Metal-clad airship

[4] One of the earliest proposals for a flying machine based on rational principles was Francesco Lana de Terzi's design for a vacuum airship, c.1670.

The concept of a metal-clad dirigible airships was again explored in the late 1800s by Russian rocket theorist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.

[6] He wrote that since his teens (in the early 1870s) "the idea of the all-metal aerostat has never left my mind"[7] and by 1891 he had produced detailed designs of a variable volume corrugated metal envelope airship that did not need ballonets.

[9][10][11] At around the same time, in 1892 the Russian Imperial war ministry agreed to let Schwarz build his metal airship in St Petersburg, though at his own expense.

The rolled seams intended to hold the panels together subsequently unrolled owing to gas pressure created by superheating during an attempted launch of the airship.

Its manufacture required the development of a riveting machine[16] and final assembly that are comparable to later rockets and transport aircraft fuselages, while being capable of dealing with aluminum skin thicknesses thin enough to allow aerostatic lift.