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the balloon. As this machinery adds just so much more to the weight, which the balloon must lift and of course takes away from its power to carry other weight - passengers, freight, etc.
     Now suppose you build a balloon big enough to carry freight or passengers. For every bit of extra weight you must build a bigger balloon. You increase the size of your balloon and you get more resistance. More resistance requires more power to overcome it. More power means bigger and heavier machinery, and all that means a bigger balloon again. And so the first thing you know you are back where you started - your balloon and machinery would be so heavy that it couldn't lift itself. 

Insurmountable Difficulties
But take a practical airship such as mine. The balloon contains seven thousand cubic feet of hydrogen gas. That means the airship will lift seven times sixty five pounds, or four hundred and fifty five pounds. The machinery, framework, balloon and netting weighs three hundred pounds. I weigh one hundred and forty pounds. That leaves me a margin of fifteen pounds, not very much on which to carry freight or passengers. And to make a balloon big enough to carry extra weight would make it so heavy that it could not lift itself. 
As a result of the publicity, people came from every walk in life, race and calling. I met artists, inventors, travelers, engineers, actors and opera singers, authors, men engaged in shipping and transportation. But most important were the offers that came to us unsolicited. We now had to refuse many engage-