What is a Hyperblimp?

If you consider that AeroVironment’s solar-powered Helios used 6,000 watts of power to fly, before crashing into the ocean, and that a Hyperblimp can run at close to the same speed, 25 mph, on 1/400 of that power, it surely hints at the value of lighter-than-air (LTA) versus heavier-than-air (HTA) flight. With HTA, it’s as if you’re trying to fly a stone; with LTA, it’s more like moving a buoyant balloon forward. Carl Sagan allegedly said, when someone asked after one of his talks, what he thought would be the future of flight; Sagan answered that this future would be lighter-than-air craft, since it takes no energy to hold such vehicles up. If the above analogy is correct, it should be easy to see why Hyperblimps hold enormous potential, particularly given the strong, lightweight materials that are being developed routinely.

Improving the speed of Hyperblimps is a major target at present. Albertos Santos DuMont, in the early 1900s, wrote about how he had too much pressure on the front of his airships, and how that pressure limited his speed on some occasions. Such pressure is what Hyperblimps avoid, to a large extent. A 20 foot, battery-powered Hyperblimp runs on about 200 grams of thrust (hold two hundred ordinary paperclips and you’ll have some feel for this piffling amount). Our emphasis has accordingly been reduction of air friction and reduction of how much air needs to be pushed aside as the Hyperblimp passes. With no resistance, there is no theoretical limit to speed, making drag resistance a critical concept for LTA vehicles.

Remarkable developments in batteries and solar panels have been made in the last decade, and continue to be made. In addition, fuel cells are coming on line that ought to make night travel possible for large Hyperblimps, since such ships could produce enough solar electricity to charge the fuel cells. And it’s worth remembering that the sun is always shining above the clouds during the day.

As Hyperblimps scale up in size, improvements should increase accordingly, as they did for traditional blimps and Zeppelins, due to gains in lifting power and surface area ratio. Consider that a mouse has a much higher metabolism than an elephant, since it’s surface area is proportionately higher in relation to its volume. Larger airships increase lifting power proportionally to their surface area, and they have more absolute surface area to hold solar panels on.
The ultimate speed or size of these crafts will depend on a number factors, including altitude (things fly better in thinner air), power source, and means of propulsion. Will jet power be feasible for, say, carbon fiber shell airships?

And how remote controlled can these vehicles be made? Even now, the technology exists to fly a remote controlled Hyperblimp anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world with satellite links (and even cell phone links, wherever available).

A few years ago, U.S. News and World Report addressed the billions of dollars being spent on dysfunctional satellites, raising the question of how many of these satellites might be replaced by Hyperblimps, for a small fraction of the cost. Also, being closer to the ground, Hyperblimps could get better resolution for many surveillance systems. They could circle cities and beam radio signals down, as AeroVironment and others are presently trying to accomplish with solar-powered HTA vehicles.

And what about capturing solar energy on fleets of large airships during the day, then bringing them down to plug into the power grid at night? It may be less costly and more feasible than trying to bounce sunlight from the moon, as some scientists are presently contemplating.

Could fleets of airships be used to move people around or between cities? Before calling this idea crazy, consider the state of transportation as it presently exists. If airports were not needed—closed roads and lakes could conceivably be used for landing—the potential for getting to remote places would improve dramatically.

But even if we didn’t worry about flying people around, how much easier and more efficient would it be for the delivery of small and medium goods (and eventually large), if they were flown by Hyperblimp, rather than sitting in trucks for hours in stalled traffic, or being unload from a ship in LA. And what about deliveries in Alaska, where many roads are not usable in winter? Or parts of Africa, where roads don’t exist? But we leave it to your own imagination to fill in the picture further.

Last but not least, what about travel on other planets that have an atmosphere? If it takes only a small fraction of the energy for HTA craft to power a Hyperblimp, why not use Hyperblimps to do the exploring? NASA is already seriously considering this, and actually built an airship to fly on Titan. And wasn’t Jules Vernes writing about blimps to explore Mars, over a century ago?