Blimps In Space

Reported September 2005

BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- You see them floating above football stadiums, but blimps are now being used for more than games: They're a cheap and safe way to get a bird's-eye view of the ground below. Recently, some students have decided to take their science class outdoors, putting a class assignment to the test and helping to send blimps into near space.

Making the grade isn't the only reason mechanical engineering student Nick Keim helped build the blimp. His student airship is now part of a project to send a bigger, un-manned blimp high in the sky.

Keim, a student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says, "We designed a smaller-scale airship that could prove that you can control an airship to fly itself." The amateur blimp is helping professional engineers design a high altitude reconnaissance vehicle, HARVe, a first-of-its-kind blimp to hover in near space.

"The military has a need for this kind of observation capability," says Vince Neradka, an aerospace engineer at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

Satellites are costly and constantly on the move. The space blimp is cheaper, disposable, and can float in one place for weeks. Neradka says, "This HARVe is going to stay and watch around the clock and provide information that the battlefield commanders today just don't have."

The blimp is packed inside a rocket and launched from ship, plane or submarine. Once in space, it self-inflates. Solar panels provide power to steer propellers and a camera and communications device send satellite-quality pictures back down to earth.

The students had to keep costs down and work within a limited budget. They purchased many of the blimp's working parts from remote-control hobby stores. The total cost was $12,000. Researchers say the real blimp is designed for near space, which is higher than commercial airplanes fly, but not as high as satellites orbit. The blimp should be ready within five years.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Phil Sneiderman
Public Affairs Officer
Johns Hopkins University
(443) 287-9960
prs@jhu.edu



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