Up to the present, too, the airship is less of a fair-weather flier than the airplane. A surprising record has been attained in the war by British airships, as is shown by the fact that in 1918, a year of execrable weather, there where only nine days during which their vessels were not up. This is, of course, in considerable contrast to airplanes as at present developed, but it may reasonably be expected that the latter will very soon develop to the same point of independence of the weather. Of course, the great difficulty of airships has been their ungainly size and the difficulty of housing them. The sheds, particularly those for the Zeppelins, have been most costly, but the British have recently developed a system of mooring masts which make much of this expense unnecessary. If such a device can be successfully put into every-day use it will enormously increase the ease of loading and unloading passengers, which now makes for considerable discomfort and loss of time. Some of the plans for future airships are unbelievable to one who has not followed their development carefully. Already there is planned in England a monster ship known as the "ten million," for the reason that it will have a gas capacity of ten million cubic feet, over four times that of the largest Zeppelin. The length is placed at 1,100 feet, the speed at 95 miles an hour, the cruising range 20,000 miles, and the cost at about $1,000,000. As a matter of actual practice, however, the best division of the space and lifting power of this airship would be for it to carry a crew of about 20, a useful load of 200 passengers or 150 tons of merchandise, and 50 tons of petrol, which would give it a non-stop run of about 5,000 miles. Airship travel would undoubtedly be expensive. The gas alone to maintain such a vessel as described is expected to cost about $30 an hour, which, added to the original investment for the ship and its house and the wages of the crew and the 200 or more skilled men at each station, would come up to a high figure. At the same time, the airship would not afford the element of very high speed which is so certain to justify any expense which may have to be put into the airplane. Nevertheless, with the improvements that are sure to come, with the ability to reach places not touched by other methods of travel, the freedom from all the delays, inconveniences, and expense of trans-shipment, this preliminary charge will be largely compensated for. Those who sponsor the airship urge that it will be used almost exclusively for long-distance flights beyond the range of the ordinary airplane and very little for short local flights. For transatlantic travel, for instance, it is being particularly pressed, as ships even of to-day have all the capacity for such a voyage, without the dangers which might surround an airplane if its sustaining engine power were to give out.