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Space United States Technology

Lockheed's High Altitude Airship 294

Posted by timothy from the avert-your-eyes-citizen dept.
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?"
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Lockheed's High Altitude Airship More

Lockheed's High Altitude Airship

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  • Wow! (Score:2, Funny)

    by handslikesnakes ( 659012 )
    It's just like every alternate history novel I ever read!

    • Re:Wow! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      It's just like every alternate history novel I ever read!

      No kidding. Ever read Job: A Comedy of Justice, by Heinlein? Many alternate realities in there, including IIRC one with lots of dirigibles as WWI hadn't happened and the advances in aircraft had not taken place. (in Job the alternate realities are just the vehicle for the story, like many of Heinlein's works.)

      While this is all very interesting in that I like dirigibles (and would like to see them come back some day for transoceanic travel) all t

    • Re:Wow! (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by Bombcar ( 16057 )
      If I remember Final Fantasy right, when you get the airship things become much easier and faster, right?

      Cool! Airship forever!

  • Taking the place of Satellites? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ziondreams ( 760588 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:03PM (#8590751)

    I'm in no way educated about such a topic, but is this some sort of less expensive approach to satellite-type communication?
    • 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?

      • Launch platform (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:39PM (#8591118) Homepage Journal
        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.

        • Re:Launch platform (Score:4, Interesting)

          by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @05:59PM (#8592639) Homepage Journal
          The way I see it, the final product is going to have a payload capacity in excess of 20,000 lbs. That's certainly enough to be the world's slowest "first stage" to orbit.

          You avoid the most inefficient segment of a rocket's journey, pushing through the troposphere at sub-sonis speed.

          You do have a problem to overcome, though. Despite the 70,000 foot head start you will be trying to obtain orbital velocity (17,000 mph) from a standstill. I'm too lazy to do the math at this point, but I'm not sure it would actually be that much of an advantage in the end.

          Despite the innefficiencies of starting from the ground, the lion's share of the energy expended by a launch system is used to propel the craft to orbital speed. The magic equation is 1/2*m*v^2.

          So lets say we max out the payload and have a launcher that has a mass of 1800Kg. (Metric is easier to work with.) We are trying to propel it to around 8750 meters/second. That's about 137e9 Joules of energy. 137,000 MegaJoules. Aviation fuel has an energy density of 47 MJ/Kg. You would need around 2910 kg of fuel (not including oxidizer.)

          OTOH, gravity plays a lesser role at that altitude. I say lesser, gravity exists even in orbit, it's just that the orbiter is falling forward, which almost cancels the effect of gravity thanks to a loophole in physics with rotataional motion. Note the above calculation did not take into effect overcoming gravity.

          Maybe you don't need to get the rocked all the way up to 17,000mph. Maybe you can find a fuel with a higher energy density. In either case, you are still at square one.

          • 20,000? Try 4000 lbs. (Score:4, Informative)

            by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @10:20PM (#8594877) Homepage Journal
            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.

    • Re:Taking the place of Satellites? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by (54)T-Dub ( 642521 ) * <[tpaine] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:08PM (#8590798) Journal
      From one of the articles
      According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), 11 high-altitude airships would provide overlapping radar coverage of all maritime and southern border approaches to the continental U.S., and may be a significant asset in homeland defense efforts. The Stratospheric Platform System (SPS) dirigible operates just barely within the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere and is emerging as part of the military's 21st century transformational mindset.
      Satalites can't provide the radar coverage that these blimps can.

      Also Geo-syncronous satalites have to placed very high in orbit around the earth to stay in one spot with using a lot fuel. This causes a significant delay in transmission time to/from the satalites. The blimp would eliminate that.
    • According to the article it's for surveilance- put cameras on it, watch people, etc.
      Wouldn't this make it easier to shoot down if you were an unfriendly nation? A big geostationary blimp has to be easier to hit than a satellite in space
      • Well, for shooting down, you're talking about a vehicle about 60-70,000 feet altitude. This would be incredibly difficult to hit based on size.
      • Shoot down? with what? There is a short list of nations with firepower that can make it that high in the atmosphere.
        • Shoot down? with what? There is a short list of nations with firepower that can make it that high in the atmosphere.

