{"id":652,"date":"2017-02-04T10:48:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-04T15:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=652"},"modified":"2017-01-28T15:27:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-28T20:27:23","slug":"dragon-mage-chronicles-airships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=652","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Mage Chronicles: Airships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.airships.net\/us-navy-rigid-airships\/uss-shenandoah\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-653\" src=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103airshipdesign.jpg\" alt=\"Airship design\" width=\"575\" height=\"380\" srcset=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103airshipdesign.jpg 575w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103airshipdesign-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 575px) 100vw, 575px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you might expect, overland travel is difficult in <a href=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?page_id=645\">a post-apocalyptic world in which plants like nothing more than eating pesky people alive<\/a>. Dragons have no problem winging where they will. But the common Joe had to find another solution. Some turned to river travel while others built&#8230;airships!<\/p>\n<p>In the first novel in the series, Verdant Magic, one particular airship features prominently. The\u00a0Intrepid<em>\u00a0<\/em>is based loosely on the USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), but I&#8217;ve detached the gondola\u00a0and added some fancy\/fantasy technology so it looks a bit more like the Shenandoah pictured above.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vincent.callebaut.org\/object\/100505_hydrogenase\/hydrogenase\/projects\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-654\" src=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103hydrogenase.jpg\" alt=\"Hydrogen-producing algae\" width=\"450\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103hydrogenase.jpg 450w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103hydrogenase-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103hydrogenase-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170103hydrogenase-144x144.jpg 144w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The hydrogen balloon is 400 feet long and 60 feet in diameter, with\u00a0<em>Chlamydomonas reinhardtii<\/em> algae topping up the gas as needed. (The image above is a modern architect&#8217;s rendition of how these algae could be used to power an aerial city.) The algae give the rigid skin of the Intrepid a greenish cast &#8212; far more fun than the flammable paint of the Hindenburg that (some scientists now theorize) collected electrical charges out of the stormy air and resulted in that spectacular meltdown.<\/p>\n<p>Modern technology can be a bit hard to come by in the world of my Dragon Mage Chronicles, but my airship captain managed to dig up fuel cells and electric motors to power the ship efficiently. Top speeds are a bit higher than the 82 miles per hour the USS Los Angeles traveled, with 12 crew members necessary to keep the ship operational.<\/p>\n<p>(A huge thank you to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.waldeneffect.org\/blog\/Design_a_steampunk_airship\/\">my homesteading blog readers<\/a> who helped me build the Intrepid from scratch. Any mistakes that remain&#8230;aren&#8217;t mistakes! This is fantasy! It&#8217;s\u00a0not a bug, it&#8217;s a feature!)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?page_id=645\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-650\" src=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/series.jpg\" alt=\"Dragon Mage Chronicles\" width=\"1800\" height=\"496\" srcset=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/series.jpg 1800w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/series-300x83.jpg 300w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/series-768x212.jpg 768w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/series-1024x282.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/series-1536x423.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you might expect, overland travel is difficult in a post-apocalyptic world in which plants like nothing more than eating pesky people alive. Dragons have no problem winging where they will. But the common Joe had to find another solution. Some turned to river travel while others built&#8230;airships! In the first novel in the series, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,128],"tags":[129],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aimee-easterling-inspiration","category-dragon-mage-chronicles","tag-urban-fantasy-worlds","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}