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High-Altitude 'Security Blimps' Coming Soon
quackking writes "The AP is reporting (in New York Newsday) that the Georgia Tech spinoff company TechSphere has sold their concept of immense (300 foot diameter), high altitude spherical surveillance blimps to the honchos at Fort Benning, GA, and production is beginning now! (more here.) These things are as big as a 30-story building. Meanwhile Lockheed-Martin is working on gigantic 500-foot long robot blimps, (and more here.) This would be 25 times the size of the well-known Goodyear blimp. Says Mayor Don Plusquellic, 'For Akron, it's a very emotional thing.'"
"Our Proud & Patriotic Security Blimps will roam the country in Freedom Flotillas keeping evildoers at bay."
- John Ashcroft
In America, You watch Good Year Security Blimp!
Security Blimps? And here I thought they were going to use the blimps to display something like: "Run Windows Update, People Who Own Spam-Bot Zombie Computers!"
Hey, fine. As long as we get to put an antenna on it and use it for wireless access.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
Weren't surveillance blimps all the rage during WW-I ? . . . Nearly a century later and we've gone full circle . . .
admittedly I didn't look at the site... but thinking about giant security blimps reminded me of the "guards"...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Soon, a stout steamer will carry all of our correspondence be-tween the United States and the British Empire, reducing communication time to a scant six weeks! Huzzah!
References to "1984" have become so common and hackeneyed these days that it's become kind of like the second order version of Godwin's Law or something. I'll agree with this.
But is this a reasonable time to start referencing 1984, now that they've started implementing actual plot devices from 1984 (the surveillance helicopters) in real life??
....Does anyone else hear some spooky voice saying 'Must Spawn More Overlords!'
Maybe this is all just a mass coverup to crashing alien craft. The numbers of crashed alien vessels has increased to the point where we need to make sure we have enough high alt. blimps cruising around so that we can claim one crashed!
From the TechsSphere page on the project:
This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the Company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) the Company's financing plans; (ii) trends affecting the Company's financial condition or results of operations; (iii) the Company's growth strategy and operating strategy; and (iv) the declaration and payment of dividends. The words may, would, will, expect, estimate, anticipate, believe, intend, and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors.
Man sometimes the beauty of legal double talk brings tears to thine eyes...***sniff sniff***
... perhaps because one of the original US military airships was the USS Akron?
These blimps were actually aircraft carriers. Akron's sister ship, USS Macon, once "dive-bombed" a Navy ship carrying President Roosevelt, dropping a bundle of newspapers for his reading. The stunt was intended to prove the worth of aircraft against ship targets.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I've got them both beat... I'm working on a sport-utility blimp that's nearly the size of Australia!! The only problem I have so far is that it's a little hard to maneuver around smaller blimps.
Just think though, with enough robotic blimps spying on us, the satelites won't be able to see us. Will this mean I'll need to build a new kind of aluminum foil hat?
The next trend will be finding "coldspots" instead of "hotspots" - places you can go to live freely outside of the benevolent observation of the government.
Maybe large multi-nationals can sponser these blimps and fly them over sporting events. Wouldn't that be grand.
but only if they fill them with Hydrogen!
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Notice their plan for using the blimps for homeland security. Notice the lack of ballons to the north. Do we trust canadians now? (j/k) But seriously, what happends when somone flys over canadian air space and around the blimps?
Jon Stewert did a bit on this a few months ago. He kept citing the report titled Hey, what if we put a camera on a blimp and the more detailed report Hey, what if we put a good camera on a blimp.
GURPS has a range of 1,650 yards.
Dungeons & Dragons v3.5 can reach about 1,240 yards but some some inexplicable reason is more popular.
The old Chivalry & Sorcery RPG had a range of nearly five miles, but figuring out how to shoot it could take years.
BEN: That's no moon! That's a Security Blimp!
My business: Farstrider Studios.
Gee, why don't they call them balloons?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Not only were both rigid-body airships and blimps everywhere, helium was declared a strategic war material. A National Helium Reserve was established in 1925, and we've been sitting on stockpiles of the stuff ever since. Finally, it will get used for its intended purpose (hopefully...)