          The list is longer than you think. Most air-to-air missiles can reach that height, and the supersonic flight ceiling of modern jet planes (including MiGs) is classified information. A blimp like this would probably need some air cover to operate inside a war zone. (Not that air cover is a problem when you've got over a dozen carriers with the capability of delivering planes anywhere in the world.)

          I remember a documentary on the Discovery channel where they were discussing how a pilot accidently shot down a LEO satellite with a missile. The realization that missiles could reach that height lead to the creation of the Pegasus launch solution.

    • They could... (Score:2, Informative)

      by bsd4me ( 759597 )
      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.
    • In many ways it would. Besides cost there would be other benefits, such as negligible latency, easier station keeping, faster deployment, less regulatory hassles (probably), far fewer politics involved, less crowding (for now). There would also be less power required due to the far closer distance, which means better engineering trade-offs. Geosynchronous satellites are a genuine pain in the ass, these would help the situation greatly. Currently, geosynchronous satellites are operated in a very limited

    • Sanswire? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sanswire is already doing this... They're beta testing their broadband balloons as we type.

      Check out http://www.sanswire.com/ [sanswire.com]

      Global Tel (gtel) http://www.globaltel.com/ [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 whi


    • 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).

    • A few years ago, I was military, and in Space Command, but nowhere where I could make policy. But we discussed things like this since I was in space launch. I predicted that, if satellite makers were smart, that balloons/dirigibles/flying wings would replace many, but not all, satellites. And this includes military satellites as well, if the USAF gets smarter.

      Specifically, one of the things Air Force likes to talk about is operationalizing space, i.e., launching a satellite like it was a sortie of a fi

  • Those "router crashes"... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheConfusedOne ( 442158 ) <the@confused@one.gmail@com> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:04PM (#8590759) Journal
    ...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.

  • Zeppelin Overlord jokes... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:05PM (#8590769) Homepage
    in 3, 2, 1....

  • It's part of mind control.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:05PM (#8590773)

    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

  • wow. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:08PM (#8590795)
    it's 250 miles tall! [popsci.com]

  • Hah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dragonshed ( 206590 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:08PM (#8590800)
    just with the physics in reverse

    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: .. like my rain coat.
  • This is the same technology as the previously discussed GE organic LED project

    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.

  • Nick Fury anyone?

  • Too Bad Commercial Airship Development Has Stalled (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:12PM (#8590838)
    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.
    • It's understandable that investors would be a little jittery at the thought of a German airship [hydrogennow.org]

    • Re:Too Bad Commercial Airship Development Has Stal (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nilspace ( 676196 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:23PM (#8590950)
      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.

    • Re:Too Bad Commercial Airship Development Has Stal (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:33PM (#8591056)
      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 [zeppelinflug.de]

      KFG

    • Mmm, Zeppelin have been around for a while (Score:5, Informative)

      by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:38PM (#8591111)
      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.

  • It's not an airship... (Score:3, Informative)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <mark&seventhcycle,net> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:12PM (#8590844) Homepage
    Unless it's powered with a FLOATER [ffalpha.com]

  • Sweet, but there are some stipulations (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zygote-IC- ( 512412 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:16PM (#8590882) Homepage
    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.

  • Broadband Blimps! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MooseByte ( 751829 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:19PM (#8590903)

    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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:19PM (#8590909) Homepage
    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.

  • Who needs this? (Score:2, Funny)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) *
    Do I really need a gigantic phallus floating above the Earth at 70,000'?

  • Why not just use Hydrogen? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:20PM (#8590917)
    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..
    • Wouldn't it have to fly through some civilian regions on the way up? Also, you don't want a single stray spark to bring down the whole thing.
      • from the website you referenced:


        In many years of research, a NASA scientist at Cape Canaveral has found proof that neither the hydrogen in the hull nor a bomb was to blame, but the fabric of the Hindenburg's outer skin and a new protective coating. A single spark of static electricity was enough to make it burn like dry leaves.

      • RTFP (Score:2)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        Yeah, yeah, we all have heard of the Hindenburg. The poster's point was that this is an unmanned vehicle.
    • Using your lighter-than-air tank for fuel means you are decreasing the buoyancy of your aircraft.

      The more you use, the more bits you have to drop off to stay up.

      It's not a terrible idea, but I think Lockheed is using a better one.

