On-Board Features

Staff Areas

At the rear of the ship, about 50 meters (160 feet) of the Panorama glass sidewall is taken up by various staff recreation and communal areas from which ship employees may also enjoy grand, sweeping views just as the passengers do.

Using golf cart-type vehicles when necessary, staff travel from one end of the ship to the other along two throughways, one of which is situated above passenger areas with the other being below. A shuttle tramway, built for express staff travel, is available next to the lower staff throughway. Due to the speed at which it travels the tram cars are enclosed. The tram is always in service and makes five stops along the length of the ship

There are several food preparation areas within which, at the fingertips of catering staff, are car-sized food processors, garage-sized ovens & dishwashers, apartment-sized refrigerators & freezers, and warehouse-sized storerooms.

The Central Laundry services all six Housekeeping departments. When housekeeping & restaurant linens need to be cleaned and finished a great deal of heavy equipment is required along with there being a tremendous amount of water used and wastewater produced. In view of this linen items that require laundering are stored in bulk inside purpose-built, ultra-cold refrigerated units near the cargo hold. When Intrepid lands these are among the first items unloaded for prompt processing through the docking facility's laundries. Of course, laundry services and dry cleaning are available to passengers while on board.

Until the ship lands, garbage and recyclables are frozen on board in capacious storage containers in a separate facility. To further aid in sanitation there is a sealed, automated waste treatment installation at the rear of the ship.

A policy of extreme hygiene is in place for the entire infrastructure and for all staff.

Security And Fire Safety Personnel

Our Fire Department staff work in conjunction with our Security Officers in ensuring the safety of the ship. Observing orders only from the captain, our Security & Fire Safety team has carte blanche and full run of the ship at all times. Their offices, accommodation, recreational, and communal areas are in an area of the ship separate to other Intrepid crew. They're all ex-military, although some have experience within various metropolitan Fire Departments. Our Security Officers either wear plain clothes or various staff uniforms at their own discretion to suit their duties.

Our firemen are always kitted out and ready for action. On a ship such as Intrepid it's not practical to put fires out with water so along with standard fire fighting equipment placed about the craft we've installed CO2 and Halon extinguisher systems throughout.

Passenger Areas

In addition to the beautifully decorated throughways, passenger access throughout Intrepid is enhanced with nine grand staircases and twenty-one glass elevators, five of which are in the court of the shopping center with another five in the atrium/lobby area.

Passengers who need to conveniently travel some distance within the ship have a choice of how to get about.

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There are trams that operate throughout the passenger areas. Tram cars each seat about twenty passengers and, depending on the demand within each service area, can be made up of as many as three linked cars. The cars are rubber wheeled, open-sided & canopied for atmosphere, and travel at a moderate speed on quiet electric engines. Tramways run throughout the center of passenger corridors, walkways, promenades, and parades.

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Where a tram is not practical or desired there is a passenger conveyor which has been included within the passenger throughways. These moving walkways travel in a single direction and are generally built within cul de sacs or where there is no need for the guest to travel great distances.

To get their day started, a family, for example, may use the passenger conveyor to get from their suite to the lifts, use the tram from there to get to breakfast (if not ordering in), get on another tram after that to reach the shopping center, at which time each may perhaps walk or use another method of traveling to make their way around the court of the shopping center or to some other area of the ship.

A tour tram runs a complete circuit of all passenger areas every hour from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon. Passengers may embark or disembark the tour tram at any time. Our coiffed, gloved, Chanel-suited tour hostesses always have A-list attitudes and happily share information as well as respond to questions.

Passengers always have easy access to maps and brochures while an entire website is dedicated to advising passengers what's on board, where to find it, and options for getting there.

Intrepid's Mobility

To design the main propulsion engines our engineers used the Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone as a point of departure. They’ve more than doubled the scale of the original design in addition to making further modifications.

