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The Be-All Blimp
EFLHigh-flying technology is going back to the blimp. Engineers are developing a new breed of buoyant airships to follow hurricanes, act as mobile cell phone towers, spy over hostile territory and track incoming missiles. Unlike blimps that hover above football stadiums, the High Altitude Airship flies without a pilot and can soar literally out of sight - so high it canât be seen by the naked eye. But will it be high enough to avoid the Pakistani attack kites? ``The prototype is expected to fly in 2006,ââ says Cary Dell, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Corp., the shipâs builder. ``And, yes, it will be large.ââ Five hundred feet long and 150 feet wide, the craft is more than twice the size of the 200- foot-long Winstar Airship, the largest blimp in the air today. At 5.2 million cubic feet, it will be 25 times larger in volume than the Goodyear blimps. Blimps differ from rigid airships in having no skeletons. The famed Hindenburg zeppelin, which caught fire and exploded over New Jersey in 1937, was a rigid dirigible. Modern blimps are giant balloons with heavy duty skins filled with inert helium. Hydrogen is flammable and no longer used as a buoyancy source. The military has big plans for the high-flying blimp, one reason officials expect it to see extensive funding. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency awarded a $40 million contract to Lockheed Martin to design and test the prototype. The craft could be used as a surveillance platform over hostile territory, although its size and sluggishness - a top speed of 80 mph - might make it seem a vulnerable target. But parked 12 miles up, about 65,000 feet, the blimp would be ``immune to most ground-launched missiles,ââ according to Lockheed Martin. Onboard sensors will be able to detect missiles for 350 miles in any direction, allowing it to identify incoming threats. A fleet of 10 could provide an early-warning curtain for the continental United States, say officials with the Missile Defense Agency. A squadron of airships would provide ``overlapping radar coverage of all maritime and southern border approaches to the continental United States,ââ according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. A big advantage of the blimp over unmanned aerial vehicles is its ability to linger over an area for days, weeks or months. This makes it a valuable option to expensive orbiting spy satellites, which must take pictures of a target or region as they pass overhead. ``The whole point of the thing is itâs superior to satellites for some applications,ââ says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia- based nonprofit group that focuses on defense and security issues. ``The advantage is you can have persistent surveillance with it over a certain area. Surveillance satellites, on the other hand, spend most of their time in the wrong place.ââ The craft will hover above the Earthâs jet stream, a current of fast-flowing air found at altitudes of 25,000 to 48,000 feet and with winds that can reach 300 mph. But the jet stream will be the least of its problems, Pike says. ``Itâs not a particularly friendly environment up there,ââ he says. ``Itâs cold, and thereâs intense ultraviolet light at that altitude, and these things can do unpleasant things to materials.ââ Posted by: Super Hose 2004-05-01 |
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