SciShow Tangents - Flight

Episode Date: January 29, 2019

At some point, we’ve all probably looked up at birds and wished we could fly. And some curious people took that wish and did science! From the biology of flying animals to machines that help humans take to the skies, this week, we’re exploring the science of flight. Why do we travel by plane instead of floating on airships? How long can some birds fly before landing? And what else do they get up to in midair… eating? ...sex? ...sleeping? [Truth or Fail]https://www.businessinsider.com/only-one-place-was-allowed-to-take-off-after-flights-were-grounded-on-sept-11-2011-2011-9[Fact Off]Swifts:https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31063-6Frigate birds:[Ask the Science Couch]https://www.airships.net/dirigible/https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/hybrid-airship.htmlhttps://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/19/the-uss-akron-disaster/https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/pa4q3g/theres-a-push-to-bring-back-the-zeppelin-in-canadas-remote-north[Butt One More Thing]http://www.airpowerworld.info/other-military-aircraft/supermarine-stranraer.htm

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen, including Stefan Chin! Whoa, hello. What's your tagline? My tagline is I have one life philosophy. It's GTL. Gaming, Tostino's pizza rolls, and laundry.

Did you write that? Yeah. Stefan, a producer on SciShow, makes science education happen on the internet. Edit a lot of videos, do a lot of graphics. Been doing it for a long time. I also just got a third monitor for my at-home computer setup. I'm so excited because now you can spread all the windows out.

Wow. Productivity increase. We're also joined by Sam Schultz. What's your tagline? Flying away on a wing and a prayer. Who could it be? Believe it or not, it's just Sam.

Sam is an artist and editor and producer on SciShow as well. We're also joined by Sari Riley. Tagline, please. Sour Patch Squid.

Ooh, delicious. I just had a Swedish fish. Why are there so many gummy sea animals? What's that all about? I don't know. You're going to have to do a whole episode of Tangents about it sometime other than right now. Sarah, what do you do for a living? I do science words for the internet, mostly for SciShow.

All for SciShow. I don't know why I said mostly. I bet you do some other stuff every once in a while. Every once in a while. You did a whole crash course by yourself. You did a whole crash course by yourself. I did a whole crash course, yeah, about film. So that's not science. Oh, excuse me.

So it's not valid? That's right. No, it's not science words. Oh, yeah. Okay. I write words. That's my biggest day job. And I am Hank Green. My tagline today is styrofoam pajamas. Really squeaky and unpleasant to wear, but they keep you nice and warm. They would be very large.

Can you move? Maybe. Maybe it's just like you slide your leg into two long cylinders of styrofoam. Then just lay back for a snooze. I'm Hank. I created SciShow and hired all these dorks and then decided to do a podcast with them. Would you like me to explain the podcast? Okay.

Oh, boo. Every week on SciShow, I don't care what Sam thinks, every week on SciShow Tangents, we get together and try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding Hank bucks to all of our friends for when they do a good thing, like when they do a good poem or answer a question correctly or et cetera. We do everything we can to stay on topic,

but judging by previous conversations, we will not be good at that. Also judging by the name of the podcast. So if someone on the podcast goes on a tangent, they have to give up one of their Hank bucks. And then if you end up having none, you could just go negative. It's fine. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem from Sari.

We tell tales of Icarus and his waxy wings, of Lindbergh, of the Wright brothers, of mechanical things. But before humans learned how to master the breeze, there were gigantic devil rays leaping out from the seas or squirrels and lemurs that glide from the trees. So your fight or flight might kick in if you see a flying snake.

But don't worry, they can't hurt us. It's just a long, scaly pancake. Wait, is there a flying snake? Is that a real thing? Yeah. Huh? That's a long pancake.

They jump from the trees and they like flatten their ribs. Oh my God. So they become like Why didn't I know that? And then they wiggle in the air. They jump from the trees and they like flatten their ribs. Oh my God. So they become like sideways. Why didn't I know that? And then they wiggle in the air. What? Like wiggle in the air like they're swimming.

