Proposed Remake: Original Aereon Type

I'd like to propose a modern day updated remake of the first controlled flight of an airship, see:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Andrews_(inventor)

With more of the airship (thanks Dan!) looking like:

I was thinking along the lines of this:

It would, possibly, have a two part system.  Two of the above wing type crafts are constructed.  One carries one or two pilots, so the weight of the pilots and possibly an array of solar cells are carried by the one that is helium filled along with a small electric motor.   The second "lead" craft is cabled a safe distance away and carries the water ballast, and hydrogen for disposable lift.

The front hydrogen craft would supply most of the steering while climbing and descinding, and most of the up and down forward motion by release of water ballast and then release of hydrogen.  Separation of crafts could happen for safety or to allow the passenger ship to loiter around on solar power as the passenger ship is neutral bouyancy and can act independantly using solar power and can glide safely down.  Craft parashute on the passenger unit. 

-Paul

Are you referring the hybrid airship projects by the Aereon corporation? 

No, not the Aereon Corp., but the predecessor, the original Aereon and Aereon II by Dr. Solomon Andrews:

The link below (hopefully gets you there) to the airship story of Dr. Andrews:

http://books.google.com/books?id=xY7Uy2mO9cQC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=dr.+solomon+andrews&source=bl&ots=2RHjbVDA41&sig=HDUM-kCB9lDZHGrY0ucSqKUBAu0&hl=en&ei=WQU3Sp-ZK4jKtgfw1YnaDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

This next link (hopefully) will take you to the Wikipedia story on him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Andrews_(airship)

With the view of the first Aereon here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airship_Aereon_by_Solomon_Andrews.jpg

A modern day version (hot air) can be found:

Hey, maybe have helium do the lifting and use hot air for the buoyancy up and down “gravitation” forward motion!... hmmmm……..

-Paul

Ps: For those posting a reply, I’d suggest composing it on a word document first then copy and paste to reply box.  This will save some frustration of a losing a reply if it doesn’t go through.

Tried replying, I'll try attaching a word document instead....

Attachment: Original Aereon.doc (25.0KB)

It looks like long posts are being flagged as spam. I have contacted lefora support about this problem. I can restore any posts that are marked as spam as soon as I see them.

AEREON 26

http://www.aereon.com/pages/aereon26.html 
 
That's the website of the corporation which prototyped a lifting body aircraft called the "Aereon 26." They are still in business but did not develop the aircraft further than to test fly it once. It flies. They say that they need help to develop the design. I'll bet they would like to see it evolve into the world's first practical airship.

   It's a great shape to scale up to the size of a personal airship. The body would need enlarging to hold two or more thousand cubic feet of lift gas. The airfoil shape would give it some aerodynamic lift to add to the static lift of its gas.
   It is one of the shapes that I'm considering at my wiki site: skyboat.wikispaces.com

UP!   Allen the Navigaiter

Hi Allen (and all), I copied your pic you posted.  This is the possible shape that I'm thinking of for the original Aereon remake.

It gives a great amount of lift, along with being able to "slice" thru the air.  I'm not sure if the below picture show the passenger seats being able to slide? or not, but with an Aereon remake it would need to so the craft could be angled up or down for forward fall or ascensions.  

The "self storage" I mentioned in the "what do you want in a personal blimp; "airship" area would be this:
Though it'll probably take it out of the 660lb classification?:

With the idea I have the bottom half of the ship is a geodesic dome (which would hold the helium), made from carbon fiber framework and internal helium containment bags.  The top half would be hotair balloon type material, and would be used for filling with hot air for lift and disposable lift for the flight cycles.

The geodesic dome is "flipped" after flying and the hotair expelled and the dome with the helium is staked to the ground creating self storage!  

I sketched a few drawings I'll try to scan in the next few days and post.

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/pboldt/Desktop/Sketches.pdf

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/pboldt/Desktop/In%20ground%20self%20storage.pdf

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/pboldt/Desktop/Tilts%20for%20ascension.pdf

The first pdf shows a few possible configurations, I like the bottom left design.

The second pdf shows the self storage, best if the ground is hollowed out and the ship anchored, with control cabin at centerline midway up it is accessible when ancored as well as up for water landings!

Third pdf just shows the whole airship tilting for altitude climb.

So then I put the concept on microsoft paint to be more clear...

