She was infamous, and earned her name by striking airships out of the sky.
Efforts by America's top military boffins to develop heavy-lifting airships have faltered, too.
Stationary, such airships would be heavier than air and so easier to park.
And news reporting aircraft, traffic planes and helicopters, and airships and blimps operating under visual flight rules continue to be grounded.
As well as carrying large items, they point out, airships are ideal for transporting light but bulky cargo such as flowers.
Proponents of rigid airships also claim that their babies are more resilient, thanks to the protective outer skin which shields the gas compartments.
Airships might, however, come into their own carrying large (as well as heavy) things such as generators, turbines or components of oil refineries.
The solution to these problems may lie in hybrid airships that are aerodynamically shaped to generate part of their lift as a conventional wing does.
It is not just a question of building a bigger version of previous designs, since scaling can be a problem with airships, says Mr Hochstetler.
Before building the Hindenburg, which was 245 metres long, the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company first built more than 120 smaller airships, each slightly bigger than the last.
Several companies are convinced that airships are ripe for a comeback, including the venerable Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, whose new craft recently won clearance to carry passengers, a dozen at a time.
The aim was to find a way to deploy support infrastructure for troops quickly: unlike planes, airships require no runways, and unlike ships, they can reach landlocked countries, says Mr Hochstetler.
And the business of the airfield's new owner, CargoLifter, is the development of giant airships, a means of transport few have taken seriously since the Hindenburg went up in flames in 1937.
Some 100 balloonists, including a slew who man special-shaped airships like dragons and bald eagles, converge on the region's parks and airports to launch against a backdrop of mountains awash in fall foliage.
Airships demonstrate a law of increasing returns: doubling the length increases the surface area (and hence weight) by a factor of four while the volume (and hence lifting capacity) goes up by a factor of eight.
Larger modern airships rely on a semi-rigid design, in which engines and passenger compartments are suspended from a metal keel that runs along the bottom of the envelope and prevents it from distorting under the load.
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