These custom Cyclones are mounted on winglets on the lower sides of the airship in an offset tandem arrangement with the propellers facing slightly inwards towards the craft so the propeller wash and exhaust heat doesn’t blow against and potentially discolor the ship’s outer skin. Each engine has four propellers with each prop blade being over eight meters in length. Each propeller arrangement can be heated in frosty weather which will prevent any ice that could otherwise form on the propeller blades from being flung off onto the sides of the ship. Although there are twelve prop engines the ship can cruise with ease on prop power by using only nine. Without affecting Intrepid's travels this allows one or more of the engines to be shut down in cycles for inspection, maintenance, and repair.

Engine Crew

It was our desire when designing this ship that none of our crew crawl through rat holes, clamber up ladders, or hang suspended from ropes. Fully protected from weather, crew members access each engine from within the ship by walking through a spacious, covered aisle which is enclosed inside each winglet.

Built alongside each of these walkways within the winglets are hydraulics, and also conduits for coolant, electrics, fuel & other engine operating fluids, and the plumbing required for engine waste fluid removal. With the engines on each side of the ship being 130 meters (425 feet) apart there are three fully equipped engine workshops on board. The crew use golf cart-type vehicles to travel throughout the various engine room areas which are located longitudinally between each pair of engines. The centrally located second workshop adjoins a storeroom in which is kept almost any spare part that may be required during flight.

Also located within the engine room areas are the ship's six electric generators. Our mechanics inspect, maintain, and service the electric generators as well as the prop engines.

Flight Control And Stability

Two structural 750 meter (2,400 feet) stabilizer fins that each extend over 15 meters (50 feet) beyond the outer skin are built into the sides of the craft to eliminate roll and, along with the winglets & the tail fins, to ensure stability during travel.

For control and added stability at cruising speeds, at the rear of Intrepid there are four of the aforementioned tail fins which are 60 meters (200 feet) in height, each with a 40 meter (130 foot) rudder. The basic shape of Intrepid's skin is a pulled dodecagon with pointed ends.

For maneuverability and as insurance against pitch & yaw over forty Aerojet AJ10 high-bypass engines are installed behind grilles built flush to the vessel’s outer skin.

While the Cyclone prop engines are used very economically for cruising, the Aerojets are utilized for complete control during Intrepid's take-offs and landings. These AJ10’s also help to counter inadvertent changes made by the atmosphere to the flight path, to otherwise boost in-flight control as required, and to instantly increase lift should additional lift be urgently required. Aerojet boosts which augment the ship's flight path are seldom noticeable to the passengers.

Flight Security

With two-hundred video cameras mounted on the exterior surfaces of the ship the pulled dodecagon shape of the outer skin offers huge flat areas that facilitate exterior monitoring and complete inspection of the outside of the vessel.

A further two thousand CCTV cameras are placed throughout Intrepid's interiors. CCTV images are stored on the Security & Fire Safety server and, displayed on some five hundred CCTV screens, can be seen live or reviewed later. To avoid fatigue the team of twenty-five Fire Safety & Security Officers each spend no longer than two hours per shift looking over CCTV footage.

The IT Department, a directive branch included within Security & Fire Safety, is located within the core of the ship and maintains all five of Intrepid's servers. Security & Fire Safety uses one server with Flight Operations using another for navigation. There is also a General Administration server and a secure Communications sub-server on stand-by that's sometimes used between Navigation and Security & Fire Safety. The IT Department uses their own server to access and maintain the other four. The General Administration server processes and monitors the software and applications required by management, guests, and staff for the general day-to-day operations & activities aboard the ship.

Buoyancy

12,500,000 cubic meters (440,000,000 cubic feet) of hydrogen are contained in standard gas bags which themselves are located inside vented monocoques. The hydrogen is heated to a maximum of 350°C (662°F) which vastly increases its lifting capacity. The gas bags containing the ship's hydrogen are permanently sealed so in the day-to-day of the vessel hydrogen is never vented, rather it is either heated or not heated as required inside the gas bags in the monocoques. These hydrogen monocoques are vented so that when the heated hydrogen expands, air can escape from inside the monocoque to make room for the increased volume of the hydrogen.

