Cargo Blimps on the rise?

Could be. Welcome to a parallel universe. [Link]

Sir David King, who you know is a big deal because dude's knighted (and he's director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford), sees a different method of freight delivery becoming a reality in the near future: cargo blimps.

While a blimp moves significantly slower than an airplane (currently not going much faster than 75 mph), they could potentially haul more, deliver goods to a wider range of places and do it without leaving a huge carbon footprint.

Where planes rely on fuel and runways, a blimp could take advantage of alternative methods for each. Solar power could keep a blimp in the sky, for instance, and it could be designed to be its own loading dock, so it wouldn't have to land at any specialized facility. Depending on its size, the floating crafts could also haul twice as much as your average 747 freight plane.