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Toronto Star, December 16, 2002
High Wireless
By Roberta Avery
An Ontario company is on top of the world with the news that its spherical airships will be used as high-flying telecommunications platforms to supply two-way internet access across the United States and into Mexico and Canada.
"This contract is so big that it's hard to believe that it's happening," said Hokan Colting, chief executive officer of 21st Century Airships Inc. Colting was in Arizona last week, where the company is conducting flights and testing telecommunications capabilities on the new-era lighter than air craft.
21st Century Airships, a research and development company based in a small industrial building one block from Newmarket's main drag, signed a multi-million dollar contract with Atlanta based Telesphere Communications Inc. two weeks ago.
If all goes according to plan, Telesphere, in a joint venture with Sanswire Technologies Inc., will send 10 of 21st Century Airships' aircraft up to the stratosphere early in 2004, at a cost of about $36-million (US).
By connecting to the company's "National Wireless Network," subscribers will then be able to access the Internet at high-speed from anywhere in the continental United States and in parts of Canada and Mexico, said Michael Molen, chief executive officer of Sanswire.
Colting designed and built the 18-metre diameter spherical airship being tested in Arizona; for the test, it will carry a payload of telecommunications equipment at 18,000 feet above the desert. When placed in service the airships will be positioned far above the weather and commercial air traffic.
Sanswire will use the test flight to demonstrate its wireless network by randomly placing a series of laptop computers in a 16-kilometre radius connected wirelessly to transmitters installed on the airship.
Telesphere calls the high-altitude airships Stratellites, said Frank Lively, spokesperson for Telesphere.
The Stratellite, which will be about 80 metres in diameter, is similar to a satellite, but it is stationed in the stratosphere at 19,000 metres rather than in orbit.
Existing satellites provide easy download capabilities, but because of their high-altitude have limitations for two-way high-speed data communication.
The Stratellite is designed to allow Internet subscribers to easily communicate in both directions using existing wireless devices.
"One of the many advantages of high altitude airships have over existing satellite technology is that the payload can easily be recovered, upgraded and relaunched in a matter of hours," Lively said.
In order to reach the same coverage area as the 10 Stratellites, the company would have to install wireless equipment in more than 14,000 cellular towers at a capital cost of $56 million plus annual tower lease cost of $67 million, Lively said.
The new United States Homeland Security Agency, created in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, wants telecommunications around major cities improved, and companies have been scrambling to find alternatives to cell towers and land-lines, Colting said.
He believes his airships can offer that alternative by providing high-altitude platforms for telecommunication equipment at a fraction of the cost of satellite communications.
Airships have come along way since the days of the Hindenburg explosion in 1937. Colting has already pushed the envelope higher by flying his airship at 18,000 feet in a test flight in Arizona in July.
"That's three times higher than conventional airships fly," Colting said.
Colting said his company is the only one in the world to use a spherical shape instead of the more familiar cigar-shaped airships.
"They are highly maneuverable and capable of extended duration flights," he said. "And they're easy to land. It takes 22 people on the ground to handle the Goodyear blimp when it lands, and our balloons only need one."
The spherical airship is filled with non-flammable helium and has no external gondola for crew. Instead the pilots sit in an igloo like cabin inside the sphere.
The initial test flights will be manned, but eventually the airship will be operated by remote control.
The airship is Colting's ninth prototype and he plans to start building the 10th, a 40 metre diameter sphere.
He hopes it will fly as high as 40,000 feet early in the new year; ultimately the plan is to build a stratellite that will be 80 metres in diameter and reach the stratosphere carrying 2,000 kilograms of telecommunications equipment.
Powered by a Volkswagen engine that uses diesel fuel supplemented by solar power, Colting calculates that his airship will initially stay up for about a month before another airship has to be sent to replace it. Now, he's working on refining the technology to keep an airship flying in the stratosphere for a year or more.
Following the test flight in Arizona in July, Colting was contacted by the U.S. military and asked to demonstrate the feasibility of surveillance airships flying high over borders and coastlines.
The military is also considering airships for special operations overseas where they could be used as telecommunications platforms as well as for surveillance, he said.
Colting, 58, fell in love with hot-air ballooning in his native Sweden in 1975.
"It was the most fun I ever had," said Colting, who immediately sold his sports-car importing business and went into hot air balloons in Sweden. He eventually opened factories in Ireland and England that made balloons to carry advertising and for pleasure-tripping.
He moved to Canada in 1988 with his Toronto-born wife and launched the Remax advertising balloon concept in Canada, before moving into airships 10 years ago.
He now employs eight people at his Newmarket facility.
Although Colting has no formal aerospace education, he's highly respected in the airship world, said Jim Delaurier, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Toronto.
"Hokan is one of those types of guys that has great intuition and judgement, and I respect the fact that he doesn't hesitate to send his prototypes up to test their feasibility," DeLaurier said.
DeLaurier said the idea of an airship supplying an elevated communications platform is "very appealing" but cautions that in order to reach the stratosphere, the airship has to pass through the high winds in the jet stream, and even in the stratosphere itself there can be high wind.
"People have the idea it's calm up there but it's not ... that varies with latitude. I'm not sure it would work over Canada," said DeLaurier, who worked on a Canadian government program to establish high-altitude platforms in the late 1980s.
While the program had some success with fixed wing airplanes, it was considered impractical and abandoned.
Colting said the craft are designed to cope with the climb and with winds expected at high-altitude, and beat the problem fixed-wing airplanes had - the necessarily short duration of their flights. "The attraction of an airship is that it can stay at high altitudes for extended periods," he said.
While it seems U.S. companies are beating a path to Colting's door, the same can't be said for Canadian companies.
"There's been no interest at all from Canadian companies and that's very disappointing." Colting said.
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