Goodyear bids goodbye to blimps, says hello to zeppelins

 AKRON, Ohio -- To Goodyear, a blimp is a blimp, even if it's not a blimp.
For decades, the tire giant has been flying its signature airships around the United States, mostly over sporting events, and has become one of the most recognizable icons in the world.
But Goodyear's current fleet of three blimps -- based out of Akron, Pompano Beach, Fla., and Carson, Calif. -- is aging, and the company announced in 2011 that it had decided to replace the airships with zeppelins, which are longer, faster, quieter, and more maneuverable than blimps
The state-of-the-art airships were developed by Friedrichshafen, Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik (ZLT), a company with a very long and storied past. For starters, it built the Hindenburg, though it has since substituted non-flammable helium for the hydrogen that exploded in that ship's very famous 1937 crash.
To Greg Poppenhouse, Goodyear's chief airship pilot, going with ZLT's zeppelins made a lot of sense because their three-engine design -- which allows for vectoring the engines -- lets the pilot hover, something the current blimps, with their two fixed engines, can't do. The ability to hover means being able to give the director of, say, the TV broadcast of a football game, exactly the shot he or she wants.
At the same time, because the zeppelin's engines are much higher up on the ship's rigid frame, and aren't right next to the gondola, as they are with the non-rigid blimp, passengers will be able to talk to each other without needing headsets.
All in all, said Poppenhouse, Goodyear is simply interested in "trying to go with the latest technology."
There's only one issue.
For decades, the company's airships have been known by everyone as the "Goodyear blimp." That's how the general public knows the airships. So even though it is going with zeppelins, Nancy Ray, Goodyear's director of global airship operations, told me when I visited Akron as part of Road Trip 2013, "We will still call it the Goodyear blimp."
Roll-out
These days, Goodyear is building the first of its next-generation blimps at its 800-foot-long Wingfoot Lake hangar, just outside Akron. It hopes to unveil the first one later this year, and then ship it off, most likely to Florida. Then it will start building the second zeppelin here in 2015, and deliver it to California in 2016. Finally, Akron itself will get to keep its own zeppelin in 2018, and at that point, all three of the current blimps will have all been decommissioned.
 Goodyear is hopeful that the next-gen airships will give it much more flexibility for shooting sporting events, and will even help it add many more golf tournaments to its already busy schedule of events. That's because the zeppelins are much quieter -- something that's essential for golf -- and because TV broadcast directors won't have to worry about the ship's shadow moving around and distracting players, Poppenhouse said.
When they're launched the zeppelins will be the only airships of their kind in the United States, but they won't be the first that ZLT made for an American company. California's now-defunct Airship Ventures flew its own zeppelin for several years, starting in 2008, and thousands of passengers got the chance to fly slowly and gracefully at just 1,000 feet over some of the country's most beautiful places. But Airship Ventures failed as a business, and that zeppelin was quietly dismantled and its parts sent back to Friedrichshafen.
Goodyear's zeppelins will essentially be the same as that of Airship Ventures, with a length of 246 feet -- compared to the current blimps' 192 feet. But Goodyear plans on some specific modifications to the electronics and systems that will let it use the new blimps as flying television camera platforms, as well as advertisements for Goodyear tires.
But will the new blimps -- or zeppelins, or whatever you want to call them -- still have the familiar Goodyear livery? According to Ed Ogden, the public relations manager for the Spirit of Goodyear, the new airships will definitely be emblazoned with "Goodyear," but there will be something more. Ogden gave a grin but wouldn't say what that would be.

Kanye West on Paparazzi Why I Hate Them ... Why I Attack Them

Exclusive

There's a reason Kanye West hates the paparazzi so much -- it's a terrible reason -- but a reason nonetheless ... and it stems from a few rotten eggs, TMZ has learned.

It's no secret Kanye's been running on a short fuse since at least 2008, when he smashed a TMZ camera at LAX. After that, he vowed to have a more peaceful relationship with the media ... but that all changed in 2012.

