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Aviation Week, June 29, 2004
NAVAIR Evaluating Spherical Airship For Surveillance Applications
By Jefferson Morris
ST. MARY'S COUNTY, Md. - Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is flight, testing a unique spherical airship to gauge its value for future surveillance applications.
Under a U.S. Navy contract with Cyber Aerospace of New Orleans, the 62-foot diameter SA-60 spherical airship has undergone several days of flight-testing at St. Mary's County Airport in Maryland, just a few miles from Naval Air Station Patuxent River. The main goals of the flight tests were to reach 10,000 feet and stay aloft for three hours, both of which were achieved in a June 28 flight. Stephen Huett, director of airship programs for NAVAIR, was onboard June 28 and piloted part of the flight. "The whole purpose of this demonstration right now is to determine the characteristics of the spherical airship, find out what it's really good at, find out what it can't do, quantify that, and then make that available to the Navy for consideration on future missions," he said.
"The main thing we're interested in is economical, persistent surveillance, and an airship provides that better than any other vehicle," Huett said. Airships can operate 25-30 percent cheaper than comparable rotary wing or fixed wing aircraft, according to Huett (DAILY, Jan. 15, 2003).
The SA-60 is the product of teamwork between four small companies. Techsphere Systems International Inc. holds the manufacturing rights, based on a design by 21st Century Airships Inc. of Canada. Cyber Aerospace, a subsidiary of Proxity Digital Networks Inc., holds the global government marketing rights, and Sierra Nevada is the systems integrator.
After spending several hours aloft in the sun, the SA-60's helium gas heated and expanded, making the vehicle extra buoyant and leaving it underweight. Without sufficient ballast onboard, landing the airship took several tries while crewmembers vented the onboard helium.
The current prototype carries thrusters that operate only at 40 percent of the vehicle's normal requirements, which added to the difficulty in landing. During some aborted landing attempts, the airship briefly contacted the ground and bounced like an enormous beach ball. Huett and the pilot took the occasional bounce in stride.
"We were never in danger," Huett said. "I'm looking forward to evaluating the machine once we get the proper engines on it, and then we think it's going to be a whole lot more interesting." Spherical advantages
The spherical design boasts several advantages over traditional, cigar-shaped airships, according to Hokan Colting, designer of the SA-60 and CEO of 21st Century Airships Inc. "It's more maneuverable than a traditional airship," Colting said. "It's amphibious, it can land and take off from water.
And it can go to high altitudes. Traditional, cigar-shaped airships can go to 5,000-6,000 feet ... We have been up to 22,000 feet with [a spherical] airship, and that's the absolute world record in altitude for airships."
The SA-60 can be transported in a truck and set up by a small group of people in roughly 24 hours, according to the companies. Although it requires a pilot, the companies plan to make the airship unmanned to allow for longer flights, according to Mike Meermans, vice president for strategic planning at Sierra Nevada. Applications could include homeland security and force protection for troops overseas, he said.
The companies are developing a larger operational version of the SA-60 that would have a diameter of 76 feet, an operational ceiling of 16,000 feet, and a flight endurance of roughly two days. In 12 months, the companies plan to build a 200-foot diameter version that would be capable of wide-area surveillance or telecommunications relay at altitudes up to 65,000 feet, according to Cyber Aerospace CEO Billy Robinson.
Such an airship could stay aloft for weeks or months at a time with the help of solar panels and regenerative fuel cell technology, Robinson said. At such altitudes, the spherical airship would be able to compete with the High Altitude Airship (HAA) demonstrator being developed by Lockheed Martin for the Missile Defense Agency (DAILY, Dec. 16, 2003).
"What we tried to do is basically to outmaneuver the Goliath out there," Robinson told The DAILY. "We're four small companies that can move quick ... We will be there before they ever get there."
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