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Lockheed's High Altitude Airship
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?"
It's just like every alternate history novel I ever read!
I'm in no way educated about such a topic, but is this some sort of less expensive approach to satellite-type communication?
01000001 01011001 01000010 01000001 01000010 01010100 01010101
...would be a tad more dramatic then wouldn't they?
Though the really great thing is that you could use the ol' tinfoil beany to actually reflect the "mind control waves" then.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
in 3, 2, 1....
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
first they put up a blimp at 70K feet then they tell us its for national security and they LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE!!!!! This "blimp" will be beaming MIND CONTROL BEAMS into the brain of every citizen of Planet EARTH!!! We will become pawns of the ILLUMINATI and sheep in their WORLD domination MACHINE!!!
Already I feel the tin foil on my head being penetrated by THEIR MIND CONTROL RAYS!!!!!
@!(#U@)#U@U#()@!U#()@#)(@!U AAAAAHHHHAAH
There are many astronomy/aerospace missions that need to get above the bulk of the atmosphere. For science, having a controlled station at an altitude of 70,000 feet would be wonderful.
Now, in addition to all the cool cosmic ray stuff that could be done up there, putting a near-space telescope up there would be a wonderful (and relatively cheap) idea... any thought of other scientific (rather than solely comm satellite) uses for this?
If your shotgun can hit something at 70,000 feet I think you may be in for a visit by Mr. Ashcroft & Co.
Trolling is a art,
it's 250 miles tall!
just with the physics in reverse
... .. like my rain coat.
Colonel Sanders: Prepare to reverse physics!
Peon: Preparing to reverse physics!
Colonel Sanders: Reverse physics!
Peon: Reversing physics, sir!
President Skroob: Oh sh*t! Quick turn it off!
Colonel Sanders: We can't, it's irreversable.
Dark Helmet:
Is it just me, or when I read this, I pictured giant Bladerunner-esque ad blimps advertising the off-world colonies!
At 70,000 ft, they might be advertising car sales or casinos on earth to passing Martians, I guess.
The above link has folding instructions and fashion advice. Just make sure your browser has cookies enabled. No real reason. Honest. Just, well, it'll enhace your AFDB experience.
Trust me on this.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Nick Fury anyone?
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
A few years ago a German firm was going to resurrect the Zeppelin for commercial flight. Though it never received the financial backing to bring it to market, which is a shame since it is a much more efficient, safer and cleaner form of air travel.
Maybe this military use will someday translate to some sort of commercial use.
Unless it's powered with a FLOATER
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I want one, but only if I can have a Moogle pilot and fly around the world looking for crystals.
Otherwise I'll just stick to my Chocobo.
If your shotgun can hit something at 70,000 feet, I think you may be in for a visit from every military and weapons contractor, each with drool covered checkbooks in one hand and unsigned exclusive use contracts in the other.
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 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.
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?
I knew this story seemed familiar...
/black_triangle_020805.html
check this out (illustrations and sidebars at space.com):
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technolo gy
Investigation Casts Light on the Mysterious Flying Black Triangle
By Leonard David
posted: 07:00 am ET
05 August 2002
They are big, black, and triangular. In UFO folklore they are proof-positive that planet Earth is a rest stop for joyriding, but road-weary, extraterrestrials.
A just released study by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), based in Las Vegas, Nevada, sheds new light on the dark and mysterious craft. They offer a more down-to-earth hypothesis.
NIDS researchers contend that these type vehicles are lighter-than-air, blimp-style craft of the U.S. military's making. Likely powered by "electrokinetic" drive, the lifting body-shaped airships have been skirting the skies from perhaps the early to mid 1980s.
Illinois sighting
NIDS has followed up on their study of last year that correlated sightings of large triangular or delta-shaped objects with Air Force Materiel Command and Air Mobility Command bases throughout the United States. Matches were made suggesting flight paths in and out of certain base locations.
The new assessment focuses on what four police officers, and more than a dozen others observed on January 5, 2000: A large, silent, low-flying black triangular shaped object. It flew on a southwesterly direction between Highland, Illinois and Dupo, located less than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from St. Louis, Missouri.
Part of the flight path took the enormous object near the perimeter of Scott Air Force Base.
NIDS does not come up with definite conclusion regarding the origin of the object sighted in Illinois.
