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Military Blimp Breaks Free and Drifts Over the Mid-Atlantic Trailing Tether (baltimoresun.com)
McGruber writes: The Baltimore Sun reports that a military surveillance blimp has broken free of its mooring at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and was last seen drifting at 16,000 ft over Pennsylvania. The 243-foot-long, helium-filled JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System) aerostat detached from its mooring at about 11:54 a.m. Wednesday. It was trailing approximately 6,700 feet of cable. "Anyone who sees the aerostat is advised to contact 911 immediately," spokeswoman Heather Roelker said. "People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger."
FTFA: "Raytheon, the contractor that makes the blimps, says the cable is unlikely to break.
"The chance of that happening is very small because the tether is made of Vectran and has withstood storms in excess of 100 knots," the company said on its website. "However, in the unlikely event it does happen, there are a number of procedures and systems in place which are designed to bring the aerostat down in a safe manner.""
So what exactly happened? The cable broke, AND they are unable to get the blimp to safely land?
Oh please, think of all that precious Helium!!!!
A blimp is a powered craft. An aerostat is a tethered balloon.
If it were a blimp -- even an unmanned blimp -- and it had fuel, they could just drive it back home.
So the military is sending up a trial balloon?
I wonder what the reaction might be..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Billions spent and the stupid thing couldn't detect a man in an ultralight headed straight for the Capital, we need to cut our losses and scrap the thing already.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Oy! Apparently MSNBC had commentary explaining that helium was explosive and dangerous. O_o
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
How could they lose it? Surely after $2.5B spent on the program, they had enough money to slap a GPS tracker on it.
Both duct tape and duck tape are acceptable. In fact if anything "duck tape" is the more correct answer. From wikipedia:
The first material called "duck tape" was long strips of plain cotton duck cloth used in making shoes stronger, for decoration on clothing, and for wrapping steel cables or electrical conductors to protect them from corrosion or wear.[2] For instance, in 1902, steel cables supporting the Manhattan Bridge were first covered in linseed oil then wrapped in duck tape before being laid in place. ...
After the war, the duck tape product was sold in hardware stores for household repairs. The Melvin A. Anderson Company of Cleveland, Ohio, acquired the rights to the tape in 1950.[15] It was commonly used in construction to wrap air ducts.[19] Following this application, the name "duct tape" came into use in the 1950s, along with tape products that were colored silvery gray like tin ductwork
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape
I love nothing more then proving pedantic fools wrong. :)
I'm not sure I'm up for a horror movie with a rosy ending. That sort of thing just seems so fake.
Nah, they're going to escort it to Massachusetts where the Patriots experts in deflation will careful deflate it for them.
And they would never be testing things at a place called the "Aberdeen Proving Ground"
Your tinfoil hat slipped a bit - better get it centered again.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
'than'
"People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger."
RTFA. The airship was at 16000 feet altitude. It's very dangerous to be at that altitude unless you have an airplane, parachute, or other safety device. To be safe, people should keep about 14000 - 15600* feet away.
(* ground elevation in this area varies from around 400 - 2000 feet, iirc)
It is not the same low, but it is the moisture associated with the hurricane. The hurricane broke up over Texas, but formed a low in the gulf of Mexico which travelled along the coast, dumping rain across the south. The moisture was pulled up the east coast by a low that developed over the Midwest.
"People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger."
(from the various armed alphabet agents closely following)
Besides just general boiler plate warning, it's quite conceivable that somebody coming across it might grab onto the tether. With an upgust they could be 50-100 feet off the ground before they realize how high they are and it's too late to let go. Then you just hope you can hold on longer than it takes for the thing to drift down again. Happened to a couple of zeppelin landing crew in the past as grabbing ahold of tethers and tying the things down is how you land a zeppelin.