Like they do the snake motion. Do they get pretty far? I think like far for a falling snake. So the topic of today's podcast is flight, which is a very broad topic. So there's animals that fly and people fly in all sorts of different ways. And all those things are science. Yeah. Walking down the street, science, right? That's right.

You got to have friction, your muscles. Yep. I also read about seeds. Actin and myosin. You read about seeds because seeds can fly. Some plants shoot their seeds out explosively to disperse them. And there's some physics stuff involved in their flight as well. Oh, and the little puffballs. What are those? Dandelions?

They fly too, right? They will, yeah. Is that flying? The wind's blowing enough. They're more like glide, maybe. I don't know what you would call that. I feel like gliding counts as flying, maybe. It's not powered flight, but it's flight.

Do you have an official definition of flying for us? No, I don't. You know what it is. Because some things that we consider flying, like flying fish, it's just a jump. I read all about them last night. They can go really far. They can go like 700 feet. What? That's not jumping? That's not jumping.

Yeah, they launch themselves and they have like really big sturdy wings and they go really far. Okay, never mind. I take it back. I'm sorry. At what point? So I guess if you're flying, you're using the air for a lift.

Yeah. So if you're in outer space, you're not flying. That's different. So what are you doing if you're in outer space and you have thrusters thrusting you? You're just shoving yourself around. Well, there's molecules there, but they're not giving you lift. No, they're not giving you lift. Just shoving yourself around.

Well, there's molecules there, but they're not giving you lift. No, they're not giving you lift. But what if I jumped and I pushed a little bit on the air? And I'm not saying I got much lift, but I did get some because that's how physics works. Did I fly? I feel like if you yell, I'm flying as you do that, then yes. Because you're declaring that what you're doing is pushing down on the air. Right. It has to be clear that that's what's happening.

That's your intent. Glad we got it settled. It is, you know, it's always fuzzy once you start looking too close at something. It's all about your frame of mind. Yeah. If you think you're flying, then you're flying. So now it's time for Truth or Fail. I, this week, have prepared three science facts for all of our education and enjoyment, including all of you at home.

But only one of those facts is going to be real. The other three panelists have to figure out which ones are the fake one and which is the real ones by deduction or knowledge or wild guesses. If you do, you get a Hank Buck. If you get it wrong, then I get a Hank Buck. And that is how truth or fail works. I'm a little ashamed of my facts. Ooh, I'm excited now. Why are you ashamed?

Are they bad facts? They're not that science-y. They're all good facts. They're very good facts. I feel like if they're good facts, then you have nothing to be ashamed about. It's just like at a certain point, it's like, yeah, everything is science. You got friction, you got muscles. What a cop-out.

This is you just said that. Let's hear your bad facts. Okay. Fact number one. During the aftermath of September 11th, every commercial flight in America was grounded, which was a problem. When the owner of one of the most deadly snakes in the world got bitten, just 20 minutes after the attacks.

He couldn't be airlifted to the hospital because the air traffic was grounded, but the government did allow the plane carrying the antivenin to save his life to take off and fly across the country, and it was the only commercial flight that flew during that period of time. Fact number two, oxygen tanks in airplanes that they use to fill up the little baggies

that you breathe into if there's a loss of cabin pressure are, of course, themselves a little dangerous because once a leaking oxygen canister actually increased the oxygen content of a flight enough that some of the passengers started to feel a little loopy because they were suffering from what's called hyperoxia. They got too much oxygen. The crew didn't know what was happening. They knew something was

happening, but they ordered an emergency landing before anything went wrong with the pilots or with the passengers. Fact number three, in 1909, the first guy to ever fly a plane over the English Channel not only succeeded in doing so, this is good, but then decided that since it was going so well, he would just keep going. He ended up landing in a field in Poland where he was shot in the shoulder by a farmer who thought he was invading Poland. I hope that's true. That one sounds so real because that's like what a human would do. Like, ah, flying man.

Yeah. Everything's science, but none a human would do. Like, ah, flying man. Yeah. Everything's science, but none of those were science. Oh, yeah. There was antivenom. Yeah. There were oxygen tanks. And there was the first guy to fly across the English Channel. All science words.

