Quad-Rotor Rescue Hovercraft & Small Blimp

Quad-Rotor Rescue Hovercraft & Small Blimp

Here's the basic idea:

Visualize for a moment that a 9.0 earthquake just struck a short distance offshore from eastern Japan. Tsunami warning sirens go off immediately and civil defense efforts are initiated to evacuate residents from potential tsunami flood zones. 

You & your family live inside one of these tsunami flood zones. 
Next, you ponder: " What are the chances for me & my immediate family if we travel on what is now a grid-locked evacuation route"?  ..... 

Thankfully, you then realize you own a {All-in-One} Rescue Hovercraft.  You realize that it can hover you & your family for many hours in GPS Auto Pilot Mode ...... 
What is it? 
It's a new Quad-Rotor-Hovercraft with built-in rapid inflation Blimp / Lifeboat. 

Your decision to climb on board your Hovercraft / Lifeboat / Blimp [ all rolled into one ] is based on one grim fact: 
You really don't think you'll reach higher ground with your family prior to the arrival of these aforementioned tsunami waves. 

To prevent congestion inside what would otherwise be very overcrowded urban & suburban disaster zone airspace, the GPS Auto Pilot is pre-programmed to take you and your family up to perhaps 100 meters elevation and hold you there ..... well above the tsunami, flood, brush-fire or riot danger zone below.  Upon reaching 100 meters elevation, your GPS position is held in a hover whilst a small blimp deploys immediately above your [ minimal batteries equipped ] Quad - Rotor Hovercraft. At this point, the need to spin your 4 [quad] rotors and 4 [quad] electric motors is minimized  ...... indeed almost eliminated. 

You & yours breathe a big sigh of relief as you'all watch the tsunami floodwaters rush in & out of your {former} neighborhood. In short, each & every one of you are thankful to be alive. 

Then, as word of a developing disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant unfolds on your Rescue Hovercraft Shortwave Radio, you decide it'd be best if you take your rescue vehicle OUT of GPS Auto Pilot mode. From this point on, you manually pilot your Rescue Hovercraft ..... vectoring you & your loved ones away from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and away from the exact direction of prevailing radioactive winds. 

If indeed anything I just described struck a cord with you, lemmi know ..... 

Gary Thomas 
cargoblimp@gmail.com 
1-304-207-3055 
West Virginia, United States of America 

P.S. - 

www.microdrones.com 

www.sourceguides.com 

www.electrifyingtimes.com 

www.homepower.com 

www.mikrokopter.de 

Nice idea  Gary  , Welcome to  the forum. 
 The only  draw back   is   there is no  rapid inflation  of  7000 cu ft  of lift gas possible  to  keep  you  and  your  family  safe .  It  will  take  Hours  to  fill  and no  way  to  contain and transport  that much gas  on  something that flies  or hovers   less  than  a DC 10  or  a giant  hovercraft 
  With  standard  cylinders  at  2500 psi  just  to inflate a 22 foot  balloon  will take  an  hour or more.  
 No time to  dodge  danger  unless  you  were  already inflated  and  ready  to go.   I dont think  a hover  craft riding on  a air cushion ,  will  do  well in  something   as  bad as a tsunami   or  even  in normal  breaking  surf of  3 foot  .
  However  if you  were a  Small blimp forum  member  and had your own  personal  airship  staked out in  the yard  ,  and  maybe lift  balloons to add to it  for  extra lift of  extra  family  members ,  if needed ,   You  "could'  dodge  the bullet . ,   

How much will a thing like that cost?

