NASA High Altitude Airship competition

This is from exactly a week ago and I thought it was worth sharing for us airship enthusiasts.

airshipcenter.com...

NASA this week said it was considering a new Centennial Challenge: Build and airship capable of long duration flight for scientific missions.

www.fbo.gov...

NASA is holding an Airship design and construct competition.

Here are the requirements.

Reach a minimum altitude of 20 km.

• Maintain the altitude for 20 hours (200 hours for Tier 2 competition)

• Remain within a 20 km diameter station area (and navigate between two designated points for Tier 2)

• Successfully return the 20 kg payload (200 kg for Tier 2 competition) and payload data.

• Show Airship scalability for longer duration flights with larger payloads through a scalability review.

REWARDS:

Award 1-- A proposed $1.0M will be split between teams successfully completing Tier 1 within 3 years of the challenge initiation. A possible scenario for splitting the Tier 1 prize money is 4 prizes of $500k, $250k, $125k and $125k, starting from the first to demonstrate to the fourth.

Award 2: A proposed $1.5M will be awarded to the first successful demonstration of Tier 2 within four years of challenge initiation.

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So it is basically a high altitude airship competition, not for designing a regular airship. Here is what a HA Airship looks like -

Source: High Altitude Airship

NASA gave out this request to find out if there is enough interest in such a competition, and to further develop rules for the competition.

"The Centennial Challenges Program is NASA's flagship program for technology prize competitions (www.nasa.gov/challenges). The program is an integral part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in NASA's future missions." - NASA

So they looking for interest for it. I hope it will take off. It's probably interesting for universities. The reward seems very good.
I wish NASA had a bigger budget so they could stimulate more projects like these, which stimulate innovation and scientific progress overall. The biggest challenge to me would be reaching the altitude of 20 kilometers, staying there for 20 hours and then coming back.

Reaching the altitude of 20 km (20,000 meters) is easy. That has been done with weather balloons and GoPro cameras. You could create a large frame with hundreds of weather balloons arranged in a hexagonal mesh pattern. The hard part is keeping that altitude constant. Easy enough to get a barometer, but then you need to drop ballast to rise, or deflate balloons to fall.
Then you would need stabilizing / propulsion system to move around as well as GPS.

originally posted by: JohnSmith77

This is from exactly a week ago and I thought it was worth sharing for us airship enthusiasts.

airshipcenter.com...

NASA this week said it was considering a new Centennial Challenge: Build and airship capable of long duration flight for scientific missions.

www.fbo.gov...

NASA is holding an Airship design and construct competition.

Here are the requirements.

Reach a minimum altitude of 20 km.

• Maintain the altitude for 20 hours (200 hours for Tier 2 competition)

• Remain within a 20 km diameter station area (and navigate between two designated points for Tier 2)

• Successfully return the 20 kg payload (200 kg for Tier 2 competition) and payload data.

• Show Airship scalability for longer duration flights with larger payloads through a scalability review.

REWARDS:

Award 1-- A proposed $1.0M will be split between teams successfully completing Tier 1 within 3 years of the challenge initiation. A possible scenario for splitting the Tier 1 prize money is 4 prizes of $500k, $250k, $125k and $125k, starting from the first to demonstrate to the fourth.

Award 2: A proposed $1.5M will be awarded to the first successful demonstration of Tier 2 within four years of challenge initiation.

-----

So it is basically a high altitude airship competition, not for designing a regular airship. Here is what a HA Airship looks like -

Source: High Altitude Airship

NASA gave out this request to find out if there is enough interest in such a competition, and to further develop rules for the competition.

"The Centennial Challenges Program is NASA's flagship program for technology prize competitions (www.nasa.gov/challenges). The program is an integral part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in NASA's future missions." - NASA

So they looking for interest for it. I hope it will take off. It's probably interesting for universities. The reward seems very good.
I wish NASA had a bigger budget so they could stimulate more projects like these, which stimulate innovation and scientific progress overall. The biggest challenge to me would be reaching the altitude of 20 kilometers, staying there for 20 hours and then coming back.

One might ask "if NASA have satellites in space then why do they need air balloons" and the answer is ..there are no satellites!

a reply to: Qwerm

Right.... and we never landed on the moon, and the earth is really flat.

a reply to: Qwerm

Or, satellites pass over a particular spot on earth about every 90 minutes, while an airship can stay over that same spot for days at a time.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Oh right, logic.

originally posted by: Bfirez
a reply to: Qwerm

Right.... and we never landed on the moon, and the earth is really flat.

Wow you knew that?

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Qwerm

Or, satellites pass over a particular spot on earth about every 90 minutes, while an airship can stay over that same spot for days at a time.

Think about it.

a reply to: Qwerm

Nvm your right, there are no satellites and the only logical reason to build an airship like this is that the government has been lying to us about accessing space for 50 years... BTW what type of phone do you have? Does it have GPS?

a reply to: Qwerm

I've been thinking about it for a long time. Are you going to try to actually refute anything or just post one liners trying to be cryptic?

PLEASE -

Stick to the topic which is NASA High Altitude Airship competition.

Thanks and do not reply to this post.

Blaine91555
Moderator

Just give Elon Musk the prize now!

a reply to: JohnSmith77

propellers at 20km?? surely they cant be effective

a reply to: choos

Yes propellers can be effective at that altitude.

But they have to specially designed to operate at a lower speed to keep the tips from going supersonic in the thinner air.

And they have to have an optimized shape to move the maximum amount of air at the lowest possible speed.

a reply to: Qwerm

I agree. And if we had planes we would not need cars. They keep building cars though, so I don't believe in airplanes!

OR .... they both have completely different capabilities making them BOTH useful ...

While I like anything to do with airships, I want passenger ones!!!! Cruise of the skies!

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Qwerm

Or, satellites pass over a particular spot on earth about every 90 minutes, while an airship can stay over that same spot for days at a time.

Yeah, doesn't the spec just shout 'and the 20kg payload is a really hi res camera, by the way MWA HA HA HA'

originally posted by: stormcell
Reaching the altitude of 20 km (20,000 meters) is easy. That has been done with weather balloons and GoPro cameras. You could create a large frame with hundreds of weather balloons arranged in a hexagonal mesh pattern. The hard part is keeping that altitude constant. Easy enough to get a barometer, but then you need to drop ballast to rise, or deflate balloons to fall.
Then you would need stabilizing / propulsion system to move around as well as GPS.

Reaching the altitude should not be too hard, but what about going down again?
To my knowledge, many high altitude blimps aren't reused, just like weather balloons. Once up, never down.

a reply to: Bedlam

That was one of the things I thought of when they announced the Loon. Send something up to broadcast Internet, with a SIGINT payload that stays on station months at a time....

That or put money into JP Aerospace..
Ascender Airship