How does a zeppelin turn and go up and down? how long does it take to do a turn or to go up or down?

Question

How does a zeppelin turn and go up and down? how long does it take to do a turn or to go up or down?

Answer 1

Not true, it has elevators and rudder to accomplish flight.

Answer 2

The airship has 'zero bouyancy' (well it's mildly negative but for the sake of argument let's say it's zero).

This means that it won't go up (or down) on it's own.  To do this it uses propellors to push it in the direction needed - up, down, left, right, forwards and backwards.

Answer 3

Several of the other answers are half-right, and several are completely uninformed.

Airships maneuver very slowly by comparison with airplanes.  A 180 degree turn may take half an hour, and rates of climb and descent are 10-50 feet per minute.

The pilot or coxswain has the responsibility for keeping the airship in trim and at approximately neutral buoyancy.  This is started by a maneuver called "weighing off" in which the mooring lines are slacked off to allow the airship to settle into trim and be adjusted so that it floats level.  This is done by moving items of cargo and equipment around and by releasing small amounts of water ballast fore and aft as needed.

After the ship is in trim, the engines can be signaled to go ahead, and the rudders and elevators come into use.  The elevators are horizontal control surfaces that adjust the pitch angle, and the rudders are vertical control surfaces that provide steering.

Steering on an airship is much like steering a ship on the water, and very different from steering an airplane.  Most of the time, the ship is controlled by the elevators and rudders, and no gas or ballast is released.

At times, usually in landing approaches and special emergencies, it becomes necessary to adjust the weight or trim of the airship by releasing gas to make it heavier or ballast to make it lighter.  The coxswain tries to keep the ship slightly heavy and maintain altitude with the elevators, so as to minimize the amount of gas that needs to be released on landing.

(The gas is quite expensive, and this is especially true for helium.)

There are many other nuances to this process.  Airship handling is one of the most complex and delicate technical processes ever devised.

For lots more information, including pictures and diagrams, try an internet search on "airship" or "airship piloting."

Answer 4

Horizontal movement was controlled by powerful petrol engined propellers and a large rudder, movement in the vertical by controlling the amount of gas within the several gas balloons within the Zeppelins frame ( releasing gas to descend), to ascend they jettisoned ballast in the form of water which was held in tanks forward, astern and midships.