The hovercraft I'm describing operates outside of [ far above ] " ground effect ". In fact, there was a very interesting "Urban High Rise Building Search & Rescue Hovercraft" featured in the August, 2001 edition of "Popular Mechanics" magazine; it was depicted in a hover many hundreds of feet up on the side of a burning office building. For a closer [ UAV camera drone ] look at this non-ground-effect-quad-rotor-hovercraft, please go to this web site: 

www.microdrones.com 

As for time for attached small blimp inflation ...... if I'm not mistaken, up to 10,000 PSI from the company Linde, GmbH in Germany means that your time-until-full-inflation-quote that's based on 2,500 PSI just got up to 4X quadruple quicker. Especially important is this realization ...... all the time that small blimp is inflating, the power required on the quad-rotor electric motors is less & less & less & less ..... until it is at or almost at full inflation ...... at that point, the { ultralight? } quad-rotor is only used for directional control, if at all. 

The www.acpropulsion.com T-Zero / Tesla Motors www.teslamotors.com sports car electric vehicle motor kits [ same 248 h.p. / 150 or 165-kW kit in each car ] is now being sold for around $27,000. Multiply by 4 and it's $108,000 for 996 horsepower. That's far & away beyond what a Turboprop powered Medical / Search & Rescue Helicopter can deliver. 

Smaller 25, 50 and 75 or ~100+ horsepower EV motor kits are at: www.sourceguides.com and www.electrifyingtimes.com  Far lower prices the closer you get to a 1-person version of what I just described. 

I'm a bit rushed for time tonight, so please contact me if I can explain things in any better for you. 

Many Search & Rescue Hovercraft Regards, 

Gary Thomas 
1 - 304 - 207 - 3055
USA  

As for time for attached small blimp inflation ...... if I'm not mistaken, up to 10,000 PSI from the company Linde, GmbH in Germany means that your time-until-full-inflation-quote that's based on 2,500 PSI just got up to 4X quadruple quicker.

-ttgrthomas

If the force of 10,000 PSI hitting the back of the blimp does not shread it completely.

Many are the ways my friend .... Ponder the:  
MANIFOLD with 100 dispersed lift gas injectors at 100 PSI each .......... 100 points of entry x 100 PSI / ea. = 10,000 PSI all combined, right? 
Right! 

Several years ago, I saw a James Bond movie where [ the bad guys, I think it was ] inflated a fair sized multi - person blimp in perhaps one half minute. Although that was obviously several decades old technology, I would dare say that 10,000 PSI equally distributed along a internal manifold with { f.e. } 100 valves / nozzles should be capable of inflating a small or medium blimp ..... possibly much faster. 

One other James Bond film I saw was a very old one from the 1960's. This one had a flying yellow mini car with detachable wings ...... compare that old & very unique 1960's ultralight with the new ICON at www.iconaircraft.com ..... the new towable / amphibious "flying jet ski".   

For a look at one more ~$500 US dollar 'augmented reality UAV drone', check out the new " AR Parrot drone ". 
Not much fractional horsepower, however it's got many really cool features

You might want to review the Darcy flow equation. If you want to calculate time to fill a blimp, it has to do with the pressure drop across the entrance, the gas viscosity, temperature and flow resistance. Most blimps that are filled from a tank go through a regulator to reduce the pressure. This slows down the flow. ( With good reason). If you just dump 10,000 psi gas into a plastic envelope you will destroy it. If you use 100 regulators and 100 entrance ports the ship will have 99 extra ports worth of weight to carry. And you will have to buy 100 regulators to support this task.

If you try to do something this fast, you will have to contain the momentum generated.

P.S. James Bond falls in the fiction category.

I believe that helium at that pressure is liquid, isn't it?  Also when it is warmed it can expand violently and I believe it needs a warming radiator, one way valves and other safety features to slow the flow down to subsonic speeds.   Too bad we cannot utilize all the power it took to pressurize helium to 10,000 lbs of pressure, it is stored energy.   If you just have the helium under pressure but not liquified then you still have to deal with a freon like cold gas as it expands, it can make any plastic brittle and fragile.

