As you can see, my airship design has reached a much more advanced stage. I will be constructing a balsa/lightweight plastic 20' flight test test model in my 2 car garage over the winter. Once the airframe passes some tests not conducted in a computer generated wind tunnel then hopefully it will be on to building an even bigger one. This finished Colossus will measure 160' in overall length and 72' wide for the airframe and she'll stand 118' from the strut to the main rudder.
Powered by 12 electric 6 blade vectored thrust props which will be able to steer the craft in something like the airship version of three rectangular arducopters bolted to each other. Not only will the housings pivot to allow more stable ascent/descent, the props also pivot out within the housing to allow lateral thrust capibilities.She'll be very maneuverable, and computer testing indicates the airframe will capable of some new maneuvers previously unknown to rigid and semi-rigid airframes such as lateral crabbing, and pivoting in a full 360 ciricle on her center-point within her own shiplength while making a vertical ascent or descent. This is a design change which can enable much safer landings and take-offs in windy conditions and perhaps prevent the pilot error which led to the hindenburg diaster from ever happening again.
The connection pylons between the main hull and the flight nacelles are airfoils which have air current forced over them by the forward engines. This adds to the lift and stability of the craft allowing it to reach higher speeds than have previously been attained by similar craft, and is one of the design features which should enable it to perform some fairly impressive maneuvers once in the air.
The main hull is semi-rigid with a pressurized envelope, similar to the Zeppelin-NT, however with a different internal framing configuration (obviously such would be necessary) and the flight nacelles have a lightweight rigid configuration with semi-pressurized helium cells.
She will be able to be operated fully autonomously, remotely operated by a single pilot wile the drones operate autonomously, or the gondola can easily be reconfigured to allow a single pilot to physically control the vessel if desired. The gondola also houses the auxilliary electric generator to allow for operation in a cloudy environment or if the solar electric system fails for whatever reason.
The battery banks providing power to each of the engine-pairs are located amidships and each nacelle is independently powered and recharged. The odd pattern of the solar cells are based on the weight of the lightweight flexible amorphous panels I could find information on. That pattern represents the best weight distribution to be able to achieve independent powering.
The drone launch and recovery system, mechanically, will be very similar to the original system designed for the USS Macon, Akron, and Los Angeles. However the drones will have cradle supports which lower fore and aft (not detailed in these photos, nor is the drone fuselage configuration to enable launch/recovery)
She's carrying 8 scaled down lightweight electric versions of the MQ-1 which are recharged by the on-board solar system. The drone wingspan is 18 feet. It is capable of carry drones with up to a 24' wingspan and gross weight of 350 lbs per plane. and obviously the system could be reconfigured to accomodate smaller craft. The way it works is really cool. The craft are stored so close together that instead of having a lowering design for launch, I worked it in to the craft are stored at different distances from the hull. The fore and aft drones are stowed 7" lower than the amidships drones.
The drone launch process will have to occur in a paired sequence for balance purposes, and the thrust configuration greatly stabilizes the craft and makes her a lot easier to balance, so the stowage level only makes it easier to conduct the launch sequence and it keeps the drones closest to the most balanced point. Once all the drones are away, the launch/recovery hooks raise up into the rigid hull of the flight nacelle and are kept close to the hull to increase aerodynamics. When it is time to recover the craft, the L/R trapeze descends to its full length to allow recovery of in-flight craft after others have already bee recovered.
The on-board sensor package is pretty modular actually. You can do a lot with this airship configuration. I have hard mounted fore and aft gimbals on the main hull and amdships gimbals on each flight nacelle. The bay in the main hull is also a sensor bay and acess panel. Fuel stowage for the auxilliary generator is in wing tankage in the two airfoils and the ship will carry approximately 4-8 hours worth of fuel currently, but more fuel storage can be added.
Unfortunately the laws of physics concerning rigid and semi-rigid airships dictate that the 20' model will be able to lift it's own airframe and that's about it. I should be able to include a single mini-cam on a gimbal but that's really it. She won't be able to carry a functional payload until she's at least 80' in overall length and even then we're talking some pretty small (under 100 lb each) planes.
I'll post more photos and stuff as they are generated and more news on this project and how it's going. Till then. Happy Flying!
Comments
A little mythbusting for the 2 most common misperceptions of LTA technology which stem from a cultural result of the "Hindenburg Syndrome".
Myth 1: Helium airships leak like a sieve and it is entirely cost prohibitive to use LTA for anything other than small non-rigid/hobby applications.
