Sunday 2 November 2014

Travelling to orbit by BALLOON?

When you first hear this one, you may be excused for thinking, 'No way! This is a hoax!'

But it's based solidly on real physics, and has absorbed the combined efforts of some serious engineers with degrees and all that.

It's called: Airship-To-Orbit.




Yes indeed. There is a real R&D company called JP Aerospace, founded by John Marchel Powell, that's totally committed to developing a non-rigid, lighter-than-air method of reaching low Earth orbit. And the crazy thing is that it makes perfect sense. Not only that, but it leaves me wondering why people like NASA or ESA haven't pumped a ton of money into it and made it work a whole lot quicker.

They may have their reasons. Read on.

JPA's plan is a three-stage process. First, a U-shaped high-altitude airship carries a crew of 3 up to 140,000 feet (that's well over 40km) where it docks with a 'Dark Sky Station'. It has this misleadingly sinister name because, well, the sky's dark up there. You're almost in space. Then from the Sky Station, an Ascender vehicle slowly powers up into orbit using a hybrid propulsion system which they're still developing. This Ascender vehicle is part-airship, and will measure maybe 6,000 feet (1800m) in length. That's over a mile! But it should be feasible, since this craft never touches the ground and operates well above the most turbulent layers of the atmosphere.

The problems? Well, how ever you get up out of the atmosphere, in order to achieve orbital velocity your vehicle must accelerate. This means energy must be expended, so you need fuel and an efficient propulsion system. How much energy is being saved by the use of airships? How much cheaper will the whole system prove to be?

One thing is undeniable, I think: ATO does look to be the safest way to reach space that's yet been proposed. Airships comprise a large number of gas cells. If a few are punctured, well, that's unfortunate, but it's not a disaster. The worst that will happen is that the airship simply has to float back down to Earth sooner than expected. No explosions, no sudden death.

I have a sinking feeling, though, that the main reason this approach hasn't received a huge swell of investment from aerospace companies is that it could prove to be too cheap! All those lucrative contracts for building big rockets... think about it.


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