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250-Foot Hybrid Airship To Spy Over Afghanistan
Toe, The writes "Gizmodo details the Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) (based on the P-791), a spyship from US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command capable of hovering at 20,000 feet. Planned for deployment in Afghanistan, the ship can float for three weeks and carry well over a ton of payload, apparently surveillance equipment. The video on Gizmodo of the P-791 shows that these ships are a hybrid not only of both buoyancy and propulsive lift, but also of both awe and hilarity."
I read TFA and the wikipedia entry for the P-791 but I can't seem to find any actual details on the crafts construction. Specifically, what material the outer skin is made of. Seems like this kind of airship would be extremely vulnerable flying over hostile territory.
Much romance surrounds travel by blimps/airships as they float gracefully through the air. But on watching that video, i have to say it it seems to be one of the least elegant take-offs (and landing) around.
With this new Imperial Probe Droid those rebels don't stand a chance!!!!
Nice headline! "250-Foot Hybrid Airship To Spy Over Afghanistan In" - in what? In November? In 2010? In next ten years? In mission to provide big target in sky? In huge ball of flames? In super-secret mission that no-one knows about?
Lucky there's a war going on, so we can test our new equipment. </sarcasm>
Or possibly Titanic, except its not the ship thats sinking its our natational debt.
______ Eagles may fly but monkeys don't get sucked into jet engines.
"DARPA's goals for Vulture are not trivial: 5 years on station with a 450kg/ 1,000lb payload, 5kW of onboard power, and sufficient loiter speed to stay on station for 99% of the time against winds encountered at 60,000-90,000 feet."
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/DARPAs-Vulture-What-Goes-Up-Neednt-Come-Down-04852/
Any kind of airship is slow and large, providing an easy target for the bad guys. Even the common shoulder-fired Stinger missile reaches up to 15 700 feet (says Wikipedia), so the ship would be vulnerable to it for a long time during its ascent and descent. Other rockets (maybe improvised) could reach it at the cruising altitude.
that's one ugly airship. it looks like some fatass sitting on a toilet, squeezing out a turd (cabin).
First your national debts will sink and then soon after the airship will be shot down from the sky over Afghanistan...
Seriously, how do they expect this huge but slow flying airship to stay in the air for up to 3 weeks without getting shot down? Even if it is 6km above the ground there should be some way of getting it down with the right weapons.
Mine was Kirov...
"Kirov reporting!"
"Aw... look, is that your house?"
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Shouldn't it be "250-Feet" ?!
After painting evil elephant faces on them, and adding mini-gun trunks.
Oh, to be an (telecommuting) operator. Sitting at a bar in Georgetown, gunning down bad guys with your own killer-flying-elephant, half a world away.
dunno how high they were, but the Taliban couldn't reach B52s.
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
Now you may well be right that the war is unwinnable, should never have been started and should be ended as soon as possible. Certainly that is a valid and reasonable point of view.
My problem with you is that you seem to be advocating cutting support for the troops before they get pulled out. This is simply dishonest and a betrayal of the armed forces. Pull out, or fully support them. Doing neither is not (or at least should not) be an option.
He takes his nick from a well known military genious who has repeatedly chosen a third option in such situations: fight until death, but don't count on backup
Mine wasn't, but then I understand the difference between hydrogen and helium.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The crew of the airship has been made available to the public, the Army has recruited a rag-tag group of unlikely heroes brought together under impossible circumstances from completely different backgrounds and cultures including:
-Guy with tough exterior yet internally continues on a never ending journey of soul searching
-Hot chick who uses her hotness to tame the tough exterior of soul searching boy
-Underage girl with mysterious supernatural abilities
-Relatively hot chick who doesn't know she's hot and hangs out with guys that have obvious emotional problems
-Overly cool guy who is infatuated with himself to hook up with any of these girls on the ship
-Random tough guy who is there to do man tasks like open jars and move furniture for all these emo boys and girls
-Some non-human creature that nobody really knows why is even there in the first place
-Pilot, named Cid, reportedly just completed rehab for alcoholism and a gambling addiction.
