Vladimir Vasilievich Korkosh, publicist and candidate of biological sciences, describes the difficult path of development of airborne vehicles - airships. The first steps, bitter experience, successes, ups and downs, allowed them to undergo many trials and find their application in the ocean of air, both during the war and in peacetime. In our huge country, with inaccessible taiga regions, the use of airships with unlimited load-carrying capacity and energy-saving energy sources are a severe necessity of life. And the founder of airship construction, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, believed in their happy fate.