NASA Pondering $1.5 Million Stratospheric Airship Competition

coondoggie writes: NASA this week said it was contemplating a public competition to build airships capable of reaching the stratosphere where they could remain for a period of time gathering astronomical data or watching environmental changes on the ground. Airship Challenge's goals (PDF) include: a minimum altitude of 20km, maintained for 20 hours; successful return of payload data as well as cargo up to 20kg; and a demonstration of the airship's scalability for longer/larger missions.

Comments

Re:Not sure of the cost benefit of this

[Ol Olsoc]

From the article:

A requirement is being considered that competitors must independently gain FAA approval for their airships and provide a location for demonstration.

How would you get these approvals and location for anything close to a million dollars?

It's not actually that hard.

You aren't the only person who thinks this way.

When I was trying to drum up interest for stratospheric balloon launching in my Amateur radio club, I made a presentation on meeting night, with concepts and descriptions and websites plus photos and RF data, the Old farts to a man completely deied that it was possible to be allowed to launch any balloons at all, that it was against the law.

Having done the research, it is in short, submit a plan, of what you are going to do, have a radar reflector as part of the payload, and where you plan to launch.

Assuming you aren't launching in the flight paths of an airport, it's approved. The day of the launch, you call them, then again the moment of launch, then when the balloon leaves airspace at 65 Kfeet. Then again when the balloon returns to airspace. After that, you're done except for retrieval.

No cost.