Master, master
This is recorded through a fly's ear
And you have to have a fly's eye to see it
It's the thing that's gonna make Captain Beefheart
And his magic band fat
Frank, it's the big hit ! It's the blimp !
It's the blimp, Frank ! It's the blimp !
Squirrel!
This kind of airship will, once at operating altitude, be essentially be impossible to shoot down unless the enemy has a true SAM based defense (e.g. SA-11). SAM would have no problems locking on, as they tend to be driven by an active radar on the ground - I doubt you could hide something that big from radar in any useful way (although, I wonder if making it extra radar reflective might not actually work better since it would give the missile to large an area to aim for?). Stingers have a useful ceiling of around 15,000 feet, and they're driven by infra-red, which means you probably wouldn't get a lock on.* The only other thing that would work would be a proper flak gun at around 88mm. While there's a lot of those lying around Afghanistan, getting them in working order, manning them, and providing reliable ammo would all be very problematic. Remember that flak is only really useful if someone is manning it 24/7 - the ceiling might be enough, but the range is terrible. * Of course, the problem with all this is that given the MOUNTAINS in Afghanistan, I wonder if there isn't a shoulder fired active radar missile available. The ceiling wouldn't have to be 20,000 feet, but rather 20,000 feet - the height of the mountain the defender is standing on. Also, it looks gay.
I was promised flying cars...Why are there no flying cars?
As for the LEMV: a 40-foot long, 15-foot wide area behind the only sometimes-manned cockpit will carry intelligence systems, like radar and wide-area motion sensors, that will beam information back to commanders on the ground.
sometimes-manned.
"Guys, I had to parachute down to get some more water supplies and left the thing running at 20,000 feet. How do I get back up?"
29 mpg. YMMV.
Does it run Linux?
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
What is it going to be shot down with? Scroll up to read my reply to Tuoqui. Someone, somewhere, can indeed shoot the damned thing down. But, do some googling, and you'll quickly learn that not every Tom, Dick, and Mohammed has the capability.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If manned, a ton of payload doesn't leave much for environmentals for a 2 man crew deployed even for a week at a time. The artist has windows which indicates manned flights.
Unmanned and I would be VERY concerned about losing control and it drifting into Pakistan or Russia. Airspace violation, technology theft, the list goes on and on.
Of course even manned flights might suffer the same fate. At least with an unmanned system, you can shoot it down if it floats too close to enemy hands. If it is manned, you will need to consider scuttle options.
Actually Hindenburg was designed to be filled with hydrogen and wouldn't have flown effectively using helium. Graf Zeppelin II was the one that was designed to be filled with helium and start operation after Hindenburg, but it never got off the ground because of US trade restrictions on helium. Change from hydrogen to helium wasn't easy, lots of design changes had to be done and passenger capacity reduced. Hydrogen has significantly more lift and since it's cheap airships could vent it out easily to reduce buoyancy.
Somebody named Toe, The pulls a PKB and says: "both awe and hilarity".
Go on and laugh. The Army captain from 117 Space BN will be sitting in Huntsville laughing when you don't notice the laser with which he's painting you. And the Air Force lieutenant sitting in base ops in Pueblo driving the Predator will be laughing when she drops the Hellfire to home in on the reflected laser. And you three can laugh and laugh and laugh until suddenly there's two of them laughing and laughing and a cloud of well done meat flakes settling to the ground that never realized what happened when it when it was visited by silent death from above. Paint it brown and call it The Flying Turd to add to the entertainment if you like, it'll still be an awesome piece of weapons delivery systems.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"I doubt you could hide something that big from radar in any useful way"
IMHO, a plastic balloon hasjust zero radar signature. Of course the undelying structure needed to attach propellers and cabin may be detectable, but for sure would I be resp. for developing this thing I definitely would propose as an option to our dear military clients something purely plastic/fiberglass or so...
Herve S.
He takes his nick from a well known military genious who has repeatedly chosen a third option in such situations: fight until death, but don't count on backup
My cat ?
I like your thinking to the point where the mere thought of having mod points sends little rivers of anticipation running down my inseam.
