miss" destinations for food, culture, history, and sight-seeing. It's likely I'll only have Sunday afternoon and weekday evenings free, so the personal tour may have to be more focused than local guides might otherwise suggest.

My home area has great food, but I'm really starving for Eastern cuisines. I'm willing to go beyond what a corporate travel budget permits if there's truly extraordinary, "can't get anywhere else" dining available.

Your insights are greatly appreciated!

I'm a US citizen living in Berlin, and I'm currently back in the US (Northeast Ohio specifically) for a family wedding. We've got a lot of extra room in our suitcases, so I want to bring stuff back that's hard(er) to get ahold of in Germany. I figured this is a good place to ask for any recommendations from others who live in Europe or have experience traveling!

As an example, here are some of the common recs I've seen in threads on r/germany:

• bulk OTC meds like aspirin and tylenol (not hard to find in Germany but cheaper in the US)
• brown sugar
• double-acting baking powder
• Frank's red hot sauce (maybe other hot sauce as well, Germans are not a spicy people)
• Ranch dressing (I've heard the powdered kind is better bc it's easier to pack?)
• Adobo seasoning (probably other Latin American ingredients too but this one specifically is a must-buy even for my white ass)
• specific brands of candies & junk food not available in Germany (though ime this category is the easiest to find at US-themed international stores, albeit at high prices)
• Levi's jeans for some reason (I don't really get this one tbh but I always see Germans saying it in threads)

I know for sure I'll get home and immediately regret not having purchased something. Anyone with experience traveling between these two continents, please let me know if you think of something missing from this list!

Ok, so the "Going on a trip and have zero idea what to do as a non-tourist..." isn't entirely true like it was in my post about NYC last year, but everyone was extremely helpful and threw out suggestions I wouldn't have even thought about looking for. So here I am again to bug you wonderful people for Tildes Travel Guide 2: Electric Denver Boogaloo

Same as before, staying for a week, I do have a rental car this time (trying to decide between the comfort of a Lexus or sportiness of an Alfa Romeo, damn car guy indecisiveness) so transport is less of an issue, anything that you'd suggest to see/do?

I am in Scotland for a little vacation with a friend, and am looking for recs! We are mainly in Edinburgh, but have a car and are open to just about anything! I don't really mess with touristy stuff, but am willing to try if you think its worthwhile! Also will be here for the rest of the week! We are planning on going to the gardens for sure, but other than that don't really have a whole lot planned. I would like to go to Galloway at night and see the milky way though. I love the scenery so I don't mind a short drive. Thanks :)

GeoWizard's latest series of How NOT to Travel just wrapped up, so I figured now would be a good time to post it all. Here are all the episode, for those interested in watching them:

Two Brits travel Boston to Miami by any means necessary 🇺🇸🇺🇸 (How NOT to Travel America #1)
We purchased a sh*t boat from craigslist and sailed down long Island (How NOT to travel America #2)
We shot some B-Ball in West Philly, and angered a Brooklyn gangster (How NOT to Travel America #3)
Our hilarious quest to get on Dance Cam at the Baseball (How NOT to Travel America #4)
Two British guys hike through rural Virginia (How NOT to Travel America #5)
We bought an old car from a stranger at a taco stand (How NOT to Travel America #6)
Two brits drive into hurricane Ian, and cause carnage on jet skis (How NOT to Travel America #7)

Or if you prefer, here's a playlist of every episode

p.s. The previous How NOT to Travel Europe series is also great.

Last weekend, my girlfriend and I drove down to attend the Monte Vista Sandhill Crane Festival. It's a roughly 4 hour/200 mile drive from Denver down to Monte Vista, with lots of variation in elevation. I got a Tesla Model Y last June, and since then haven't really had the chance to go out into the remote mountains of Colorado with it.

This weekend would be my first such excursion. Getting down to Monte Vista is absolutely no problem. At about the halfway point in the trip, there's a Tesla Supercharger. That, combined with the range of the car meant that conserving battery was no problem at all.

I was worried, however, about how the car would fare down in Monte Vista for the three days we would be there for the festival. There are no charging stations of any kind in downtown Monte Vista itself (though there are a couple of slow chargers on the outskirts of town, slow chargers with nothing around them are kind of useless). However, there were fast chargers in the towns nearby! One in Del Norte, and another couple in Alamosa, both a 20 minute drive out of Monte Vista. My plan was to charge up at those every evening while we were down there.

On the trip there, we left Denver at 100% SoC, and the battery and cabin preheated for 30 minutes beforehand. We arrived at the Poncha Springs supercharger with about 17% SoC, plugged in and charged to 90%, which took about 40 minutes. The reason for charging this high was because I wasn't sure what state the non-Tesla fast chargers would be at when we got down to our destination area. My plan was to head from Poncha Springs toward the Del Norte fast charger; arrive at 60% and charge back up to 90% before driving around to look for the cranes.