However, the reports jibe with over 150 separate reports of sightings of large triangular or deltoid shaped objects. Those eyewitness accounts, accumulated by NIDS, have mainly come from the United States. A small number of the sightings they have on file come from Canada and Europe.
Ballooning expectations
To bolster their case about military airships being taken for UFOs, analysts at NIDS make a historical note.
Lighter-than-air vehicles held all records for payload, distance, duration, and altitude within the first four decades of the 20th century - even with the advent of the airplane. In fact, save for rocket-powered research aircraft, like the X-15 and the space shuttle, all absolute altitude records are still held by high-altitude scientific balloons.
NIDS makes the case that Big Black Deltas, or BBDs, are U.S. Defense Department airships. They are so large they can carry massive payloads at low altitudes, cruising at speeds three to five times as fast as surface ships.
Among a range of NIDS observations, the group believes the BBDs are powered by electrokinetic/field drives, or airborne nuclear power units. These craft also fly at extreme altitudes, high above conventional aircraft and the pulsing of ground-based traffic control radar.
Elecrokinetic propulsion means that no propellers or jets are used. A hybrid lighter-than-air craft would rely on aerostatic, lift gas, like a balloon. No helicopter-like downwash would be produced. Except for a slight humming from high-voltage control equipment -- and in older BBD versions an occasional coronal discharge -- a Big Black Delta makes no noise.
Given a slew of BBD capabilities -- from silent running, diminished drag, elimination of sonic shockwaves, to operation from ground level to full vacuum -- NIDS calls for pushing this black world technology out into daylight for commercial benefit.
Wheat from the chaff
"What we're trying to do is transform unidentified flying objects, UFOs, into IFOs, or identified flying objects," said Colm Kelleher, deputy administrator for NIDS.
"We want to limit the number of cases that are unidentified in our data bas
(Cut to interior of a zeppelin. A party. Expensively dressed guests. Champagne. A palm court orchestra playing. Some guests looking out of the windows in wonderment.)
Von Bulow: (approaching Zeppelin) Herr Zeppelin - it's wonderful! It's put ballooning right back on the map.
(Zeppelin goes instantly berserk with anger.)
Zeppelin: It's not a balloon! D'you hear?... It's not a balloon... It's an airship... an airship... d'you hear?
(He hits him very hard on the top of the head with the underside of his fist.)
Von Bulow: Well, it's very nice anyway.
Tirpitz: (to Zeppelin) Tell me, what is the principle of these balloons?
Zeppelin: It's not a balloon! You stupid little thick-headed Saxon git! It's not a balloon! Balloons is for kiddy-winkies. If you want to play with balloons, get outside.
(Drags Tirpitz over to the door, opens it and flings him out into the clouds.)
Tirpitz: Aaaaaaaaaghhh!
Hydrogen is cheaper, and Weighs 1/2 as much, so the whole thing could be smaller.
......
It could also be 'canibalistic' is need be to power the fuel cells.
Hydrogen's only drawback is it explodes with fire, but this thing is unmanned, so
Just a thought
* Carthago Delenda Est *
The organic LED based technologies (polymeric / organic /nanostructured / Titania / Gratzel / Graetzel) cells are not yet ready for prime time, though they have huge promise. Check out Konarka or Nanosolar. GE and HItachi are also fooling around with this. The idea is that you can make solar cells out of TiO2, which is almost infinitely cheap in industrial quantities (see here toothpaste or white paint.)
Uni-Solar's product is in fact based on conventional silicon, just like 90%+ of the market today. The difference is that instead of slicing it out of crystals, they sputter it onto a backing, enabling them to make, e.g. peel-and-stick solar panels for commercial raised seam roofs, a conventional shingle for residential roofing, as well as, here, a flexible backing product for airships. Many are working in this area; it's sort of the next generation for solar cell cost decreases (which have come down by more than half in the last ten years; world production doubled between 2000 and 2003 - however, we're going to run out of tricks with conventional silicon within about 5 years at this pace.)
I find everyone's obsession with conversion efficiencies touching; what sense does it make when your fuel source is infinite and free? Area - related costs are subtle, so focus on this: with solar, efficiency matters not at all - the be all and end all is cost per watt.
Gerald Bull, a Canadian big gun engineer, made large guns and was killed by Israel's Mossad for daring to talk to Iraq about building a "super gun"
Trolling is a art,
Actually, the company, CargoLifter, got several million Euro in backing. They were *very* slick. However, the technical difficulties ended up taking too long and costing too much money. This is also in addition to the huge cost of construction of a hangar and air facility to support such operations.