Sources close to Kanye tell TMZ ... after he started getting serious with Kim Kardashian, he felt a couple of paps would cross the line and ask him inappropriate questions about their relationship in public. We're told he started to feel like certain paps were "heckling" him.

Things escalated in October 2012 during a trip to Miami ... when a local photog -- not a TMZ guy -- asked Kanye and Kim if they would be inviting Kris Humphries and Reggie Bush to their wedding.



Kanye was pissed ... and, rightfully so, felt the photog was just trying to antagonize him.

Things got worse a few months later, after Kim announced she was pregnant -- when another pap started hammering K&K about whether they would invite Ray J to the baby shower.



That, we're told, was the breaking point -- and from that moment on, Kanye decided to impose his "DON'T EVER TALK" policy on anyone with a camera.

Here's the problem ... if Kanye doesn't want to talk to a pap, that's fine -- he has that right. But when he starts attacking people and smashing camera equipment ... dude, you crossed the line.

Take this example, Kanye -- if a white person walked up to you and said the N-word, would you hate all white people??? Would you try to ATTACK every white person you encountered???

Bottom line -- we get why he's upset ... but seriously, GET OVER IT.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2013/07/13/kanye-west-reason-hates-paparazzi-attack/#ixzz2YxZFfJbl
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Russia says no asylum request yet from fugitive Snowden

Russia kept former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden at arm's length on Saturday, saying it had not been in touch with the fugitive American and had not yet received a formal request for political asylum.
Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signaled Russia is weighing its options after Snowden, who is stranded at a Moscow airport, broke three weeks of silence and asked for refuge in Russia until he can secure safe passage to Latin America.

 

Washington urged Moscow to return Snowden to the United States, where he is wanted on espionage charges after revealing details of secret surveillance programs, and President Barack Obama spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Snowden's leaks about U.S. spy methods, including eavesdropping on global email traffic, have upset Washington's friends and foes alike. Stuck at Sheremetyevo airport with his passport revoked, he has become an irritant in relations between the United States and Russia.
"We are not in contact with Snowden," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying in Kyrgyzstan, where he attended a foreign ministers' meeting.
He said he had learned of Snowden's meeting with Russian human rights activists and public figures at the airport on Friday from the media, "just like everyone else."
Snowden, who had previously kept out of sight since arriving in the airport's transit zone on June 23, told the activists that he would submit his asylum request the same day.
Lavrov said that under Russian law, asylum seekers must first make an official appeal to the Federal Migration Service. But its director, Konstantin Romodanovsky, said on Saturday the agency had not yet received such a request from Snowden.
DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Snowden, who worked at a National Security Agency facility, in Hawaii, revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of data such as emails and chat rooms from companies including Facebook and Google, under a government program called Prism.
He fled to Hong Kong and then flew to Moscow, where he and Russian officials say he has remained in the airport transit zone. He has no visa to enter Russia.
Snowden is useful as a propaganda tool for Putin, who accuses the U.S. government of preaching to the world about rights and freedoms it does not uphold at home. But his presence on Russia's doorstep is a double-edged sword.
Putin has invited Obama for a bilateral summit in Moscow in September, and asylum for Snowden could jeopardize that, even though both countries have signaled they want to improve ties that have been strained in Putin's third presidential term.
And while pro-Kremlin politicians have been avidly casting Snowden, 30, as a rights defender, former KGB officer Putin said last month that the surveillance methods he revealed were largely justified if applied lawfully.
Putin has said twice that Snowden should choose a final destination and go there, and on July 2 he said Russia could only take Snowden in if he stopped activities "aimed at harming our American partners".
Putin's spokesman said on Friday that the condition, which prompted Snowden to withdraw an earlier asylum request, still stood.
Snowden has asked some 20 countries for asylum and received offers from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, but he said on Friday that Western states had made it "impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there".
The United States has urged nations not to give him passage, and a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from Russia last week was denied access to the airspace of several European countries on suspicion Snowden might be on board.