Dorrington's airship is shaped like an upside-down teardrop with a tail. It carries a two-man gondola and is powered and steered by small motors. It uses helium gas, which will not burn, unlike hydrogen gas, which caught fire inside the Hindenburg and brought at end to an era when the giant Zeppelins served tourist routes connecting Europe, Brazil, India and the United States. The Zeppelins were cigar-shaped ships that were hard to turn, Dorrington says, unlike his ship, which can pivot in the air. That is the theory, anyway, as he explains his motors and his switches and we hear the voice of Herzog, always filled with apprehension, telling us, "He did not know then that this particular switch would cause a huge problem later."
Dorrington tested an earlier airship in 1993 in Sumatra, and that ended with catastrophe, Herzog tells us. Dorrington describes the death of his cinematographer, Dieter Plage, who fell from a gondola after it was broken on the high branches of a tree by a sudden wind. "It was an accident," Dorrington says, and all agree, but he blames himself every day. Now he is ready to try again.
His airship was built in a huge hangar outside London that once housed dirigibles. Strange, that it cannot be tested there, but must be transported to South America and the rain forests of Guyana
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