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The orbital airship, also called the space blimp, is a proposed space transportation system that carries payloads to and from low Earth orbit. A remote camera captures a close-up view of a Space Shuttle Main Engine during a test firing at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi Spacecraft propulsion is used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites, or in short, to provide delta-v. ...
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit in which objects such as satellites are below intermediate circular orbit (ICO) and far below geostationary orbit, but typically around 350 - 1400 km above the Earths surface. ...
In the Airship To Orbit (ATO) design envisioned by JP Aerospace, there are three components. A conventional airship (Ascender) lifts payloads up to 30-40 kilometers above the ground - roughly the maximum altitude a conventional airship can achieve. At this altitude the second component, a docking station (Dark Sky Station), acts as a resupply station for the third stage. The third stage is an "orbital airship" (Orbital Ascender), which takes payloads to low earth orbit via a ion engine in three to nine days (i.e., it accelerates itself horizontally to orbital velocity and gains sufficient altitude). Their estimated marginal costs are one dollar per ton per mile of altitude, and their development costs thus far have been under one million dollars. Akron in flight, 2 November 1931 An airship is a buoyant (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can be steered and propelled through the air. ...
An ion engine test An ion thruster is a type of spacecraft propulsion that uses beams of ions for propulsion. ...
The orbital speed of a body, generally a planet, a natural satellite, an artificial satellite, or a multiple star, is the speed at which it orbits around the barycenter of a system, usually around a more massive body. ...
Altitude is the elevation of an object from a known level or datum, called zero level. ...
Two stages are needed because any airship made strong enough to survive the atmosphere would be too heavy to lift payloads to space. An orbital airship would need to be built larger to improve the volume/surface area ratio, with thinner walls, and designed to operate at notably lower pressure. Even in the outer fringes of the atmosphere, helium is still lighter than air. Consequently, airships can continue lifting payloads, but the same airship cannot make the entire trip. General Name, Symbol, Number Helium, He, 2 Atomic mass 4. ...
The expression lighter than air refers to objects, usually aircraft, that are buoyant in air because they have an average density that is less than that of air (usually because they contain gases that have a density that is lower than that of air). ...
Both the atmospheric and orbital airships will be V-shaped for aerodynamics. However, the orbital airship will be angled upwards to help generate lift. As the airship gains altitude, drag will reduce. According to JP Aerospace, there is a wide margin between the thrust that ion engines can provide the airship and the amount of drag the airship would experience in the outer fringes of the atmosphere. Early stages of the station and the airships will be powered by fuel cells. In the long term, the surface of these objects can be sprayed with a thin-film solar cell, which, while inefficient in energy conversion, would benefit from light weight, simplicity, and the large surface area. Lift consists of the sum of all the aerodynamic forces normal to the direction of the external airflow. ...
In physics, the drag equation gives the drag experienced by an object moving through a fluid. ...
For the land-speed record breaking car, see ThrustSSC and Thrust2 For the computer game, see Thrust (computer game) Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newtons Second Law when a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction to propel a vehicle in the opposite direction. ...
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device similar to a battery, but differing from the latter in that it is designed for continuous replenishment of the reactants consumed; i. ...
A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is a semiconductor device consisting of a large-area p-n junction diode, which, in the presence of sunlight is capable of generating usable electrical energy. ...
Several potential problems exist in the design, the largest of which is the threat of micrometeorites. As these will frequently impact the airship, it must have an effective self-healing mechanism, without gaining much weight. Still, additional helium will need to be continually added to the airship to help keep it buoyant. It also faces some of the other risks that face a space elevator, such as elemental oxygen and space debris. A Micrometeoroid (also micrometeorite, micrometeor) is a tiny meteoroid; a small particle of rock from space, usually weighing less than a gram, that poses a threat to space exploration. ...
A space elevator would consist of a cable attached to the surface and reaching outwards into space. ...
General Name, Symbol, Number Oxygen, O, 8 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16 (VIA), 2, p Density, Hardness 1. ...
Space Debris Space debris or orbital debris, also called space junk, are the objects in orbit around Earth created by man that no longer serve any useful purpose. ...
JP Aerospace believes the problems can be solved, and has already begun tests of the Ascender. They hope to test a 30 meter wide prototype station at 9 kilometers altitude by the end of 2005, and have been funding their operations thus far with contracts for development of military communication and spy airships designed to hover over battlefields at altitudes too high for conventional anti-aircraft systems. They also point out that, unlike getting to space on a rocket, if something goes wrong on an airship, nothing bad will happen to you or your payload. A Redstone rocket, part of the Mercury program A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving exhaust gas from within a rocket engine. ...
Skepticism Several prominent posters on the sci.space Usenet groups, of which many knowledgeable amateur, and some professional, rocketry and space enthusiasts discuss such technologies, remain highly sceptical of JP Aerospace's claims. They believe that existing propulsion technologies for the airship are heavy enough, and the lift-to-drag ratios of lifting bodies at hypersonic speed poor enough, that without a fundamental breakthrough in one or both of these areas, there is no way the craft will be able to accelerate itself to orbital velocity and gain sufficient altitude. Their consensus is that either the company has made a mistake, or that their plans revealed to date omit some vital technical point. Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...
A remote camera captures a close-up view of a Space Shuttle Main Engine during a test firing at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi Spacecraft propulsion is used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites, or in short, to provide delta-v. ...
The orbital speed of a body, generally a planet, a natural satellite, an artificial satellite, or a multiple star, is the speed at which it orbits around the barycenter of a system, usually around a more massive body. ...
Altitude is the elevation of an object from a known level or datum, called zero level. ...
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