I completely and utterly disagree with this, and it depresses me that so many people think as you do.
Your armed forces have not betrayed you. They are doing their duty, as they have sworn to, and obeying the orders given by their political masters. Who were elected by democratic vote. Blaming the soldiers is simply a cop-out. You cannot muster the political support to pull out as you want, so you advocate cutting off resources since it is a battle you may be able to win.
This is a betrayal, and it will cost the lives and limbs of those who are willing to die to protect you. It isn't the military's fault that the politicians sent them into Afghanistan and still have them there 8 years later. They are dying and being maimed for these decisions, while you are simply troubled by your conscience.
You disagree with Afghanistan, fine, possibly I agree with you. What you need to do then is get your forces out of Afghanistan, and if you don't have the support to do so then try to bring people around to your views until you do. But keep your hands off the purse strings.
Thunderbirds are go!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
250-Foot Hybrid Airship In Which To Spy Over Afghanistan
if you please
Lots of posts describe how difficult it would be to take down this monstrosity. However, if students manage to get something that high with 150 $, so can surely some ingenious combatants as well. The bigger problem would be to get the payload, but surely not impossible, even with homebrewn methods.
And now an airship with three buttocks.
From down here it looks like a participle!
That was a much better sound track for the flying marshmallow. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Yes, it should be "2011." In the /. submission form, there used to be a form-imposed length-limit on titles.
Now the limit appears to have been removed, but it is still enforced after submission.
So while I was preparing the story, the "2011" was in the Title field, but it got nixed on submission. My bad for not noticing the single missing word when I previewed the story.
Of course there is no Edit command on submissions. But I figured if the article got approved, someone would fix the title before sending it to the front page.
Call Nick Fury at SHIELD, find out how big he wants his.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
From what I've read quickly on Wiki it seems that there isn't a TOW with the range to hit something at 20000 feet.
The ERYX has about as much of an effective range as most medium power rifles.
Only the AGM-114 HellFire seems to have the range but given that the stat is tied to an air to surface missile I doubt it has that kind of range on a climb but may have the range when launched from an altitude to a ground based target by not using fuel as a lift but rather strictly for guidance.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Same military genius thought that reserves are for wimps, that bigger is better, that the way to solve food scarcity was to cull the extra population, and that making purchases from his allies with IOUs will make them love him more ... not to forget getting millions of his own people killed in the process ... and no, there is no connection between the V1 or V2 and the rockets that actually got to space except having pointy tops and fins ... during the war the Russians, UK and US of A already had rockets that could hit a target smaller than the city of London, which was the smallest target the Vs managed.
Welcome to the dawn of a new era!
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Ocean-going ships are technically better for travel between continents (much more efficient, can carry lots of luggage, etc) but there's a reason they're not popular - time.
No sig today...
Launch all Zig! For great justice!
That explains all of those UFO sightings... "It was just hovering there in mid-air!"
I wonder how that got past the submitter, let alone the editor.
Free Martian Whores!
Sir, an enemy craft is approaching! ... an Air Hippo.
What is it man?
It appears to be
My. God.
Wow - no Final Fantasy references yet... and to think I was about to dust off my gunblade.
Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from GhostBusters...
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
That's no moon...
Your rocket history is sadly uninformed. I'd like to see your source for claiming that the UK and US already had missile technology. Our rocket program was the result of hijacking as many German scientists as we could at the end of the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_paperclip
That is not true and is a common misconception. The lift is generated from the buoyancy which depends on the difference between the density of air and the density of the gas. Since hydrogen and helium are both very less dense than air, the lift differences are small. For example, a 20,000 liter balloon will generate about 500 lbf if it is hydrogen and 460 lbf if it is helium [http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/lift.html]. Also, of interesting note is that the Wikipedia article on on the Hindenburg argues that the Hindenburg disaster was caused by the frame being too flammable, not the Hydrogen.
TOW (of course, it's a ground strike missile, but I'm sure it can easilly hit a blimp).
TOW is wire guided, not active radar guided and has a maximum range of about 2 miles under perfect conditions. It's not clear how the motor nozzle and control fins would function at 20,000', my guess is "poorly".