So, yeah, the three things were the only flight to fly during September 11th carried antivenom or an oxygen tank got loose and people got hyperoxia and they had to land the plane or the first guy to fly over the English Channel

kept going on it and Poland and got shot in the shoulder. He lived. I think the first one is just inspired by snakes on a plane

and is therefore fake. Oh. I was thinking it sounded familiar. Maybe it's just snakes on a plane though. It seems excessive to fly anti-venom to one person.

Just let them die? But, I mean, there's, like, other treatment methods. And, like, some antivenoms are generalized, so you can treat multiple snake bites with one type of antivenom. Sure. I don't know. I'm unconvinced. I don't know what deadly snake he had with him. But the only thing I have to rely on is science. That's true of all humanity, Sari.

You just explained us. The human condition. And I'm distressed by it. But the oxygen thing sounds real to me. I don't know. But that could be misleading because it sounds sounds too easy sounds too real right

sounds too real the other one's like just in the middle where it's like this is a little bit unbelievable so it's probably the true one

and if you got that excited about something that you made up for the third one you're a really good actor I want it to be real so I'm gonna go with the third one.

Okay, because you're going with the guy who flew over the English Channel and got shot. Yeah, me too. Oh, no. This is down to Sarah. You should go with a different one because he's going to have $3 soon. Yeah. Okay, I'll go with the oxygen one. It's boring, but seems correct.

And who's got $3? This guy. What? There were snakes on a plane?? Were the snakes on a plane? No. It was not snakes on a plane. Snake juice on a plane. No, anti-snake juice. I don't know how they make anti-venom.

But yep, it flew from California to Florida. You can't use a generalized anti-venom for it because it's a weird snake. It's called the Taipan snake. It's one of the most deadly snakes out there, apparently. And this guy was a snake handler, had been handling snakes for 40 years. And he's probably going to die. So they were like, yeah, okay, we'll let one plane go.

Did he live through the thing? Yeah, he did live. Okay. Dang. Yeah. I mean, like watching you all go through that was one of the best experiences. The last story is so delightful.

So that one was actually based on two different true stories. One, the first guy to try to fly over the English Channel in 1909 did not succeed, but he did succeed in being the first person to land a plane on water. Oh, no. Best case scenario. I don't know if you'd call it landing, but he did live. Did he say, I'm landing when it happened? Yeah. at landing but he did live did he say I'm landing when it happened yeah but then

unrelatedly the drummer from Lynyrd Skynyrd his plane crashed in a cornfield several people died yeah and he

the whole band almost right yeah so yeah and he's like drags himself out of the cornfield and gets shot by a farmer did he die too no he lived he got shot in the cornfield and gets shot by a farmer. Did he die too?

No, he lived. He got shot in the shoulder. Jesus. So like, there was a guy who got shot by a farmer. Well, why did that farmer shoot him? He wasn't in Poland, was he?

Only Polish farmers. I think that he was afraid of them being a raggedy bunch of corn thieves. And then, lastly, there are no oxygen tanks on planes. Huh.

I thought that was the case. Instead of having oxygen tanks, because they would be dangerous, because you don't want a bunch of oxygen anywhere, because stuff starts lighting on fire and it might explode. So you don't want compressed gases. They use what's called a chemical oxygen generator system that is connected to all the masks in the compartment.

And when you pull down on the oxygen mask, it removes the firing pin of the generator. So that's why they tell you to pull down on it. Because it won't do anything if you don't pull down on it. And then it uses one of a bunch of different oxygen sources. So chemicals

that have a lot of oxygen in them and then reacts. And that creates enough oxygen that flows into the bag for like 15 minutes of oxygen supply. And that's enough for the plane to get down low enough where the oxygen levels are good. You can just breathe the normal air. Usually the oxygen source is an inorganic superoxide. So that sounds cool. Yeah, it does sound pretty cool. Saves your life. Yeahic superoxide. So that sounds cool. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Saves your life.

