Test Flights/ Mission Profiles-

• Benchmarking- Speed, climb, lift, endurance, etc. will be established in early flights.

• Cross Country- Following prevailing winds and conserving propulsion for course adjustment and landing.

• High Altitude- Stripping all excess payload, the high altitude capability of the design will be tested.

• Sample Pickup- Touch down on (calm) water to acquire samples for biological and chemical analysis.

• Exploration in close environments- Urban and rural canyons, building interiors, and other crowded locations put a premium on agility.

• Station Keeping- Maintaining a constant position for as long as resources allow. Useful in comm relay work and observation. GPS automation a goal.

• Robotic Operation- Testing of computer based autonomous control.

• Public Events- Ideas range from carrying a tiny video projector that displays thru the envelope, a la Bladerunner, to a "fire blimp" that tows pyrotechnics displays.

• Ultimate missions- a) Search and Rescue b) Exploring hostile environments such as volcanoes and storms c) New RC Solar Challenger Blimp race (in parallel with Solar Challenger car race in Australia) d) New records for flight in the RP/A-LTA class d) Teletourism in farflung lands e) Human Rights Witnessing f) Teleparamedicine g) Anti Landmine Application h) Evironmental monitoring, i) Arms control inspection, j) Traffic monitoring, k) Structural inspection of towers, bridges, etc.,

-Application Ideas (7/14/96):

Structural inspection, site inspection, employment and 
recreation for the mobility impaired, human rights 
witnessing, disaster assessment, hostage situations, 
lifeguard, photojournalism, education, specialized 
parcel delivery, livestock management, crop surveys, 
surveying, 

Anti Landmine Application

Design Variants-

The basic design can be varied to achieve top performance in specialized missions.

Speed and endurance missions would benefit from a stretched envelope offering extra lift for bigger motors and/or more batteries.

Absolute speed records will require gas engines.

Indoor acrobatic models should have shorter fatter gas bags and bigger control surfaces for turning ease.

A stripped down low cost version would be popular even without all the fancy high-altitude all-weather solar-boosted fully-instrumented features.

We're living the revolutionary fusion of robotics, amateur RC  
aviation, GPS, global data nets, and miniature versions of mainstream  
avionics. 

Microaviation will grab a large market share from existing aviation  
and create broad new application markets. It could be a multi-billion  
dollar industry by the year 2000.

Global wireless nets such as Iridium, combined with GPS, will shortly  
enable microaviation operations anywhere from anywhere on the  
Internet.

Average microaircraft price could soon be as low as 1-2K. Comparison  
with manned aircraft for many uses suggests over two orders of  
magnitude cost advantage.

LTA microairships have unique properties of endurance and station  
keeping. They make excellent sensor platforms and can easily achieve  
great altitudes. Our current challenge is to achieve sufficient speed  
("penetration" in E-Flight parlance) to operate effectively in normal  
winds. Solar charging and ballast control is the key to extended  
missions.

What's needed is a diverse developer community that pushes a rapid  
maturation of the technology by shared efforts. The potential market  
is so vast that competition is less appropriate than cooperation. In  
fact this community seems to be gelling lately. (The Robot Group has  
long worked on robot blimps, but in isolation)

Go to ORCA main menu.

Thanks for flying PolyCosmos. Join us anytime.

Comment to santos@88net.net