And if I am not mistaken, you do have the portable (i.e. carryable by 3 men) ground-based AGM-65 Hellfire launcher.
Firstly, there is no AGM-65 Hellfire. The Hellfire is the AGM-114. And no, there is no portable launcher. Tests were done firing off of Humvees and ITVs, but nothing was ever fielded.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
i wonder if this "hybrid airship" will look anything like the ones in super mario. would be funny to see all of the angry bullet-bills.
stephen
The dull-grayish metallic color... A very dense appearance... Does anyone else have a sudden urge to sing "Stairway to Heaven"?
Airships that are covered in solar panels could be extraordinarily efficient. Get a biomass burning generator to power the electrical system when the sunlight isn't enough. The gas provides passive buoyancy, or just make a majority of the surface absorb heat to keep the air hot. The "free" energy from the sun provides the thrust.
Never underestimate the power of a slow moving vehicle in travel for 24 hours straight. They had them at 60+ mph in the 1920s, so at 50mph average, you could go 1200 miles in 24 hours, which seems like the speed of slow rail travel without the required infrastructure.
It's not going to capture the LA-NY trips, but for regional pleasure travel, it could be a real winner. I know I'd rather spend a day reading a book or cruising around the internet than driving.
I've been watching for something like this since the New Yorker carried a series about hybrid airships when I was in grad school. Seems it was finally published as a book (1973): The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
I guess it says something about the time it takes for new technology to get off the ground, so to speak.
Everyone thinks of the Hindenburg, but as the New Yorker article pointed out, there weren't many passenger aircraft in those days, and this was the first such crash caught on video, so it had a huge impact. These days, we have 10 times as many lost in a passenger jet crash and even if on video it has much less impact on the public at large.
It's a platform for use on countries with essentially zero anti-aircraft capability. Saddam at his weakest could have cobbled something together to knock this thing down. Personally I wouldn't bet on the Afghans figuring out how to do it either.
Dude!
This thing looks like Cartman coming in for a landing!
No really! It does!
The ultimate recipe for P-791 defense.... the Lawn Chair mounted Weather Balloon Defense System.
2 Dozen helium filled weather balloons
1 lawn chair
1 car battery
1 room fan converted to run on battery power (navigation)
1 shotgun (descent control) (optional)
1 RPG
1 120 lb Afghani militant
--
"There is always an elegant solution. If you believe that, you will find it."
Your rocket technology awareness is sadly not very developed, if you think the rockets designed in US or USSR during the '50s had anything to do with the Vs, except being ... you know, rocket-ish, being pointed and having fins. Remember I did not deny that von Braun had a hand in developing US rockets after the war, just that the technology used in the rockets that got to space in them was dissimilar enough from what was put inside the Vs.
Missile technology is ancient ... arrows are missiles, you know, and rockets were used for quite a long time before WWII, and even during the WWII (for antitank weapons, for ex.) ... the bazooka was a lot more imporant, militarily speaking, than the duds that the Vs were, who only killed civilians and who took resources from the production of submarines ... I believe the Vs had a larger contribution to the defeat of the Nazis than some of the Allied nations ...
if you're an Internet worshiper, here is a link, too ... http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/america_and_rocket_technology.htm
I'm not sure he's advocating cutting off the soldiers from support. He just seems to be saying that the war is really stupid, and any and all investment in such a war is folly to the extreme. The rest of his post is just trolling.
But, that said, I am not sure if it would be betrayal. From my point of view, everyone who signed up to invade Afghanistan and Iraq betrayed me, betrayed the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and betrayed the citizens of his respective nation. When it comes to randomly invading countries, I am a pacifist to the extreme.
You do realize that 9-11 was ordered by a guy living in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban, right? You can say what you want about Iraq, but going to war in Afghanistan was IN RESPONSE to us being attacked. It was hardly random.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
That would be the other Werner Von Braun, then?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
thinking of a big one of these:
http://www.amazing1.com/Graphics/T4181.gif
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
no, just von Bazooka
I don't know, after my experiences with flying in an airplane, I think I'd actually pay good money for a blimp ride instead... assuming that I actually get _some_ leg space on a blimp, I could live with it taking an hour longer in flight. Quite happily.
