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Thank you! The designs, propulsion, electronics, control mechanisms, and materials available have improved tremendously but starting up a whole new method of aviation in the modern day is difficult so we don't have a many good examples in use yet and that leaves us in a kind of odd speculative space. Modern aviation is rightly and respectably safety-focussed but it's hard enough to get even a new airplane design through (which is how we end up with these weird start-with-something-grandfathered-in-and-kludge-on-modernizations) let alone a whole different kind of commercial craft. But there are a few designs I'm excited about which seem to have a lot of potential, especially in replacing cargo helicopters in their niche.

I did that in a previous picture, not sure why I forgot here. I'll probably update it for the book, thanks!

So for the use case, probably the best way to describe it is to think of an airship as a cargo helicopter with way more lift and a much longer range, which can fly a bit faster, and is cheaper to operate. They can carry way less than an onceangoing cargo ship but they're faster, they can carry more than a plane but they're slower, and they have the potential to be cheaper on fuel than both (setting aside the potential return of sailing ships). The startups seem to be pitching them mostly as a way to do overland transport of items like wind turbine blades that are too large for trains or highways. But in this setting where societal crumbles and a deprioritization on cars during rebuilding left most roads and bridges in no shape for 18-wheeler trucks, I also picture them filling the role of cargo trucks. This mirrors some research and planning by the Canadian government considering using airships to reach communities who are currently only linked seasonally by ice roads, who are being gradually stranded by climate change.

Airships like the one depicted are often described as Flying Cranes, with their own internal hoist system allowing them to raise and lower shipping containers, modular buildings (like aid stations) or to dangle larger cargoes below them.

In that case, mooring masts would fill a role similar to cargo ships dropping anchor outside a port while waiting for their turn at a dock, just a safe place to wait. In this case the crew could also disembark.

Some airships can land and would likely park on the ground during cargo operations.

The tricky part is that if they're parked for any amount of time they need to be able to weathervane in the wind or be secured in a hangar. They're basically big sails.

So any structure (like the top of the mooring mast) has to rotate freely. For little towers like this one which may not be open to the public, a rotating platform and gangplank are probably sufficient but for passenger liners I could picture a whole rotating terminal at the top of a tower though that might not be much fun in high winds.