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JP Aerospace
A camera on the remote-controlled Tandem airship captures the view from almost 100,000 feet up.
An unmanned twin-balloon airship rose to nearly 100,000 feet over the weekend — marking the latest milestone for an all-volunteer group that's aiming to send balloon-borne payloads into space.
"The big aerospace firms have been trying to do this for decades, spending hundreds of millions of dollars," John Powell, president of California-based JP Aerospace, said today in a news release. "We've spent about $30,000 and the past five years developing Tandem."
The remote-controlled Tandem airship was launched from Nevada's Black Rock Desert on Saturday, rose through extreme turbulence at an altitude of 40,000 to 60,000 feet, and reached the 95,085-foot mark, Powell said. A pilot on the ground used remote control to turn on two electric-powered, 6-foot-long propellers and guide the craft through a series of maneuvers. At the end of the mission, one of the balloons burst and the other balloon was released. Tandem descended to a soft landing, eased down by a row of five parachutes, Powell said.
Research balloons have risen to heights in excess of 135,000 feet (42 kilometers), but JP Aerospace claims that Tandem set an altitude record for a powered, steerable airship. "The highest before ours was the Army's sounder / HiSentinel, that went to 74,000 feet a few years ago," Powell told me in an email.
The entire Tandem craft weighed 80 pounds, with the balloons accounting for 20 pounds of that weight.
Powell said Tandem is being developed as a "high-altitude backhoe" that can be used as a launch platform for small research rockets, a mothership for hypersonic craft, a construction platform for high-altitude research stations and a precursor for JP Aerospace's "Airship to Orbit" program.
JP Aerospace
The Tandem airship has two balloons that are separated by a 30-foot-long carbon-fiber truss. The 6-foot-long propellers are designed to work in the thin atmosphere at an altitude of 20 miles.
More about balloons and near space:
- Balloons built for future frontiers
- Students reach high for launch photos
- Chair floats toward the final frontier
- Huge space balloon crashes in Australia
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
OK- i must admit this brings out my inner geek- it's really cool.
Amazing what these folks have done on such a tiny budget!
Take that, gravity.
why
Have you ever had to climb three flight of stairs to get to your apartment? Gravity's had it coming for a long time.
mark my words, one of these days a variant of this is gonna break earth orbit and land on the moon, validating a 1960's book, balloons to the moon. I hope I am in on the winning design.
Good for them I worked on several projects back as early as 2001 on the many uses of balloons to explore other worlds, even steerable ones using large propellers, see "The Windsurfer" here presented at the 2003 Mars Society Conference:
http://shineinnovations.com/5812.html
Here is another presentation at the Mars Society 2005 conference on how to use balloons as a commercial tool to explore Mars.
http://shineinnovations.com/media/Theater$20Quality$20Video$20From$20Mars.pdf
I want to use Tandems to explore Venus.
JP
How about a pack of party ballons, and you can explore Uranus?
Zing.
Now THAT'S funny, I don't care WHO you are.
Thanks for making me snort orange juice all over my computer, Sirlaf....
pumping the gas back and forth into storage is the winning concept...put the storage canisters inside the frame. There is no reason you can't use this to explore venus. breaking earth orbit is within your reach JP, the balloons as are will burst at around 300km so they must be all but deflated by then and a secondary propulsion system must already be kicked in.........start adding charged streamers to your experiments before resorting to chemical booster rockets....and now is the time to start puzzling over gyros as reaction thrusters....clue, you already have two gyros...kinda big, gyros nonetheless....
If you go a little further east there are several much larger vehicles that have been doing this for years. They make aircraft carriers look small by comparison. But this is nice too.
tom. dont.
It would be fun just to ride along on one of these. Several in an outer skin would make a great airship able to use the jet stream, travelling hundreds of miles per hour using almost no power when compared to a Boeing jet. Such vehicles could be put to so many cool uses!
Tom Don't,
re: post #6
Can you be more specific please? Larger than an aircraft carrier?
Next up: Micro satellites.
Also needed: A satellite sweeper to collect all the space garbage and dead satellites and recycle them. 2050?
Troy,
re: post #9
It seems to me we can do much better than that snail's pace. THE most underused technological asset we possess right now is our very own Patent Office with all of the inventions that have passed into the Public Domain. There have been literally dozens of air/spacecraft that could fulfill such a mission. Most people may not know that the Patent Office also holds dozens of designs for discoid craft- what we would call UFOs. If we as a Nation would put the knowledge contained in that office to use for the National and world benefit. we would be living in an entirely different world than what we have now. Jeez, in WW II our military vehicles were fitted with carbeurators that got 50 mpg. At war's end those carbs were replaced or the vehicles destroyed- they weren't allowed onto US soil. Here we are in 2011 and people piss themselves with joy to get 35-40 mpg! You may find this phony snail's pace of advancement acceptable but it infuriates me. Seriously, don't you think we can do better than 2050? I'm pretty sure we have the ability to have done it yesterday, especially seeing as how we got Nazi scientists and discoid aircraft able to reach 80,000 feet in a matter of only a couple of minutes from the Nazis. This was confirmed in Robert Jungk's 1958 book "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns". It is mentioned in the 1st edition (which I have) but is censored from following editions. Jungk was a highly creditable scientist/writer of his day. Too bad that we're not allowed in on the fun.
Wonder when Richard Branson will set his lawn chair up on this thing? Bottled oxygen, a martini, and let's get high!
It will take a lot more balloons to get an ego as big as his off the ground.
Where do these people get some stupid idea that our WWII military had vehicles that got 50 MPG? Most got very poor mileage. Nothing improved until Tucker brought out his rear mounted pancake engine automobile which got around 30-35 MPG. The balloons are very exiting and quite likely it is inventors like this that will get us to the stars and not bumbling government workers like at NASA.
If only we could get the unions out of the research part of our corporations we would get the best people with alot better budget!. Not just the one with the most senority! There would be reward for those who actually accomplish the task at hand not just someone dragging it out for a paycheck!
Hey all you balloon riding space cowboy wanna-be's. Just a tip to help you get into space cowboy camp. Start dieting now. Sounds like this fine contraption will work very well at transfering...er...maybe a cup of coffee (cold of course) close enough to tease a thirsty person in orbit. Not seeing any reason to get excited about this thing till someone invents the SCSR device. (Space Cowboy Shrink Ray) Cause only someone the size of a smurf will be able to get anywhere near that altitude from it. I'd have to conclude that every piece of this thing has been whittled down to the bare minimum to get this thing there as it is. So....Beefin it up to make it bigger and carry more is gonna turn it to one a Sirlafalots party balloons suitable for exploring Ur....Well. You know.
One step at a time paldude, one step at a time.
JP