Plus, honestly, have you flown in the last 10 years or so? Between having to come an hour early just to make it through the byzantine controls and bureaucracy in time, and stuff like having to wait almost an hour on the runway because someone forgot to also load the luggage (for bonus points: it once happened in _both_ directions)... if an airship line can simplify that and maintain, say, a 200 km/h speed in a straight line, it might actually be faster on the whole. Well, for short to medium distance flights, anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
WW1 called, they want there technology back.
You do realize that 9-11 was ordered by a guy living in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban, right? You can say what you want about Iraq, but going to war in Afghanistan was IN RESPONSE to us being attacked. It was hardly random.
Completely with you on this one. There's a reason we had most of the world's support (or at least understanding) for invading Afghanistan, and it wasn't just that our image was better at the time. There is no conceivable Commander in Chief -- Al Gore, even Ralph Nader -- who wouldn't have put our forces' boots on the ground in Afghanistan in response. Even freaking Canada thought it was a cause worth spilling blood over (that and they're in NATO).
It's too bad the Iraq debacle distracted us so much from the justified war. Before it began, I was worried the Admin. would see Afghanistan through rose-colored glasses and assume it'd be a cakewalk. Turns out they took "The Graveyard of Empires" seriously, and took very pragmatic steps like befriending the Northern Alliance and all the warlords immediately. No, it was in Iraq that all my worst fears became reality, and even worse took vital attention and resources away from Afghanistan. I doubt we'd be out of Afghanistan today, but a lot of the reason the Taleban has kept resurging is because we didn't have the resources to hold the territory we kept taking from them. The very fact that I'm talking about a conflict where "taking territory" is even a relevant concept, but we wasted our army in an urban insurgency hellhole, just depresses me.
The enemies of Democracy are
Also, it looks gay.
:)
Well, they were going to add "Must not look gay" to the Request For Proposal, but their hands were tied by Don't Ask/Don't Tell.
What's happened is that Congress lost their balls. If they don't support the war, then they can refuse to approve spending for the war. This puts the President in the position of either keeping our troops in harm's way without the resources they need to continue the invasion, or bringing them home.
If congress were to take such action on their own, they would be reviled by President and people alike. However, if American citizens opposed to the wars were to pressure their congressmen into taking such action, the congress would have no choice and neither would the President.
When the executive power fails to be prudent and fails to listen to the citizenry, as has been and continues to be the case, the ability of Congress to defund the war effort is the only check against him.
It's a shame that the rhetoric of "supporting the troops" has been perverted to the level of "keeping them in harm's way for no good goddamned reason."
Eventually we'll just make an unmanned version, and it will be so cheap that we can just send another up if someone blows it up.
Also if it can carry a ton of payload then I assume it could one day carry some anti-missile technology aboard to distract the guidance or destroy it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
How is this a new technology... Nothing new here accept that this pos looks far less stable than the blimps they had sailing across the Atlantic almost a century ago. Perhaps a new bio-weapon involving trebuchets and diseased carcasses is on the horizon. That may take a few more years development though.
The US also happens to have harbored terrorists inside its borders. Luis Posada Carilles bombed a Cuban airliner, and so far as I know, he still lives in the US, and he cannot be deported. Since we will not hand him over, Cuba has the right to invade our country and, in the process, kill thousands of innocents who have no connection to the government (intentional or not). Then, after the invasion, the Cuban government
SSC
There are no hand held weapons that reach out that far. Those people talking about RPG's and sniper rifles are clueless. Max height of the airship is 20K feet (but cruise will likely be less for a better look). Max altitude of afghan is 24K feet. Assume that the terrorists are up higher, so they are around 10-13K feet. That means that a bullet has to travel 7-10K feet.
.30 caliber, 150
gr., Spitzer point bullets, at a velocity of 2,700 f.p.s. Using the
bullet ballistic coefficient and elapsed time from firing until the
bullet struck the water, they calculated that the bullet traveled 9,000
feet in 18 seconds and fell to earth in 31 seconds for a total time of
49 seconds.