There are many other commercial blimps, Lightship, Goodyear, etc. Not to mention several student groups working on similar topics (check out Univ. of Virginia Solar Airship, Surrey, and Univ of Japan)
The final closing of military use of airship, the Snowbird in the 60's I believe, was heavily influenced by more political factors that technical or monetary.
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)
...and more.
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
LOOK! It's the Lockheed Martin blimp!
>
747 Captain: Commencing laser firing using floating relay mirror. Crap! Did anybody else hear a loud Pop?
On the other hand, if it gets shot down, you can be fairly certain you just detected a hostile aircraft.
Richard Buckminster Fuller had a similar idea... if one could build large enough geodesic domes the pressure/temperature differential would cause them to float in the atmosphere... I'd have to do some googling to find a good url for that.
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
It sounds like this airship technology is rapidly approaching existance. Have AMSAT or the ARRL or any ham radio groups approached the government or whoever about getting ham radio payloads included on-board? If not, well maybe we need to create a new organization to promote Amateur Radio aboard high-altitude blimps.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I have read some feasibility studies for near-earth communications satellites, like high altitude blimps. The only real downside is the coverage area (since the blimp is much closer to the earth, the elevation angle is shallower). IIRC, they give pretty decent metropolitan area coverage, but not much beyond that. My antenna az/el calculator is at home. When I get back tonight I can post effective coverage areas if anyone is interested.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Check out http://www.sanswire.com/
Global Tel (gtel) http://www.globaltel.com/ just bought Sanswire to use them for a broadband and voiceIP offering. The idea is that these things float above a city and service everything below it. They're thinking about not only offering this in major cities but also having them floating above flight routes of planes across the atlantic, etc, so you can have broadband/voiceIP while going transatlantic.
Very cool stuff, imho.
As it happens I submited the story about that Zeppelin to Slashdot a bit over a year ago when they first began commercial flights and we all had an evening of fun making Hindenberg jokes.
The company is alive, well, and making commercial passenger sightseeing flights. If you want to take a zeppelin ride all you have to do is go to Lake Constance with 190 euros to spare in your pocket.
We be rigid gasbags and shit
KFG
What do you mean? An African or a European barrel?
They are a heavy engineering company. But they do indeed have a new ship which is flying now, the Zeppelin-NT:
http://www.zeppelinflug.de/pages/E/haupt.htm
Cargolifter were going to create a f*cking *huge* ship which with a cargo capacity of 160 tonnes but ran out of money. When I say "f*cking huge", imagine an ocean liner floating in the air in front of you.
http://www.cargolifter.com/
It seems that military spending is needed for these kinds of projects to succeed.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Well, thinking about the nature of the X-Prize (straight up, then straight down), a bouyant launch platform sounds to me like an excellent idea.
Geosynchronisity without requiring a high orbit.
Of course, there are technical issues to work out regarding flame safetey, what to do if you lose pressure in your balloon, etc. But it's definately worth a look.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
These would probably be a great inexpensive satellite replacement for communications, but they would not be able to replace spy satellites (which must be discreet), nor could they replace geostationary satellites that service other space vehicles (such as the GPS constellation).
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
My initial thought was that hyrdogen being a smaller molecule would leak out more rapidly, though perhaps not at a significantly higher rate. A quick googling reveals this to be false. Helium actually sneaks through mylar faster than hydrogen. At very low temperatures it looks to be about 50% faster. Dupont data, see page 3 I don't know what film they are using, but the others I checked were similar.
Given that the limiting factor for staying on station is gas leakage, hydrogen would seem to be a winner.
> If it gets shot or blown up...
I don't think gas type will be much of an issue. Either way the blimp will be a loss. The spectacular combustion of the hydrogen will happen well away from anything else that can burn.
The safety issues of hydrogen are probably only an issue on the ground. You probably would not want to put an inflated hydrogen blimp in the hangar for maintanence, so if the life cycle of the blimp involves hangar work like leak detection and repair helium looks better.
The final reason may be what Lockheed harps on a couple of times... Lockheed has the expertise in getting FAA certification for blimbs. The FAA is a variable that could effectivly kill the project, so project risk management probably dictates that they deviate as little as possible from the previous designs.
always have to post this link:
http://www.worldskycat.com/
so...
