[Rigelian]

I hesitate to join a thread that's degenerated into bickering already... but what the hell. Back on the Hindenberg, there has been some pretty convincing modern research on this. The conclusion was that it was not the Hydrogen that was responsible for the (intial at least) combustion. Apparently the doping agent used on the outer skin, in the right conditions, was highly flammable and this was what caused the disaster. I saw a documentary where they had analysed the old film and could demonstrate from the spread of the flames that it was the skin and not the gas that was burning.

As for the relative danger of Hydrogen gas - well, here's an anecdote for you. Back in chemistry class about 20 years ago, a popular (with the kids anyway) experiment involved producing a test-tube full of hydrogen. I forget the exact reaction involved, it may have been some kind of acid-on-iron-filings thing. Anyway, that little test-tube containing hydrogen was then ignited using a lighted taper, producing one hell of a bang and (sometimes, though I never saw it) busting the test-tube entirely. From that I have always concluded that hydrogen/oxygen reactions can release a lot of energy.

However, I had also heard the argument that Fyron puts forward that Hydrogen airships are not as dangerous as they are generally perceived to be. So, why is that? Does that kind of violent small-scale reaction just not scale up?