So, here you go: In 1920 the U.S. Army Ordnance conducted a series of experiments to try and determine the velocity of falling bullets. The tests were performed from a platform in the middle of a lake near Miami, Florida. The platform was ten feet square and a thin sheet of armor plate was placed over the men firing the gun. The gun was held in a fixture that would allow the gun to be adjusted to bring the shots close to the platform. It was surmised that the sound of the falling bullets could be heard when they hit the water or the platform. They fired
And that was 1920's tech.
So, IS IT POSSIBLE? ABSOLUTELY.
Is it probable? Not likely. THey will have to be in the right place at the right time. And anybody who shoots at one of these will likely not want to be standing in the same place in the next minute or two.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder if there isn't a shoulder fired active radar missile available. The ceiling wouldn't have to be 20,000 feet, but rather 20,000 feet - the height of the mountain the defender is standing on.
Active radar homing generally requires a substantial power source and other equipment with total weight exceeding several hundred (or even several thousand) pounds. This generally precludes any man-portable active radar homing missiles as impractical because some sort of vehicle transport (motorized is preferable, but wagons and oxen with generators might possibly be made to work in a pinch) would be necessary. If vehicle transport is inevitable, then why limit the size of the missile to something that people can carry on their shoulders? Every man-portable surface-to-air missile system ever produced has used some combination of remote-control (used in the blowpipe missile, but now largely abandoned as ineffective and obsolete) with or without optical video feed OR infrared homing (used by all modern systems).
There actually is a third option: Steam From an article on that site: "As seen from the Table, this is about 60% of the lift of helium and more than twice the lift of hot air."
Argh Link didn't post: http://www.flyingkettle.com/
That thing could be painted to look like a gigantic hot dog in a bun. Mmmmm...
/* No Comment */
As mentioned before, the bigger issue here is the slant range. At 20kft, it will see a long way over the horizon, meaning you can park this thing 50-100mi out and still get full coverage. AAA has no chance of hitting anything at that range, and neither do any short range missiles. There are only a handful of SAM systems capable of that range, and none of them are cheap. Those would would be taken out by something far less visible than a giant phased antenna in the first round of ordinance exchange anyway.
Seriously - these types of drone reconnaissance would make the police state into a lock down state. It would be great if legislation was put in place now in Anticipation of the privacy invasion that devices like these can cause in the future . . . Imagine flying smaller versions into large vertical cities and having the capability to peer into windows . . . the state cops in Florida already use small aircraft to conduct speed traps occasionally but this could be a whole other ball of wax
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I doubt that would make so much difference, if you painted one of these in thermite it would go up just as badly.
I am trolling
The US also happens to have harbored terrorists inside its borders. Luis Posada Carilles bombed a Cuban airliner, and so far as I know, he still lives in the US, and he cannot be deported. Since we will not hand him over, Cuba has the right to invade our country and, in the process, kill thousands of innocents who have no connection to the government (intentional or not). Then, after the invasion, the Cuban government
First, I'd have to say to Cuba... good luck with that.
Next, do not target "thousands of innocents who have no connection to the government", unlike what they have done to us.
Then again, I'm starting to realize that you are big pussy who would be happy to see:
(start music)
Bush: "Hey Mr. Taliban, please hand over Osama."
Taliban: "Daylight come and we put hide him in a hole"
Bush: "Please Mr. Taliban, let us have Osama"
Taliban: "Come and take him if you think you have the bolls"
(end music)
Bush: "Ok then, never mind. Sorry to bother you guys. If you need to kill another 3000 of us, please let us know ahead of time so we can put your guys in first class. It's closer to the cockpit."
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
How about sending up a Stinger on another balloon with some remote control built in? Surely it wouldn't cost that much to stabilise and fit with video for capturing the target. Could you capture the target from the ground and send up the initial coordinates? Does this make any sense at all?
Such as all the airships waiting to dock, while their crews starve and cry in in anguish?
Well, i guess that kills the idea of a RPG.