Yeah. Superoxide. So you said you didn't know how they make antivenin? I don't really know how they make antivenin. But I want to know. And also I don't know

why it's called antivenin and not antivenin. I think that's an even better question. It's not antivenin? I don't know. I've seen it both. Miriam Webster

slash medicine.net say venin is a specific word for snake venom. Oh, okay. So it's like specifically anti-snake bite. Oh, cool. As opposed to anti-any sort of venom because that's a lot. Jellyfish have venom and things like that. So how did they make antivenom? It's kind of old.

It seems old-fashioned to me. I don't know as far as science goes. They extract venom from snakes, so those are the pictures that you see with snakes, like, fangs into a rubber membrane on a collection container. Can I guess? Does it involve a horse

somehow? It does. That's the most old-fashioned thing you can do. Anything with a horse. Put it in a horse. Yeah. That's what they do they just like take the venom distill it down to make it less deadly if possible then stick it into a horse or another big animal that can take a very

small amount withdraw its blood and then when anything bad goes into your body or a horse's body or anything that's what our immune systems are for so they create antibodies that are specific to the venom molecules that will bind to it and recognize it. They distill down all those antibodies,

and that's just what they put in humans. Like the goal of antivenin is to just bind to the venom particles and wrap them up so they become useless, and your body's like, ah, I'll just send macrophages after it, and they'll eat them up or filter it out of your blood or whatever. That's really cool. That is really cool. Thanks, horses.

Thanks, horses. Yeah. And scientists. Also, sorry, horses. So that was the true fact, you guys. I'm so happy with how that went. You're quite wealthy now. I'm a winner.

You're so rich. You are. Congratulations. Must be nice. You're quite wealthy now. I'm a winner. You're so rich. Yeah, you are. Congratulations.

Must be nice. Speaking of getting wealthier, it's time to go to our ad break, everybody. All right, everybody. We're back from the break. I'm here with Stefan Chen. Hey. And Sam Schultz. Hello.

And Sari Riley. Hello. And we're through the first half of SciShow Tangents, and I have three Hank bucks. And Sari has one Hank buck. How did I get one? And everybody else has zero Hank bucks. I forgot about the bonus poem money. Yeah, you get a free one for being the poem person.

None of us can win. I could go on a bunch of tangents. How many feelings do you have about flight? I've got a lot. And I read a lot of stuff with those three. It was two fake facts and one real fact. So I got a lot stored in my back pocket. But before we get to that and me going destitute as quickly as I got wealthy,

we are going to have to get ready for the fact-off, where two panelists have brought science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow our minds. The presentees each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most. But if both facts are a giant snooze, we can choose to not award our Hank Buck and instead just throw it in the trash. Both facts are a giant snooze. We can choose to not award our Hank book and instead just throw it in the trash.

We're going to go by the person who most recently ate something that flew. Oh, I went vegetarian last night, so. Yeah. Probably. What about you? I don't know what I ate last night, but I very recently tried the sweet and spicy

chicken breast tenders from McDonald's. They were fantastic. That sounds really good. Yeah. I should check them out, too. You should go should check them out too. You should go first though. You should go first and the rest of us are going to McDonald's after this. So some scientists outfitted a bunch of common swift birds with a tiny little black box that basically just had an accelerometer and a light sensor. And they gathered two years worth of data following their flight patterns and stuff

and found that during their non-breeding period, which is their breeding period is two months of the year. So for 10 months of the year, most of the individuals landed occasionally, but some individuals were airborne the entire time. And even the ones that landed were still airborne the vast majority of the time, likely over 99 i have a tangent to go on oh perfect one time i i had upstairs bedroom and i had a tv in it and i got showtime on it are you just a just a little boy at this point i am a teenage boy okay and non-breeding season yes

and one day my mom came up the stairs to be like what you watching and I used to at night leave the video recorder to record whatever happened on show time at night what could it possibly be

and I was watching a tape of a movie that was very bad, but definitely had some boobs in it. But the moment that she walked in was this couple and they were telling the story of the birds that never landed. The man was telling the woman, this this apparently was supposed to be like a seductive story of some way. Like they live their entire lives without ever landing their weary bodies. And like my mom was like, what are you watching? And I was like, they're just talking about science stuff. And she, later I heard her say to my dad he can just watch anything up there so

that was the story of how I got caught recording Showtime night times oh man I'm glad I could conjure that up for you yeah

but then later I was like that stuck in my mind of course because it was a terribly embarrassing moment when I had to try to explain to my mom what I was doing watching a late night Showtime movie.

