DIY unmanned airship soars 95,000 feet above Earth, lays claim to new record (video)

Nov 2nd 2011
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DIY unmanned airship soars 95,000 feet above Earth, lays claim to new record (video)

Are you entertaining dreams of launching your personal private spacecraft ? All you wish is set 30 grand on your checking account, and many spare time. Last weekend, an organization called JP Aerospace sent its unmanned Tandem airship 95,085 feet above the bottom — a height that, in accordance with the corporate, establishes a brand new record for remotely controlled airships. In actual fact, JP Aerospace says this altitude is a whole four miles higher than another airship has ever flown. To drag this off, the team strapped its 30-foot-long aircraft with two balloons, and packed it with a couple of electrical motors that manipulated the Tandem’s specially designed propellers. It is a relatively simple method, and one which didn’t exactly cost a fortune, either. All told, it took about five years and a few $30,000 to launch the aircraft, as component of the company’s Airship to Orbit project. The long-term goal is to apply the Tandem or similar airships as a launch pad for rockets or other interstellar aircraft. No word yet on when which could happen, but you may float past the break for a temporary video at the Tandem, coupled with a temporary PR.

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JP Aerospace Airship Flies to the brink of Space, Smashing the prevailing World Altitude Record

On Saturday morning, October 22, 2011, The Tandem airship was launched from Nevada’s Black Rock desert. The airship flew to 95,085 feet, higher than any airship in history

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif., Oct. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — On Saturday morning, October 22, 2011, The Tandem airship was launched from Nevada’s Black Rock desert. The airship flew to 95,085 feet, higher than any airship in history.

After fighting through extreme turbulence from 40,000 to 60,000 feet, Tandem soared to 95,085 feet. Tandem flew nearly four miles higher than any airship before. The pilot at the ground then remotely turned at the motors and flew the airship through a sequence of maneuvers. On the end of its mission one balloon burst and the command was sent to release the opposite balloon. Tandem was then carried to a soft landing by a row of 5 parachutes.

Tandem is an unmanned twin balloon airship. The 2 balloons are separated by a thirty foot long carbon fiber truss. Two electric motors each spin a six foot long propeller. The propellers are specifically designed to work inside the thin atmosphere twenty miles up.
The airship was built and flown by the all-volunteer, independent space program: JP Aerospace.

“The large aerospace firms were attempting to do that for many years, spending hundreds of millions of greenbacks,” says John Powell, President of JP Aerospace. “We’ve spent about $30,000 and the past five years developing Tandem.”

Tandem is a general workhorse vehicle. A high-altitude backhoe, will probably be used as a launch platform for small research rockets, a mother ship for hypersonic test airships and throughout tool for the Airship to Orbit program. Airship to Orbit is a project to construct large V-shaped airships that may fly to space.

Tandem is additionally a construction vehicle for prime altitude research stations and finally cities on the fringe of space.

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