Who wants to bet they will be in the domestic US in another year "for our protection"? And at 20k, its far enough that you will never know, but will still be close enough to read over your shoulder with ease.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you painted it in thermite it would barely get off the ground. Thermite is to heavy of a mix.
Now a days they don't use that kind of dope mix to make fabrics air tight. Of course anyone who actually pays attention to the world would know that too.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Remember the Phoenix lights and the St. Louis UFO reports? Observers in both cases stated an object large enough to blot out most of the sky floated slowly overhead. Maybe this is our UFO.
Sorry, off-by-one error. It was the R101 which dove into the ground in France, not the R100. Which reinforces my point-- the ship that went over the ocean did fine, the one that had the nerve to approach a hill went bye-bye.
Why didn't they plaster a few of these on the roof to run it on solar power during the day? above the clouds so great power generation. It probably doesn't make sense to only have enough to power everything and waste weight on batteries and extra power to store. Still this doesn't seem very futuristic to me. just a plausible example.. http://www.siliconsolar.com/flexible-solar-panels.html
So what would you hit it with? I see a lot of talk about missiles, I don't see a lot of talk about missiles that would actually have a chance to hit this balloon.
Here's my take. It's a lot harder problem than you'd think. A 250 foot balloon has almost no radar signature because most of it is air. There's no heat signature. The best bet IMHO would be to paint it with an infra-red laser and fire some missile that both can home on that signature and reach that high. The problem though is that the solution to destroying the balloon is probably about as expensive as the balloon (the balloon's electronics might be a lot more expensive, but you might be able to recover that). The US will win any war where the victor is determined by money and resources expended.
Given that it is only 20,000 feet in the air (rather than a safer 100,000 feet which is feasible for balloons), then you can shoot it eventually. But putting a few holes in the balloon (perhaps for the cost of hundreds or thousands of rounds of ammunition) merely means that it deflates in a few hours or days. The enemy could put up a new balloon in that time and keep surveillance. Meanwhile every shot you make reveals where your guys are.
I think the problem is that if you threw a dart into it, it would go spurting all over the sky.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
SAM would have no problems locking on, as they tend to be driven by an active radar on the ground - I doubt you could hide something that big from radar in any useful way (although, I wonder if making it extra radar reflective might not actually work better since it would give the missile to large an area to aim for?).
There's be almost no radar signal because most of the balloon is air. Most of the rest would be a thin layer of some sort of polymer. As I've mentioned elsewhere, a possible solution is to paint the balloon with an infra-red laser and tag it with some heating seeking missile that has the range. I'm not sure how you'd program the missile to detect when it gets close enough to explode and cause damage. You might end up putting a $100,000 hole (actually two holes, in and out) in the balloon. And holing a high altitude balloon is not that significant. There's little to no pressure to "pop" the balloon. Even a relatively big hole from a missile would take some time to deflate the balloon. The other side would be able to launch a replacement while the original continued to work for a few minutes or longer.
>1) Are they really more efficient?
>...2) What gas to use though?
Airships can be very efficient, but only when they are gargantuan. The lift goes with the volume while the cost and drag goes with the surface area, so the $/ton efficiency goes up linearly with size. Given some internal structural rigidity, airships can be reasonably fast without giant engines (roughly 100-200 km/hr for on the order of 100W / kg payload.) The problem is that you have to have someplace big enough to land and store them and some way of dealing with them on the ground when the wind kicks up. A lifting-body partially buoyant airship relaxes the need for extreme size, allows easier ground handling, and makes flying easier by allowing altitude changes to be less dependent on managing buoyant lift.
Helium is not an economical choice of lift gas - it is too expensive to vent yet will leak out slowly through any light-weight material, it is nonrenewable and far more useful for cryogenics than lifting. Hydrogen is dangerous if pure - it can safely soup-up a lift gas mixture, though. Hot air is low performance in every possible way. Ammonia is poisonous and some what flammable. Methane is flammable and does not perform as well as hydrogen.
Steam is actually the best lift gas from many points of view, giving 60% of helium's lift and being non-toxic, cheaply produced from water ballast and engine waste heat and is easily ventable for buoyancy control, but steam airship design does require some envelope insulation and provision for condensation collection.