Civilian aircraft (including airliners) rarely fly much above 40,000 feet.
Shouldn't be a problem.
The biggest danger window would be during blimp acsent and descent.
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
Your typical 747 cruises between 36,000 ft and 44,000 ft. Air density starts thinning out dramatically at these altitudes hence the maximum possible altitude for a civilian aircraft would be say 50,000 ft (15.3 km straight up).
The only possible exception would a supersonic aircraft but there isn't too many of those in civilian hands.
Da ZombieEngineer
Sounds just like a larger implementation of the not-too-sucessful Aerostat program they tried along the Southern borders of the US.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I was going to go with the:
I for one welcome our large, invisible, gas-filled overlords...um...version 2.0.
There have been several posts to the effect of "what a big target, anyone with a gun could shoot these down". Consider the physics of this for a moment.
A Magnum-powered hunting rifle has a muzzle velocity of around 2,000 mph (You could try using an AK or such, but these are going to be considerably lower velocity). With the high-altitude blimps flying at 65,000 feet per the article, your shot would hit it in about 22 seconds, were it not for two things:
The first is gravity. 32.2 feet per second squared downward acceleration. Vith v^2/2*g = 131,400 feet maximum height, there is high enough initial velocity to hit the blimp.
The second problem, however, is air resistance. The aforementioned bullet loses half its velocity within the first 1,800 feet or so even in level flight, and continues to slow down from there.
Between these two considerations, there is no way for a bullet (except maybe from a huge cannon) to hit something that is 65,000 feet up in the air.
Even if you did hit it, a blimp is not going to suddenly pop like a rubber balloon. You might get lucky and hit a motor or some other critical component, but just hitting the surface of the blimp (which is what makes it such a big target) is just going to put a 1/3" hole in something as big as a skyscraper, and make it leak at a negligible rate.
The higher you go, the farther you can see. I don't recall it exactly, but @ the beach, you can see something like 22~25 miles out to sea. Raise yourself 20 or 30 feet and your viewing distance increases tremendously.
If you're standing at the edge of the water, the horizon is less than three miles away. At 30 feet, it's six and a half miles.
At 65000 feet, it's 314 miles away.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
that weren't required to read it in high school and are wondering what all these double-plus-ungood and 'big brother' comments are, check this out.
/. would know this.
There was once a time where everyone on
Ummm, hello, not even CLOSE, a 50 cal BMG dosent even have the altitude they are talking about is > 50k ft.
Better yet, check this out for the free online version.
Excuse me? In what way are 500-foot-diameter blimps like helicopters? They're big. Round. Like... I dunno... like... eyes! Big... electric... eyes! Yeaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!
George Orwell's 1984's helicopters are totally pwn3d by Judas Priest's Electric Eye, and Rob Halford sang it in 1982. Nyaaah!
"(1) COMMENCEMENT.--Not later than January 1, 2005, the Secretary shall commence offering for sale crude helium from helium reserves owned by the United States in such amounts as would be necessary to dispose of all such helium reserves in excess of 600,000,000 cubic feet on a straight-line basis between such date and January 1, 2015.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, people like me have been using the strategic helium reserve for years. I'm a physics grad student who uses liquid helium for cryogenics experiments, and about half of our helium comes from the reserve, with the other half coming from coal mines and oil wells. I'm too young to remember it, but the old guys in the physics department remember when helium was $10-20 per liter (liquid), whereas now it's about $5-7 thanks to the Feds selling it cheap.
Now I live in New Zealand and these giant gas bags won't be showing up here any time soon, but I was wondering, will it be possible to see them from the ground? I expect not in the cities, but out where the air is clear?
As a rough rule of thumb (in imperial units):
Take your height above the ground in feet, multiply by 1.5 and take the square root to get the visible horizon in miles.
For a six foot person this would be sqrt(6*1.5)=3miles. If they moved to 150 feet it would be 15 miles......