It uses "the same technology as the previously discussed GE organic LED project"
in a new dirigible?
Making it...
A LED Zepplin?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
If that's the intended use. Perhaps they could team up with NASA which already has a winged flying prototype.
...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?
"The airborne laser will fire a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser, or COIL, which was invented at Phillips Lab in 1977. The laser's fuel consists of the same chemicals found in hair bleach and Drano - hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide - which are then combined with chlorine gas and water. The laser operates at an infrared wavelength of 1.315 microns, which is invisible to the eye. By recycling chemicals, building with plastics and using a unique cooling process, the COIL team was able to make the laser lighter and more efficient while - at the same time - increasing its power by 400 percent in five years. The flight-weighted ABL module will be similar in performance and power levels to the multi-hundred kilowatt class COIL Baseline Demonstration Laser (BDL-2) module demonstrated by TRW in August 1996. As its name implies, though, it will be lighter and more compact than the earlier version due to the integration of advanced aerospace materials into the design of critical hardware components. For the operational ABL system, several modules will be linked together in series to achieve ABL's required megawatt-class power level."
Bush Lies On the Record.
You're not the 1st to suggest this. But...
There is no way on *earth* you're ever going to get another airship using hydrogen as the lifting gas. Even with a Halon mix to suppress the radicals required for burning. The movie of the Hindenberg burning is just too compelling, it's the first thing anybody mentions whenever the subject of airships are brought up. It set airship flight back 100+ years. Doesn't matter what actually caused the fire on the original ship, the fact that 2/3 of the passengers survived or the fact that you're actually using helium, they'll bring the Hindenberg up.
So, Hydrogen will *never* get approval.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
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."
Aha. I RTFA and they're being paid to develop and deliver 2.5kW/kg solar panels. Their current designs put out 600W/kg, which sounds more reasonable. Hopefully they can come up with those 2500 things. That'd be pretty impressive.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
IANAME, but I've always been curious about whether a dirigible could be built without resorting to light gases like hydrogen or helium. Instead, construct a light but strong structure, maybe out of composites, make it airtight, and then stick a solar-powered pump on it to remove most of the air inside. While on the ground, you could attach externally-powered pumps to get it off the ground quicker.
Possible downsides: cost; no real advantages over conventional designs; more complex and probably heavier structure due to higher strength needed to resist air pressure; vulnerability to punctures and leaks. I'm just curious if this has ever been attempted.
Read my keyboard review.
Check out where they plan on building these things. It's the old Goodyear-Zepplin Airdock in Akron, OH (now owned by Lockheed Martin - see their article on the HAA.)
A book I have (Published by Goodyear in 1923) lists this place as 1175ft x 200ft x 325ft. It even has a picture of it super-imposed over the American side of Niagara Falls (it's 75 longer). It's also mentions that it is so big that it often form clouds on the inside.
More links are here and here
The way I see it, the final product is going to have a payload capacity in excess of 20,000 lbs.
According to the linked articles the payload will be a mere 4000 lb, despite the dirigible's massive size. It makes sense, since an airship's bouyancy is created by the difference in density betwen the airship and the air around it. At sea level this large airship would have much greater lifting capability, but way up there the lifting gas won't be that much lighter than the thin atmosphere.
By the way, some back of the envelope calculations show that this thing would have about 70% of the volume of the LZ-129 , the famous Hindenburg. The Hindenburg was considerably sleaker too, at 804 feet long vs 500. The Hindeburg carried 50 passengers and 50 crew, which alone without luggage or cargo would amount to something like 15,000 lb; in addition, the ship could carry 11 tons of cargo.
So we're talkiing very neary 40,000 lb of payload capacity for the LZ-129 vs. 4000 for this beast. In part this is because of LZ-129's 40% greater volume (lifting gas only - overall it had 4x the volume), possibly the use of hydrogen gas (doesn't say whether the ship in question will use H or He). But mostly it is due to the fact the LZ-129's normal operating altitude was on the order of 200m.
An airship to lift 20,000 lb to the altitude this one will would, all other things being equal, have to have five times the volume. Conservatively, we are talking about something on the order of 850 feet long; possibly a bit less because of increased volume to surface ration. Undoubtedly it would be the largest flying machine every built.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.