In 2006 Slashdot had an article on a similar lifting-body airship design: "New Aircraft is Part Blimp and Part Airplane" where I commented:
The lifting body and wings allow the craft to operate under a much wider envelope of loads and buoyant lifts. A huge problem with airships is maintaining desired buoyancy despite variations in temperature, altitude, barometric pressure, fuel expenditure, and condensation or icing loading - helium is too expensive to vent when the airship is light and cannot be generated in flight as can hydrogen, hot air or steam*. Being able to descend or ascend without losing ballast or lift gas and to operate without massive ground crews and facilities should significantly reduce the operating expense associated with helium airships. The Ohio Airships people have gotten an amazing amount done with very little money, and they seem to be selling their idea effectively to US government buyers, so it seems possible that this design will avoid the fate of all the other large airship projects of the past 60 years.
The main innovation in the Ohio Airships design is in the novel rigid internal structure which uses a keel beam supported by stays (cables) from a tower in the manner of a suspension bridge. This should allow greater loads relative to the airframe mass, including positive or negative loads from the wings.
*Steam is potentially the most economical lift gas since it gives 60% of helium lift or 200% of hot air lift, is essentially free if generated as a by-product of a steam engine, and the airship envelope acts as a condenser for the engine, reducing weight. This makes both the lift gas and propulsion much more efficiently produced than helium bags or IC engines See www.flyingkettle.com for more details.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Your post was good right up until the homophobic troll at the end. Was that remark really necessary?
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Quick, to the Buttmobile!
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
However, the administration knows that congress critters won't dare yank the purse strings away, so they have no incentive to pull out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)
If congress yanks funding, they get the wrath of the public for crippling our troops.
If the administration pulls them out, they lose shitloads of face.
If both sides stay at status quo, our soldiers will die.
"Very well, the existing appropriation will carry the navy halfway around the world and if Congress chooses to leave it on the other side, all right" -- Roosevelt.
I don't think anyone is advocating abondoning the troops to some sort of purgatory. It's interesting to note that the Vietnam war ended when congress cut off funding.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but blimps don't have much density (or metal) to them and will be practically invisible to RADAR. They also lack a thermal profile due to electric motors so they are invisible in the IR band too. Winds on the way to altitude are typically high, but it all varies seasonally, by position on the globe, jet stream, etc. Mostly, though, things are reasonably calm above 60k. Power is solar, with batts for night. Control power is an issue, as there isn't enough data to really derive good thrust/control-power requirements. Time to get to/from op altitude is really long. 10-17 hours is probably a good time range. You have to give the gas inside the envelope time to adjust, keeping the deltaTemp between the lifting gas and outside (called Superheat) within limits. Otherwise, you can get into runaway conditions where the ship will rise too fast out of control and burst, or descent out of control too fast and crush. All that time spent between takeoff and op altitude could see the ship blown way off course, requiring a long time to maneuver into position.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
From my point of view, everyone who signed up to invade Afghanistan and Iraq betrayed me, betrayed the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and betrayed the citizens of his respective nation. When it comes to randomly invading countries, I am a pacifist to the extreme.
Woah, that was a work of art! 11/10, will flame angrily even on third repost.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
This comes quite late, but of course I know the difference is approximately 8%. The reason why I call this significant is that with Hindenburg's over 200 tons of lift the difference was 16 tons. Each ton can carry close to 10 passengers, when including cabins and other supplies for these passengers difference is still tens of passengers compared to helium filled airship. There is no such thing as abundant lift in an airship, once the dead weight and mandatory operational items (fuel, water ballast, crew) has been covered the added 8% can save you.
Also on operational side hydrogen could be vented out to counter fuel consumption where helium couldn't. This caused extra weight and loss of power to engines because they needed to be fitted with water collectors to cover fuel loss. That alone caused many tons of dead weight compared to hydrogen ships.
I was wrong about Hindenburg though, originally it was thought to be helium filled, but then switched (and redesigned) to hydrogen because of the trade issues. Also Graf Zeppelin II did fly, but only inside Germany and then later some military missions.