Alexandra Hall
Co-founder and CEO, Airship Ventures
A UK national newspaper once called Alex Hall "a queer fish" in an article about her career as both an author and BBC TV presenter as well as the driving force behind the UK's National Space Centre, a visitor attraction. But that may have been because she mentioned her pet ferret. In any case, the story appeared on the second half of the page below a piece on Bill Gates. "The only time I've come close to such esteemed company since then was at Flight School last year and at the Ansari X Prize award dinner."
Hall moved to the U.S. five years ago to turn around the struggling Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, CA, a 125-year-old institution. Two years ago she left it revitalized, to accept a proposal of marriage and make an altitude adjustment from the edge of space to about 1000 feet above ground, in fact. Her new husband, Brian Hall, persuaded her to build a business to satisfy his own passion for Zeppelins, the German-made airships. The most famous one, the Hindenburg, blew up in 1937, but technology has moved on since then. The carbon-fiber, fly-by-wire modern Zeppelins are filled with helium and are much safer.
Airship Ventures is currently in start-up mode, with funding from Esther Dyson, the founders and other angels. Airship Ventures is expecting to take delivery of its first airship in mid June, operate in Europe over the summer, and transfer the ship by sea to the USA to start flights in the fall in the San Francisco Bay area. The company plans to fly its second ship across the Atlantic in 2010, the first Zeppelin to do so for more than 70 years. (There wasn't time to do so for the first one.)
The business plan calls for revenues from three sources: The first is passenger fees, from tours around the Bay Area, Wine Country, etc. for up to 13 people. (You can rent the whole thing for a private party, whale watching, a candlelight dinner or a sales promotion, if you prefer.) Second, the Zeppelin is a fine above-ground, non-digital advertising vehicle. And third, it can be used for a variety of data-collection tasks, including surveying the salt flats in the Bay just south of San Francisco, gathering air-quality data.
The plan is to park the ship in a hangar at Moffett Field – which was, incidentally, originally designed 75 years ago to house a Zeppelin. Says Hall: "Navigating the regulatory, funding and operational challenges of establishing the return of passenger Zeppelin operations to the USA has been almost as much of a thrill ride as Zero-g … only more expensive." Welcome home!
