[Benclaman]

A bored or malicious person will definitely be able to shoot our airships. The nice part about an airship is that if you shoot it with a gun, the hole will be small so it will take a long time for the gas to leak out. The failure mode is the airship will gradually lose lift and have trouble flying, probably on the order of hours before it wouldn't have enough to fly.

Most of the time we'll be operating over areas without people, so if the airships do get shot at, they should be in an area where they can safely land and be recovered. The envelope will be tough enough to handle birds landing on it.

Regarding banditry, we hope that we are providing enough value to these communities that there will be peer pressure to prevent it.

It's relatively easy to transport them when not in use, either keeping them inflated and flying to the end location, or packing them up and assembling/inflating on location.

[burnished]

Rad! Thanks for the answers and best of luck!