And then later I was like, there's no fucking way that they could not ever land. Of course they land. They have to like have babies. They're not going to like plop an egg out into the ocean. So non-breeding season. They didn't say that in the Showtime show. Exactly. All right.

So that was at least one Hank fuck because there's no way you're going to let me get away with that one. Do these birds have sex in the air too? No. Some birds do. Some birds do. Yeah. Oh, mid-flight refueling. Oh, yeah.

Like hawks or eagles or something. Yeah. Yeah. They do the thing where they plummet to the ground in a lover's embrace. I actually don't know where their breeding area is. Because the map that I was looking at was showing where they winter, and that's in like middle of Africa. Okay.

So they might, somewhere in Europe, I think. And so they migrate between those two. So from the paper, they said, during migration and the winter, there was an almost total lack of inactivity recordings except for a few nights in February 2014 when Bird One settled in a vertical position for four whole nights. Oh, I got really tired. I was so sick.

He had a cold probably. I get really sleepy when I have a cold. Maybe he drank too much. How long? How long in a row do they fly? Yeah. Some of them stayed in air for the entire 10-month period. What the heck?

Most of them did land, but still they only landed for like less than an hour, like very short periods of time. I guess they just don't need to take naps or they can take naps while flying. That's one of the things that they need to figure out is how they sleep. So the birds ascend to like two to three kilometers in altitude at dusk and sunrise every day and they think they might use that for navigation

but also maybe do like a long glide down from that where they're sleeping. Take a little drowse. Yeah. That sounds like fun. There's this other thing that I thought was cool which is that because they're tiny little sensors that it's just an accelerometer and a light sensor. And the light sensor is how they know where the birds were.

So because they know they fly up, they can track when sunrise and sunset is. And based on when that's happening, they can figure out where their location was. Neat. That was kind of cool. I like that fact a lot, Steph and Sam. I might be able to shed some light on a lot of these questions you had about sleeping birds. Oh, good. Because mine is very similar.

So as we just learned, there are a lot of birds that fly around for weeks and months at a time, like during migration or when they're hunting. But scientists don't know this one thing, how they sleep and even if they sleep while they do it. So in 2016, a study of frigate birds revealed the answer. Frigate birds are a type of seabird, and they have the largest body-to-wingspan ratio of any bird, and they use those wings to go on really long hunting expeditions where they can be in the air for like two months at a time. So they mostly eat flying fish because if they land in the water, they can't get out of the water and they just die, I think,

is basically what it was. But they're really big, and they're big enough to put brainwave machines onto. So scientists did that, and they discovered that, like dolphins, they sleep with one side of their brain at a time, just for a couple minutes, circling on updrafts, and they use the other side of their brain with their eye open to make sure that they don't crash into each other. But sometimes they would slip into total sleep with both sides of their brain and just fly around in the air with totally asleep. And this was the first evidence ever that birds could fly while sleeping.

The end, period. Wow. Except I have a little addendum. Well, you could probably work it into one of our questions. It kind of answers some of his questions a little bit. They slept for 42 minutes a day while they were flying around, but when they would land after their hunting trip,. They slept for 42 minutes a day while they were flying around, but when they would land after their hunting trip, they would sleep for

12 hours a day. It's like cooping. The article I read was talking about how they were purposefully sleep-depriving themselves, which I guess was a big deal, but I don't really understand why that was a big deal that they found out. I mean, I've been there. I've done that. Yeah, like we did.