    • Re:permiability issues (Score:4, Informative)

      by victim ( 30647 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:55PM (#8591291)
      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 [dupontteijinfilms.com] 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.
    • You can't extract hydrogen from the atmosphere. You'd have to extract it from stored water. This could still work, though. During the day you'd use power from the solar cells to crack water, storing energy in the form of hydrogen in the gas bags. This would increase your lift during the day when you need it. At night you would feed hydrogen from the gas bags to fuel cells to produce power, saving the by-product water. This would decrease your lift, but you need less lift at night.

      You _might_ be able

    • Frankly? Politics. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @04:22PM (#8591583)
      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.

  • Big Black Triangles? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:20PM (#8590918)
    I knew this story seemed familiar...

    check this out (illustrations and sidebars at space.com):

    http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technolo gy /black_triangle_020805.html

    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

  • Not a balloon (Score:5, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06NO@SPAMemail.com> on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:20PM (#8590919)
    1st Voice Over: Meanwhile for Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the year 1908 was a year of triumph.

    (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

  • Not OLED based at all, actually. (Score:5, Informative)

    by WOV ( 652967 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:21PM (#8590927)

    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 [konarkatech.com] or Nanosolar [nanosolar.com]. 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.

    • This is right.

      Tthe poster's statement:

      This is the same technology as the previously discussed GE organic LED project - just with the physics in reverse.

      , however, is wrong.

      Solar cells absorb light and convert to electrons and holes, whereas OLEDs are light-emitting devices. But OLED's are made from different materials, like WOV says, they are made from oganic polymers whereas the flexible substrate solar cells are usually made with amorphous silicon. Not sputtered though, as WOV says, but usually

  • Alternate uses: Cell towers and surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:24PM (#8590956) Homepage
    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)

    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 ...and more.
    • I don't think you want a cell tower that high. The cell would be too big. Cells need to be small in order to serve people cost-effectively.

    • Re:Alternate uses: Cell towers and surveillance (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @04:02PM (#8591372) Homepage
      logical uses I can see are as replacements for cell towers

      Not a chance, go read up how cellphone networks operate and you will see why this will not work.

      cell towers need to be low, and lots of them in an area there are a very small number of frequencies and therefore you need to keep that number of calls in a cell area so that you can carry more calls in a geographical area...

      cellular requires many small low towers to cover a metro area. you see taller towers in rural areas as the chance of saturating that cell site are much smaller in hickville compared to manhattan.

  • LOOK! It's the Lockheed Martin blimp!

  • Moving relay mirrors -- Yikes! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mackman ( 19286 ) * on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:27PM (#8590987)
    >

    747 Captain: Commencing laser firing using floating relay mirror. Crap! Did anybody else hear a loud Pop?
  • According to the spec it should have a lifting capacity of somewhere around 140 tonnes[1], though much of that will be consumed by the ship itself.

    [1] At sea level and assuming my US->metric conversion is ok.

  • floating geodesic domes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by intertwingled ( 574374 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:28PM (#8590997) Homepage
    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.
  • "The Stratospheric Platform System (SPS) dirigible" Typical Dod language. It is a Platform AND it is a System. Not it is a Platform System!

  • Amateur Radio Payload (Score:4, Interesting)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:30PM (#8591026) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • The thin-film solar technology, although low in peak conversion efficiency, can potentially deliver a whopping 2500 watts/kilogram.

    So much power did that 'anti ballistic missile' laser require? Or rather what would it take to put three or four of them onboard, and use them by remote-control against ground targets in realtime? No more depleted uranium- shells in tanks, just a laser range finder and a directinal antenna. In theory.

    --Maskirovka

    • Possibly, according to globalsecurity.org's write-up of the ABL project:

      "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

  • Tasty (Score:2, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 )
    Broadband communication blimp, anyone?

    No thanks, I already ate.

  • skycat ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by madhippy ( 525384 )
    always have to post this link:

    http://www.worldskycat.com/

  • An funny blend of technologies (Score:5, Funny)

    by Phat_Tony ( 661117 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @03:58PM (#8591322)
    so...
    It uses "the same technology as the previously discussed GE organic LED project"
    in a new dirigible?

    Making it...
    A LED Zepplin?

  • Partial Vacuum Blimp? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SlipJig ( 184130 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @05:57PM (#8592606) Homepage
    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.

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