Modern lifting element materials technology along with improved helium filtration has reduced leakage to very nearly zero. The Zeppelin NT has over 261,000 cubic feet of helium pressurized inside the small semi-rigid triangular hull and the loss is less than 100 cubic feet per week. ILC Dover in Delaware is the company that manufactures the materials the Zeppelin NT's envelope is constructed from, and their system is unmatched for large airship use.
Myth 2: The only way to do big airships is using the low-pressure cell system designed by von Zeppelin and Eckener.
Recent developments in semi-rigid design haven enabled larger ships to be constructed with pressurized hulls which allow for more helium in a smaller space...in other words more lift with a smaller shape. The ZNT is 240 long yet carries 12 passengers. The Goodyear Blimp is only slightly shorter and only carries 5 passengers. My UAV is 157-180' long and only carries what essentially amounts to 8 large remote control planes and related lightweight launch/recovery assemblies and solar charging equipment/power cells...and maybe one person and their 50 pounds or less of gear.
This technology isn't dependent on the hopes of improved technology for the future...it's the quickest path to it. The Goodyear company has already rekindled it's former partnership with Zeppelin to contruct ZNT's at it's Akron facility. Where the Colossus differs from the NT in semi-rigid design is that the main hull uses semi-rigid cells that are slightly less than 1/4 of the radius of the entire structure. ...think 4 "quarter-blimps" making a "full round blimp shape."
This enable larger structures to be built with less overall framework (because the lightweight lifting cells already provide most of the rigidity) thereby reducing the overall frame weight. The main hull of the Colossus will have 8 Lifting Cells in the main hull and each flight nacelle will have a single cell. The cell system allows for smaller pressurized structures which is easier to control leakage with and also allows for on-board constant filtration and blast-valve heated using internal heat-exchangers(to add lift at higher altitude) in the lifting cells for larger systems.
Good airship design incorporates current limitations rather than relies on hope for future hurdles overcome. That's one of the fundamental problems in current airship design (other than the ZNT, which is an excellent design, leave it to Zeppelin..) such as the large heavy-lift airships currently in development many of which have already failed or been proven infeasible at our current level of development. Those that may work would still require years of infrastructure development to be able to produce. The Colossus just builds from existing infrastructure at existing facilities using already available equipment and skills using already developed design precepts.
Sorry about delays in response, I've been working around the clock detailing the lifting cell frame/main hull frame relationship.
@Helldesk: in general I agree, but your "Space Cadet" might want to consider "TMIAHM", space mined materials need not be expensive to return to Earth. We have a great gravity well here. ;) One day.....
Heh, you are preaching to the choir, Wes. I'm one of those 'space cadets' of sorts. Still, you are getting waaaay ahead of yourself if you think helium or any physical non-terrestrial resource will be commercially available on Earth in any quantity in the next few generations of spacecraft. The price per kilogram of sending anything to low Earth orbit is prohibitively expensive. New space companies are working on bringing that price down, and good things are happening already, but no matter what, spaceflight will only slowly become commonplace.
Let's assume that flying to space becomes affordable and profitable for some limited business case. Even then you won't be bringing back any significant amounts of material of any sort anytime soon, because the rocket equation basically dictates that most of the mass of any conventional spacecraft is propellant. If you want to bring space resources back to Earth, you almost always have to pay for launching the return propellant too. Thus bringing a few kilograms of helium from who knows where would require tonnes and tonnes of propellant spent lifting the tonnes of propellant required for that small cargo, spread over numerous expensive launches of what would basically be tankers with no other useful payload... Not going to happen, and it's not just a question of technological breakthroughs waiting to happen.
Any resource found in space is best spent IN space, as other spacefaring humans (hey, we are talking about the future) can always afford to pay a better price than humans here at the bottom of our gravity well, with our gravity tax weighing heavily on us. When someone someday is finally in the position of exploiting space resources, sending it back "home", without getting a decent pay (we would have to spend all of the pay on the propellant to launch what little is left of it), will be the last thought in his or her mind. ;)
If current helium reserves can be made to last better, that's good to hear, however I'm still of the mind that it would be better to use the arguably better lifting gas - the one that is abundant and only incurs an energy bill, and having to take the proper safety precations. It seems you have familiarized yourself with the legislation, so can you answer me this: is hydrogen outright banned as a lifting gas everywhere? If so, is it an old remnant from the days when the great airships disappeared from the skies to make way for heavier than air flight, or what?
Ouch;
At some point; the surprise of Radio cannot be used to argue the viability of every new technology.
In addition, a technology which depends on mining resources from places beyond the earth and moon - is - shall we say - somewhat premature.
Good luck and all; but if those are the pillars of viability, this is an art product not a technology.
Nice Art though - no offense.