I'd be like, oh, I just get the 45 minutes now. I'll get the 12 hours later. It'd be so nice to sleep with one side of your brain. It'd be so nice to sleep for more than six hours at a time. Well, don't have a baby then. I sleep for eight hours every night. That sounds great. Love every minute of it.

I'll call you next time I'm asleep. Do their eyes close when they're brain? I don't know. It talked a lot about ducks sleeping literally with one of their eyes open. So I think it's just a thing birds do. They're just winking all the time. They're just like, well, one of their sides is just asleep and the other side isn't asleep. And it talked about in mammals, when you go into deep sleep,

your body goes limp, but for some reason, birds don't, and just their heads go limp, but the rest of their body stays rigid. Love the idea of the frigate bird just gliding with its head, like a rule, tongue long out of its mouth. It said when they would fall asleep

with both sides of their brain, their heads would droop down, so they would be flying through the air with their heads drooped down. What? I love it. That is also a great fact, Sam. Those are both good sleepy facts.

Yeah, good sleepy bird facts, you guys. I don't know. I think I'm gonna go with Sam. Yes. I haven't gotten a hang fuck in such a long time. Yeah, it's always easiest to go first. That's the thing. As you started talking, I was like, maybe I can slip in here. I haven't gotten a hang fuck in such a long time.

That's the thing. You started talking and I was like, maybe I can slip in here. I can't. I was also... Do it. I'm also going to go with Sam. I'm sorry. Suck it.

We're tied. See? His stupid birds only fly for two months. That's true. I did think... From reading it, it seemed like that was an outrageously long time for a bird to fly. I didn't like I didn't look into how long birds could fly.

But I think measuring brain waves of birds was like slightly more interesting for me. I don't know how they did it, but I'm imagining like little tinfoil half of them. That might have been. Yeah, that might have been. I also love that you could only do it with frigate birds because they're the big ones. Because they're big, yeah. No way you can do it. You can't fit a brainwave monitor on a Swift. I thought it was crazy that it took until 2016 for them to figure that out.

Because the paper basically said they knew how it worked. They just couldn't figure out how to prove it. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I feel like there are a lot of things that scientists guess about. And then when you actually measure something, it's either like, ah, that's exactly like I thought it was, or this is nothing like I thought it was. And there's never, yeah, I don't know.

I guess those are the only two options in the world when you ask a question. It's either yes or no. All right, now it is time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. What do we got, Sam? One Cup of Jojo asks,

Why aren't blimps and zeppelins used more often? So if you're unfamiliar with Ask the Science Couch, I do my best to answer with no research. And then Sari answers because she actually knows the answer. I'm going to guess because planes are better. Yeah, I'm going to guess Zeppelins are too slow and the Hindenburg manga, everybody's Zeppelin shy. Maybe a little bit Zeppelin shy.

Nobody's using hydrogen anymore, which is a better lift and there's more of it. There's not that much helium in the world. Probably shouldn't be using it so much. That's like basically it. It's just like PR is bad for blimps and zeppelins. Is it a lot of PR

problems? And also utility. We were really into airships like for a while. There's a lot of like drawings of blimps from like magazines and stuff probably in like the 50s or 40s. And like it was the vision of the future. Like a cruise ship in the air

that would take you across the Atlantic Ocean. That's what I want. Yeah. That would be awesome. That's the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg didn't take anybody across

any oceans. It did. I'm pretty sure it was docking. Was it arriving? Yeah, it was arriving in New Jersey. That happened in New Jersey?

Yeah. I did not know that. I thought it was in Germany. It came from Germany. I think the wave of blimp enthusiasts was in the 20s and 30s especially. They were developed as military technology, especially by the German group.

Like that's where the word Zeppelin comes from, was just a company started by a dude whose last name was Zeppelin. Oh, it's a Xerox situation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they built like these metal frames and balloons around them and filled them with gas. The European ones had hydrogen in them. American ones had helium in them because America apparently had a wealth of helium around World War I. Is that true?

Yeah. We had a lot of helium? I think we had a lot of helium. Okay, where does helium come from? The ground. What? Really? When you get natural gas, you also get some helium. Separate it out, and then that's where helium comes from.