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/pboldt/Desktop/Thermal%20Rider.doc

but since it may be able to keep the ship assembled with the inground "hangar-pit"  instead of two geodesic domes, larger internal superpressure balloons can be used...

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/pboldt/Desktop/Thermal%20Rider%20Revised.doc

This way helium is self stored, no hanger needed, tie downs easily to secure ship in "hangar-pit", control car is accessible, water landing available with control car midway up hull.

The size is purely just a guess, most likely need to be bigger, will need to calculate.

If solar cells can be designed in, two small electric motors can help motor about when sunny.  Maybe an auxilary compressed air main prop if some serious power is needed, or maybe a chase van can bring out a heavy duty (gas) engine to install on the ship where it landed to power it back to base....

Don't think the above doc are readable?  Anyone know how to download the pdf's so they are viewable?

Yah I was not able to open them either. Can you insert image or uplaod the file?

Bold, you merely posted the url of your own desktop on those sketch photos. I wish you would upload them so I could see them.
   At the bottom left of the "Reply to:" form there is a button called Attachments Upoad files. Click it and you'll get a file browser window for your files.   cheers AllenM

Oh, upload themm as graphic file suffix so the image will show on the post. gif or jpg

Hi Bold, I went to the wikipedia article for solomon andrews aereon. Your url was incorrect by one parenthesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Andrews_(inventor   close the parenthesis after the word inventor and it'll work.
   
   If the air were completely still, such as it seldom is, and the buoyancy were positive and the ship were angled up at 45 degrees, the ship would float up and be pushed forward by the appaently down-flowing wind which was a product of the ship's own rising. So the balloon would go up one unit of speed and forward the same amount of units.
   Guess how much the speed of ascent would be with the amount of positive buoyancy you could build into the craft and plot that on a graph, then bring it down to a 45 angle and you'll see on the horizontal scale the horizontal speed.
    I guess we're dealing with under ten miles an hour. A ship that slow wouldn't be able to fight any headwinds when they came up and they will come up and the ship'll be going up and down backwards a lot. This design is an interesting and workable impractical idea.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xY7Uy2mO9cQC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=dr.+solomon+andrews&source=bl&ots=2RHjbVDA41&sig=HDUM-kCB9lDZHGrY0ucSqKUBAu0&hl=en&ei=WQU3Sp-ZK4jKtgfw1YnaDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

A couple things to note in the above read, the ship can fly into a wind, into a 10mph wind was noted on a flight.  On it's last flight of the first Aereon, after he flew it around,  Dr. Andrews sent the ship up by itself, being that light it moved very rapidly, although I'd imagine a little slower than the 120mph reported, but still quite quickly.

The glide ratio is a major component, I'm thinking computer simulations, factoring the bouyancy, drag, the body shape/wings will be able to improve on Dr. Solomons ships.  Obviously a non motor glider has quite a range, anything from ridge running to catching thermals, due to it's sleek design.

 I've named the airship design Thermal Rider, hopefully to be designed to be able to catch thermals:

 Even though not able to cut through the air like the glider, a great lift/drag scenario for the airship due to bouyancy is almost approaching the glider as the airship will be able to use it both as ascending and decending! while the glider can only descend unless catching a thermal, or ridge running, both of which hopefully the airship will be able to due as well!

I was thinking my design concept should come out in the design submission stage?  Ah what the heck, I'll the diagrams next...

If it gets to far downwind, find a suitable place to anchor,  then on the next calm day, either fly it back, or strap on a motor (but this would make it under a new classification (motorized balloon?)).  So I guess the first (without motor) would be considered a free balloon.

Here is one of the Aereon II's flight, even though probably drifting a lot he initially did he upwind, and flights up to 6000 feet and then back down along the flight path:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=W+Houston+St+%26+Greene+St,+New+York,+New+York,+New+York+10012&daddr=welfare+island+to:Steinway+St+to:40.765982,-73.803406+to:Northern+Blvd%2FNY-25A+to:oyster+bay&geocode=%3B%3BFT4VbgIdtDWY-w%3B%3BFYh1bgIdMoyb-w%3B&hl=en&mra=dpe&mrcr=1&mrsp=3&sz=10&via=2,3,4&sll=40.686886,-73.748474&sspn=0.509213,0.88028&ie=UTF8&z=10

Might not link, but basically when from Greene&Houston to Oyster Bay.