delivery drones, self drving cars it will all happen soon enough

https://qz.com/1274105/the-us-government-has-approved-the-first-statewide-tests-for-autonomous-drone-deliveries/

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/613255/the-first-commercial-drone-delivery-scheme-in-the-us-is-already-flying/

The FAA has already issued waivers for tests that at least forgo the line of sight requirement. Amazon is also testing with autonomus drones. The FAA regulations that are currently in place are basically meaningless because as soon as companies need those regulations to disappear, they will. Delivery drones are already well underway and these regulations won't stay in their way as soon as they're reliable and economically viable.

It's the same with autonomous vehicles. There are still regulations that require the vehicle to be able to be manually operated by a human. You don't think that's gonna last very long, do you?

Seems unpractical for some reasons:

1. Airships do need quite some maintenance. It's the main reason why there hasn't been a revival of them outside of the much cheaper low-tech blimps and hot air airships (basically steerable hot-air balloons) despite being safer than Airplanes when fueled with helium, which all modern Airships do. Hydrogen got only used because helium was very rare at the time, the US had a quasi-monopoly and didn't want to export it, resulting in the Hindenburg disaster.
2. You'd need to load and unload (to refuel the drones for instance) an entire airship, which will take quite some time
3. Could easily come into conflict with airspace regulation
4. Would most likely be grounded during heavy rain or storms or forced to stay above the clouds to avoid that weather. In any case, no delivery under such weather while it's still possible to do with a truck

That being said, I expect airships to slowly make a comeback, at least in short to medium range freight services. They can load absolutely massive amounts of freights nowadays (way more than even the biggest cargo planes) and don't need to unload the plane, load on a truck and unload that truck at the destination again as they can deliver directly to the client (if regulations allow it) or to remote places.

video blocked here, will see later.

1. It is possible to make maintenance during operation if it is designed like that, just like ships can and receive maintenance while still on the water and even during mission.

2. You can certainly make use of solar energy for the mothership if it doesn't need to be moving constantly

3. Regulation changes when technology changes

4. If the mothership can fly to high altitudes it would be outside of weather troubles such as rain and storm. And if it have capability of moving around it can dislocate from problematic cumulus nimbus that approaches.

1. The main problem in an Airship is that the Helium Ballons inside the rigid structure and the external hull need to be checked for holes. While you can make some small checks of the inner balloons depending on how they are arranged and if they are accessible from all sides, but for thourough checks the airship needs to be in a hangar. (That hangar is another problem btw, as it would need to be much larger than those we have for planes as an Airship is much larger in height).

2. The Mothership ain't the problem here, unless there's a leak. It's more that, to make it worthwhile, they would need to load up  several tons of goods to make it worthwhile, and loading so much packaged for end-users and pre-prepared to be shipped by drones takes a lot of time, time that a truck delivery could use much more efficiently.

3. True, but it takes time. And not everybody is in favor of so many drones, so it could take a long time to convince the lawmakers to support such a bill.

4. The mothership, yes. The drones, not so much. So they would need to wait for better weather conditions. Plus, the Airship probably needs to fly lower to release the drones in the first place.

1 - You can certainly design the ballon to have the continuous test done in locu, with system redundancy so you can take out one ballon for external test on periodic calendar without having to put the airship down.

2 - That is a different problem but not necessarily how you describe. They could have means to load the airship using aircrafts or others that would pair and unload.

3 - I understood this thread is about it happening in the future, not in the next couple years.

4 - The rains aren't permanent and you can drop the drones when it is appropriate so I don't see the weather being a problem. Also I guess it is manageable to have the drones to fly up and down from the airship. If the drones can't go down they wouldn't be able to get back.

Yeah, but the things need to fly to give the lawmakers any reason to change the law in the first place. It doesn't matter how long it takes until it's ready, changes will only get initiated when it's ready.

4. Of course. But like I said, unless the distances are too long, it will simply be faster and cheaper to just have truck driver deliver them one by one in bad weather conditions. And  for the last sentence: that's the reason why the Airship would need to go lower first before starting sending out the drones. And even if they could go down, such drones often have pretty low flight ceilings, so they couldn't get back to the Airship if it wouldn't lower it's altitude.

Valid points

Wouldn't work in the US.
They have certain types of people who shoot guns at drones all the time. It has been in the news. They probably think they're UFOs or something.