Some twenty ballonets have also been included in the ship's design. Like the gas bags, the ballonets are located inside vented monocoques and have been fireproofed to take extreme heat. To augment Intrepid's lift, air, which can be made much hotter than hydrogen, is flash heated inside the ballonets for further lift, or expelled to reduce lift. Unlike the standard airship arrangement that uses ballonets along with airbags, the ballonets inside Intrepid are separate from the hydrogen cells and do not serve to increase or decrease pressure on the hydrogen.

Electronically sensored gas detection equipment is in place to ensure safety and it is the single responsibility of many of the back-of-house flight support staff to monitor the status and condition of the buoyancy areas inside the ship. For safety none of these staff are allowed more than two hours of monitoring per shift.

While Intrepid does carry ballast it's built into the structure of the ship. Because so much lift is built into this ship's design and because the ballonets and Aerojets give quicker control it is not necessary to cast off ballast in order to increase Intrepid's buoyancy.

Ventilation And Air Conditioning

There are seven vent outlets along the top of the outer skin of the craft which serve the same purpose as funnels on an ocean liner.

Heat exhaust and any other gases requiring expulsion leave the ship by drifting through the front end of these vents. The rear of each vent is reserved for the expulsion of the vessel’s fresh air throughflow. While we've taken care in the design of this ship to scrub the exhaust, the rate of used fresh air throughflow is high enough to completely dilute any exhaust which keeps the top of Intrepid from becoming discolored.

Fresh air to keep the hydrogen cell compartments cool, for Aerojet influx, for air conditioning, and for general ventilation is mechanically drawn into the ship through two vent grilles on the outer skin. One is located on either side near the front of the craft.

Because this air is pulled through nearly a hundred vents that provide a total of 550 square meters (5,300 square feet) of intake area it has been observed that if only the air flow is switched on when Intrepid is at a full stop, after several minutes the ship will begin to slowly drift forwards.

Such a volume of intake enables a constant supply of fresh air throughout all passenger areas along with a continued flow of air throughout all back-of-house areas within the ship.

Inside the vessel immediately behind the outer grilles there are two inner stop-grilles that prevent wildlife, air borne debris, and snow & hail from being vented in along with the fresh air passing throughout the vessel. These inner grilles are internally monitored by CCTV and if necessary can be attended to by staff at a moment's notice. Birds who have survived impact with the stop-grille are occasionally held on-board for observation so their condition may be monitored by the ship's veterinarian. Those that have not been seriously injured can usually be released in a day or two from one of the hangars at the top of Intrepid. When Intrepid docks, occasionally birds are transported for recovery to the nearest veterinary hospital.

Stores, Freight, & Baggage

The 20 meter (65 foot) wide freight & baggage ramp built into the rear of the gondola can be lowered to the ground over which stores, freight, and baggage are either driven up into the ten-storey hold with everyday street vehicles (which remain on the ground after launch), or with palettes and large freight being placed on the five meter (16 foot) wide conveyor at one side.

Both freight and baggage are X-rayed and otherwise extensively security scanned prior to being moved aboard. When on board, freight and stores are lifted to their designated floors by top running overhead cranes, and from there conveyed to Central Refrigeration, Central Freezing, and to Central Warehouse for further distribution where needed throughout the ship.

Upon its arrival baggage is immediately removed from the hold and rapidly lifted to a purpose-built beltway for further conveyance to several stations throughout the passenger areas. From there it is then priority delivered to passengers’ rooms. Passengers and hand luggage are security scanned in the terminal prior to boarding.

A craft ready for today’s skies offering single-class travel and built to contemporary levels of luxury for today's passengers, voyaging on this ship is said to be so stable that during travel a pen could be balanced on end atop a table without it’s falling over. Full-service formal dining aboard is comparable to that of Michelin-starred restaurants. If they are not near the external glass walls at the time, many passengers are unsure if the ship has departed or arrived due to the launches and landings being so smooth. On a still day, when Intrepid is aloft and cruises by, it is said that some viewers on the ground can perceive light breezes and a slight change in air pressure brought on by this craft's travel.