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US Navy spares Silicon Valley's 'Alexandria Lighthouse'

Hangar One will stand - naked

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Hangar One, the onetime airship station that has long symbolized California's Silicon Valley, won't be destroyed after all. The US Navy will allow it to stand - without its clothing.

More than two years ago, the Navy designated Hangar One for demolition, after discovering that the mammoth Mountain View landmark was poisoning nearby wetlands. But some feisty blimp garage lovers fought to save the structure, and yesterday, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the Navy said it will leave the hangar's steel skeleton in place while removing its toxic siding.

Hanger One

Hangar One (clothed)

Lenny Siegel, who heads the ad hoc Save Hangar One Committee, sees this as half a victory. "We can still fight to restore the structure," he tells The Reg. "But this isn't a longterm solution."

Siegel compares Hangar One to the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. "Nothing like this will ever be built again. If you tear it down, it's lost forever," he says. "If you tear it down, all you have is waste - and memories."

Measuring 1,133-feet long by 308-feet wide by 198-feet high, Hangar One is the centerpiece of Moffett Field, a naval air base built in the early 1930s. The hangar originally housed the USS Macon, a 785-foot-long dirigible. The blimps floated in during the Second World War.

The base was closed in 1994 and handed to NASA, which now uses its airstrip as means of taking money from the jet-setting co-founders of the world's largest search engine. ®

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Latest Comments

Fill it with new blimps

Isn't it about time that we started using blimps for <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/11/skyhook_jhl_40_boeing/">heavy lift operations</a> again? Since they have their own buoyancy, fuel consumption is greatly reduced. And current fuel prices are killing the American Airline industry.

Re: a previous comment:

<i>Every blimp that set sail from this place crashed and burned

By Gordon Pryra</i>

That's just ignorant. Not only was the Macon a Helium filled zeppelin (and it didn't burn) but there were many other lighter than air ships that operated out of Moffat Field. Just look at <a href="http://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/history.html">ZP-32 during WW2</a>, which operated about 20 different blimps on anti-submarine patrol of the West Coast.

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@David renaud..

nice pictures! got any more?

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Rigid Airships

The airship Macon for which hanger was designed, as were the R100 and R00, were of the rigid variety, one might even say "Zeppelins" if that is politically correct.

Blimps are soft bodied dirigibles; the hanger could hold both the Macon and a handful of blimps simultaneously.

Paris because....

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