Lockheed's High Altitude Airship

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lockheed's High Altitude Airship

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @07:00AM from the avert-your-eyes-citizen dept.

swordboy writes "Lockheed Martin has just awarded a contract to UniSolar Ovonic regarding development and delivery of flexible, lightweight solar cells for the U.S. government's High Altitude Airship security project. The proposed 500-foot-long dirigible is to fly at a stratospheric 70,000 foot altitude - above both jet stream and severe weather. The thin-film solar technology, although low in peak conversion efficiency, can potentially deliver a whopping 2500 watts/kilogram. This is the same technology as the previously discussed GE organic LED project - just with the physics in reverse. Broadband communication blimp, anyone?"

17 of 294 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

security my ass by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 07:02 · Score: 0, Insightful

good to see USA is begging for another reminder of their foreign policy

enjoy
Re:Taking the place of Satellites? by (54)T-Dub · 2004-03-17 07:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

From one of the articles
According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), 11 high-altitude airships would provide overlapping radar coverage of all maritime and southern border approaches to the continental U.S., and may be a significant asset in homeland defense efforts. The Stratospheric Platform System (SPS) dirigible operates just barely within the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere and is emerging as part of the military's 21st century transformational mindset.
Satalites can't provide the radar coverage that these blimps can.

Also Geo-syncronous satalites have to placed very high in orbit around the earth to stay in one spot with using a lot fuel. This causes a significant delay in transmission time to/from the satalites. The blimp would eliminate that.

--

"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Broadband Blimps! by MooseByte · 2004-03-17 07:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Now if they could just stick some broadband transceivers on the thing....

Satellite service is my only option (until bb-over-power-lines succeeds), but the built-in latency of the roundtrip to geosynchronous orbit makes it useless for realtime, and the crippled upload speeds makes it useless for teleconferencing.

Shouldn't be too hard to add a motor and SNR tracker to have a dish follow that thing around the sky....
A more important application by DickBreath · 2004-03-17 07:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

A more important application than security would be...

Making use of both the solar panel technology, and the OLED technology...

Autonomous, solar powered, high altitude....

Advertising billboards.

There are probably other equally attractive applications as well, such as tracking every citizen's personal tracking device within a given area.

--

I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Why not just use Hydrogen? by QuantumRiff · 2004-03-17 07:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

This is an unmanned dirigible flying at 70,000' Why not just fill it full of Hydrogen, and use the big balloon as a "gas tank" for a hydrogen fuel cell to power the dang thing. The solar cells could then be used to power devices to extract hydrogen from the atmosphere, and fill the baloon during the day. If it gets shot or blown up, who cares, they're out over the ocean, and sound pretty cheap..

--

What are we going to do tonight Brain?
1. Re:Why not just use Hydrogen? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 07:27 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Trust me when I say that nothing Lockheed makes is cheap. The manufacturers they sub the work out to have to test each and every component with MIL-STD-#####, which takes time, which costs money.
  I know this because everyday I go to work people die.
2. Re:Why not just use Hydrogen? by CompressedAir · 2004-03-17 07:33 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Using your lighter-than-air tank for fuel means you are decreasing the buoyancy of your aircraft.
  
  The more you use, the more bits you have to drop off to stay up.
  
  It's not a terrible idea, but I think Lockheed is using a better one.
3. Re:Why not just use Hydrogen? by John+Hasler · 2004-03-17 08:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  You can't extract hydrogen from the atmosphere. You'd have to extract it from stored water. This could still work, though. During the day you'd use power from the solar cells to crack water, storing energy in the form of hydrogen in the gas bags. This would increase your lift during the day when you need it. At night you would feed hydrogen from the gas bags to fuel cells to produce power, saving the by-product water. This would decrease your lift, but you need less lift at night.
  
  You _might_ be able to extract enough water from the air to supply makeup hydrogen. The air is pretty dry up there, though.
  
  --
  Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Alternate uses: Cell towers and surveillance by Chairboy · 2004-03-17 07:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

Two logical uses I can see are as replacements for cell towers. One of these could potentially offer as much coverage as many cell towers at a small fraction of the cost. The immediate followup thought is that this would break down barriers to high speed broadband too. At 70,000 feet, it could be an effective 'last 13 mile' solution. (har har)

Another use for the tinfoil hat & central government crowd is surveillance. Put high resolution cameras in place and you could have low cost monitoring of everything from:
- Fires
- Traffic jams
- Speeders (digital VASCAR, anyone?)
- Traffic patterns
- Police tails of vehicles under investigation with no possible detection ...and more.
1. Re:Alternate uses: Cell towers and surveillance by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 07:31 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Cell towers, probably not. The problem with cell towers is that you actually want *more* towers. One large tower is significantly less efficient than many small towers, in terms of both power usage and users supported. Its more expensive, true, but the trend in recent years has been towards smaller cells, especially in urban environments.
Re:Wow! by ackthpt · 2004-03-17 07:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's just like every alternate history novel I ever read!
No kidding. Ever read Job: A Comedy of Justice, by Heinlein? Many alternate realities in there, including IIRC one with lots of dirigibles as WWI hadn't happened and the advances in aircraft had not taken place. (in Job the alternate realities are just the vehicle for the story, like many of Heinlein's works.)
While this is all very interesting in that I like dirigibles (and would like to see them come back some day for transoceanic travel) all this security isn't making me feel any more secure.
"MOM! The blimp is spying on me again!"

--

A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:Taking the place of Satellites? by MarsDefenseMinister · 2004-03-17 07:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's also a lot easier to replace a blimp than a satellite.

--
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Re:Taking the place of Satellites? by Short+Circuit · 2004-03-17 08:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Not only that, you won't have shrapnel occupying the former "orbit" of a blimp.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Help me with this by Xiaotou · 2004-03-17 08:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

...would operate above the jet stream and above severe weather in a geostationary position to serve as a telecommunications relay, a weather observer, or a peacekeeper from its over-the-horizon perch.

Does "Peacekeeper" mean "Weapons Platform?"

Or am I just being paranoid?
Re:easier to take out ? by shokk · 2004-03-17 08:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

Or more importantly, over border areas to give "over the horizon" view at ground targets for ground forces. At 12 miles up and 100 miles away, how many 3rd world ground forces are even going to spot it, much less shoot it down? Imagine all the advanced optics you can't put onto a Predator, and now only available on spy satellites, loaded onto this baby and you've got a nice spy platform.

--
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Re:Those "router crashes"... by MenTaLguY · 2004-03-17 08:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

...or paint it with rocket fuel, for that matter.

--

DNA just wants to be free...
Re:Mmm, Zeppelin have been around for a while by Inthewire · 2004-03-17 13:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

160 tons is not fucking *huge*
It's a lot, yeah, but I used to work on a towboat that pushed 25 barges capable of carrying 1,500 tons *each*
That's 37,500 tons of cargo
*That's* fucking huge

Now, I understand that you mean the aircraft is huge, not the capacity, but 160 tons still works out to the approximate capacity of a Lockheed Martin C-5 Galaxy

--

Writers imply. Readers infer.