That's how the Earth stays in space. Float. Is that right? So we were really enthusiastic about it, but they were just like, there were too many disasters. Like Hindenburg was one. There were more than that one?

A lot of U.S. airships ended up not so great. Mostly they were caught in storms. It does seem like it would be pretty easy to get caught in a storm if you're just a balloon. Yeah. And so like the Hindenburg wasn't even the biggest disaster. The deadliest disaster was the USS Akron where 73 people died as opposed to 36 people in the Hindenburg. It was just calibrating radio equipment off the New England coast and then it got caught in a storm. And then they sent a rescue airship to go rescue them. And then another one popped. Okay, so planes are just better.

Never send a blimp to rescue a blimp. You know, we were doing our best. Never send a blimp to rescue a blimp. You know, we were doing our best. There was a blimp fever. Airship fever. Blimps don't have the structure inside. Blimps are just big balloons, like steerable balloons, essentially. And then airships have a metal usually structure. More suited for longer trips, is that what it is?

Yeah, sturdier. It also allows for them to be a more aerodynamic shape. But actually, the shape of the blimp can provide lift in addition to the gas. So are there any Zeppelins in the whole world? There are a couple, yeah. People use them for a couple things. Like you said earlier, air travel is the biggest thing where people, as soon as we could fly, people wanted to go places faster

and have more passengers, and planes are really good at that. Yeah. If you need to advertise at a football game, there's only one way to do that. Planes are way too fast. But Lockheed Martin is making airships right now. For what reason? And I am on Team Cargo Ship right now. Before this podcast, I had no feelings about airships whatsoever.

They looked kind of cool, but now I am fully behind the idea of building them because, okay, maybe their advertisement videos just worked on me. But basically the only reason we haven't built them is there isn't a good market. But Lockheed Martin is developing some sort, they're called, I think, hybrid airships that are specifically for transporting cargo. So they're like super, super sturdy. They use a fraction of the fuel per like amount of cargo that they can carry compared to helicopters and other planes. They can transport like 19 people, but like tons and tons and tons of cargo. And they can land on sand. They can land on water. They can land on any sort of surface without needing the infrastructure,

which makes it really good for transporting supplies. Yeah, they don't need train tracks or anything either. Yeah. Cool. Hank, will you buy us a Zeppelin, please? Hank, will you buy us a Zeppelin? We could relocate our offices to the Zeppelin. Into the space!

All right. Well, we'll look into it. That's so much more about Zeppelins than I thought there ever even was. Me too! Yeah. We gotta bring them back. We did an episode on SciShow Space, the YouTube channel focusing

primarily on space content. Like and subscribe today. Subscribe at youtube.com slash SciShow Space. But we did an episode on that channel about sending airships to Venus, maybe, as a potential way of exploring Venus because the atmosphere is so thick. Yeah.

And once you get close to the surface, it is very hot. It's way too hot to survive. So hanging in the atmosphere is more of a chill vibe. Cool. Thank you to One Cup of Jojo for the question. If you want to ask the science

couch, you can tweet your question using the hashtag AskSciShow. Thank you to Chelsea Moon and Cynthia Darling and everybody else who has tweeted us your questions. And our final scores, Sari, you have one Hank Buck. Sam, you have two. Stefan, you have one. And

I have two. I would have beat you, Sam. I would have had three Hank fucks, but I did go on that tangent about getting caught watching softcore porn on Showtime. Yeah, it was a beautiful story. And I appreciate it, but. Now, if you like this show and you want to help us out, it's very easy to do that.

You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's helpful. It also helps us know what you think about the show. You can also tweet out your favorite moment of the episode. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us.

I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chun. And I've been Sam Schultz. And this has been SciShow Tangents. It's a co-production with WNYC Studios. It's produced by all of us and Caitlin Hoffmeister.

Our art and music are by Hiroko Matsushima and Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this stuff without our patrons on Patreon.

Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. The British Supermarine Strandreier is an anti-submarine plane flown in World War II. It was fitted with a toilet that was just a hole that went out into the open air. Oh, man.