We arrived in Del Norte at 60% SoC as expected, but we found the one fast charger already occupied when we got there. Thankfully, we waited less than 5 minutes for the owners to get back finish charging, after which I was able to plug in and start charging.

This charger was advertised as a 62 kW charger, but for the hour we spent charging there, the charge rate never went above 30. I'm sure part of this was that I was charging from 60-90%, and part of it was that it was cold out, and the Tesla lacks the ability to precondition the battery en route to non-Tesla fast chargers. We ended up charging there for about an hour to get the same charge that the supercharger gave us in 15-ish minutes.

Luckily, there was a brewery/pizzeria and a neat antique shop just a block away.

At some point in the trip, I became aware through Plugshare that the fast chargers down in Alamosa were being taken down that weekend for upgrades. They were installing more stalls, and I guess that necessitated taking the existing ones offline. Now instead of 3-4 fast charging options in this area, I was down to just one. I was certain that because those chargers were down in Alamosa, many more people would come up to use the single charger in Del Norte. Further, I knew that lots of people came down for the crane festival, and so I was worried that there would be an increase in the number of EVs competing for this one charger.

When we got to our hotel in Monte Vista, I noticed there were outlets near the parking lot. I asked the front desk for permission to charge my car in the lot overnight, but was denied because "it would cost them too much money". I thought about offering to pay for the privilege, but the person at the desk didn't really seem interested in pursuing that line of conversation further.

Overnight, the battery stayed charged at pretty much the same level, only losing 1% indicated charge. We got up at 5 AM in order to see the cranes take off from their roosting location in the wetlands, and go out into the fields to loaf (this is the technical term :D). We spent the rest of the day driving around the back roads and farm roads, watching the cranes in the fields.

The whole day I was checking the charge point app to see if the one fast charger available to us was in use, in order to judge how busy it was, and to plan when we might go charge there. Surprisingly, not once did I see it in use!

Since we had had a great day watching cranes, we decided to leave a day early. We had enough charge to get to the Poncha Springs supercharger, and from there back home with no issues.

I thought I would conclude with a few bullet point takeaways from this trip:

• Range anxiety is real. I spent a lot more time thinking about where to charge and if I could charge enough on this trip
• Being away from the Tesla Supercharger network sucks. A whole set of fast chargers I was relying on was taken down exactly when I needed them. They're slower, you have to worry about them not functioning much more.
• Tesla is opening a supercharger site in Alamosa! They filed for the permit just this week. This will basically erase the anxiety I had last weekend on future trips
• Total energy costs for this 500 mile trip were about $35. That feels pretty cheap to me!

I’m going to be in Washington, D.C. for the next week (give or take a day). I’ll be staying in Arlington, VA and plan on utilizing public transportation while I’m there.

Any unconventional recommendations or things I should know?

I'm spending 5 days in NYC starting next week. While I've traveled plenty, it's almost always been alone, frequently short term (2-3 days including flights in and out), and work related so I had people to either ask for suggestions or just went out on my own. If the trip didn't fit into the above categories it was typically to somewhere I'm relatively familiar with or had a lot of lead time to prepare my trip.

That is not the case right now. I've never had any interest in NYC so I don't have a list of places I'd like to experience in my head, I don't have a ton of time to research a plan and filter out all the "top 10 things to do in NYC" websites, I'll be with my wife so going off wandering on my own isn't an option, and this will be the first trip where I don't have a rental car to just go get lost in and see where my randomness takes me. I'm also not the tourist type so there's no interest in "the tree" or Times Square, etc.

So I beseech you fellow Tilderinos, as someone that doesn't care about being a tourist, doesn't have a social media presence to feed I'm-here-and-you're-not selfies to, and needs actual destinations to go to due to a lack of independent mobility, what should someone with pretty much 72 hours of completely free time in NYC actually do?

So, next year, I will spend two 3-month periods at a place that is 1400km away from my home. Because of my somewhat large, superfast dog, with a tendency to run away and topple people, I will have to go by car, dog in hand (don't worry, I won't be driving :P). Each roundtrip amounts to 42 hours on the road.

At the same time, I'm budgeting for a new desktop workstation for gaming and video editing (so both fun and work). I could get a much inferior gamer laptop with the money, but I wanna have a good machine for things like Adobe After Effects, and the inferior part bothers me quite a bit.

Hence the question: how can I safely transport a desktop PC plus monitor for an 84-hour car trip? Should I take it "whole"? Disassembled? Or not at all? I really don't wanna screw up my brand-new PC!