Yeah, this design can be flown with hydrogen with very little modification and I designed her with the intentions of doing so the second the laws change regarding hydrogen as a lifting gas in the US. Mainly you would have to return to the heat-reflective surface coating rather than painting it whatever color you want. If this design were going to be used in a hostile environment, however, I would strongly recommend NOT using a gas that will ignite with the first RPG or incendiary bullet.
However helium is much more widely available today than it was during the 30's, is comparatively much less expensive, and the right business deal could ensure that helium remains affordable for the right airframe. Goodyear-Zeppelin has some good things going on with their helium connections. Even at the current costs of helium, modern filtration processes make it so that it is still less expensive to fly a helium airship over the course of 1 year than it is to fly an airplane with similar payload.
Also remember tha Hydrogen and Helium are the first two elements on the periodic table. they are also the most common in the universe. Those elements are everywhere. So while Helium may be considered a non-renewable resource on Earth, that does not mean that it cannot be harvested from elsewhere close-by and we're not too far away from having that technology. We currently have acces to enough helium to be able to operate a fleet of 50 giant airships for another 150 years at least. We don't even have one giant airship built right now. In 150 years we may have even colonized other planets. Go back in time to the 1850's and ask folks around how likely they think it is that mankind will ever be able to talk to one another across entire oceans using only a little box the size of a tinder-box or snuff tin (the cellphone). They would have thought you mad.
This UAV airship is a step in the direction of jumpstarting a giant airship industry. The Colossus has a manned counterpart that measures in at 985' long and 461' wide (and is the largest aircraft ever designed). Those plans are going somewhere other than here though.
I like airships, but helium is a non-renewable resource that will only go up in price and its demand will never go down. If anything, it could make helium airships prohibitively expensive to operate as helium resources dwindle. Hydrogen on the other hand can be made in abundance and isn't explosive as long as its concentration is kept under a close watch. Being lighter than helium, it's a better lifting gas to boot. I've been told WW1 bomber zeppelins weren't exactly easy to shoot down, but I digress - have you looked into using hydrogen and what would it take to fly with it? It's something I've wanted to do someday.
Ambient heating achieved by solar panels and topside surface coating. Keeps helium at a warmer temperature than if the ship were coated with the heat reflective coating that hydrogen Zeppelins were protected with...you don't want hydrogen heating up too much so they coated the outsides of the envelopes with highly heat reflective paint. That's what gave the Zeppelins their characteristic silver color and it ended up becoming "the norm" even after hydrogen was abandoned as a lifting gas. Hence, why we still think of "the big silver Zeppelins" when they can really be any color you want these days.
It's actually more of an issue to keep the lifting gas cool than it is to warm it up, hence the redundant gas temp regulation designs. Above the cloud layer or at altitudes of 10,000 feet and higher, the easier it is to use ambient solar heating. We have already achieved near stratospheric flights with helium lifted aerostatic (geostationary) blimps carrying atmospheric monitoring equipment. That was back in the 80's no less...you gotta love old back issues of Pop-Sci.
This design would only be a high altitude design if it were being operated unmanned and even then high altitude should be on quotes considering it probably won't be able to reach much higher than 30,000 feet...maybe 40,000 but that still places it well above the service ceiling of most drones.
The cabin pressurization equipment requirements would start to negate lift if this model were intended to be a manned HAA. It's also important to note, for those of you with LTA experience, it is the addition of the airfoils which create the additional lift necessary to reach altitudes higher than that permitted simply by the lifting gas. In other words, she'll be able to fly at 30,000 feet until she slows down at which point she will descend back to an altitude of neutral buouyancy.
The intended powerplants are 12 UQM Technologies EV-218 Three Phase Brushless DC motors (that each weigh 110 lbs including the gearbox) each putting out 71 horsepower with 2 auxilliary Textron Lycoming IO-360 air-cooled flat-four 200 horsepower engines mounted in the main hull (one in the gondola, the second in the sensor bay both connected to the charging system of all three nacelles.
Another way to save on lifting gas is to purify it once a week, rather than replenishing. Helium becomes contaminated over time and must be filtered to retain lift. You use a lot less helium this way. At 160' long, even as a UAV this is getting into a much larger class of aircraft which requires different maintenance procedures than say the average "party blimp" of 30' or less. It becomes more cost effective to operate the larger it gets. It actually costs quite a bit comparatively to run smaller airship platforms. It doesn't really start becoming cheap again until you get under 10'. 20 to 60' are very cost prohibitive operational platform sizes. My 20' flight test model will probably require upwards of $400 or more worth of helium just for the initial flight tests. I'm hoping I can find some partners or donors by then...
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next