From a net search:

What are the three major groups of compressed gases?
There are three major groups of compressed gases stored in cylinders: liquefied, non-liquefied and dissolved gases. In each case, the pressure of the gas in the cylinder is commonly given in units of kilopascals (kPa) or pounds per square inch gauge (psig).
Gauge pressure = Total gas pressure inside cylinder - atmospheric pressure
Atmospheric pressure is normally about 101.4 kPa (14.7 psi). Note that compressed gas cylinder with a pressure gauge reading of 0 kPa or 0 psig is not really empty. It still contains gas at atmospheric pressure.
Liquefied Gases
Liquefied gases are gases which can become liquids at normal temperatures when they are inside cylinders under pressure. They exist inside the cylinder in a liquid-vapour balance or equilibrium. Initially the cylinder is almost full of liquid, and gas fills the space above the liquid. As gas is removed from the cylinder, enough liquid evaporates to replace it, keeping the pressure in the cylinder constant. Anhydrous ammonia, chlorine, propane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide are examples of liquefied gases.
Non-Liquefied Gases
Non-liquefied gases are also known as compressed, pressurized or permanent gases. These gases do not become liquid when they are compressed at normal temperatures, even at very high pressures. Common examples of these are oxygen, nitrogen, helium and argon.
Dissolved Gases
Acetylene is the only common dissolved gas. Acetylene is chemically very unstable. Even at atmospheric pressure, acetylene gas can explode. Nevertheless, acetylene is routinely stored and used safely in cylinders at high pressures (up to 250 psig at 21?C).
This is possible because acetylene cylinders are fully packed with an inert, porous filler. The filler is saturated with acetone or other suitable solvent. When acetylene gas is added to the cylinder, the gas dissolves in the acetone. Acetylene in solution is stable.

I could not find the pressure ratings for liquid helium, but I know it needs to be under considerable pressure to liquify and chilled also, but, like voltage and amperage to wattage, I don't know the ballance of one to the other to achieve the liquid state.   It is much more affordable in liquid state according to Tupelo Gas, some years ago, but this makes it more complicated to handle.  

Quote from previous:

"Non-Liquefied Gases

These gases do not become liquid when they are compressed at normal temperatures, even at very high pressures. "

So if you get liquefied Helium:

1. It's going to be at its normal vapor pressure if below 4.2 K

2. If it is at its boiling point at 4.2 K the pressure will be 1 atm or 14.696 psia.

3. The equipment to store, convert to a high pressure gas from the liquid,  is far more expensive than everybody in this forum put together can afford.

4. A 291 cf He cylinder has 2640 psi in it-------no liquid Helium, just gas.

5. The process to form liquid He from pressurized gas is a specialized refrigeration process, pressurization alone won't do it.

yeah ,  just  a  few ticks above absolute  zero  .  --- 459 degrees F .... thats  COLD!

Thanks, swampie, so we would need about 30 high pressure air tanks, a truck load, to fill an 8,000 cubic foot blimp, and a comparable amount of tanks to store it, and a super high compressor like cuba tanks use to compress it.  What about the high pressure water washers, they go up over 3,000 psi, do you think they could work with helium?  The volume would be very slow, though.
.    Navigaitors'  hydrogen plan is looking better all the time, for it does not have to be stored under pressure , just with certain safety factors involved.   I think one of those safety factors should be to surround those lifting bags with helium inside the shell, a small amount would be affordable and a good safety feature.
.   Speaking of the quad rotor rescue hovercraft, have you seen the army's old flying platform?   It was small, simple, could lift a couple of hundred pounds straight up and do about 45 or 50 mph and was automatically stable with the pilot inside.   There are plenty of videos of it on youtube.

 High speed mechanical Helium  / hydrogen  and other  LTA  gas Compression  gets the equipment  extremely hot I 47.   Thats  why  I'm  not going  the  SCUBA  route. I'm  fairly  certain   that  the compressor  would  melt down  in  short order  unless  used in  very  short  intervals   with long  cool down  periods to  follow.    Helium  is  like very very thin air  and  doesn't like to  bond to  anything  like  air or  water does ,especially to  itself  called  surface  tension. Bonding  causes  one  atom  to  pull on  the next  thats  why standard  air compressors  and pressure washers work  with out  a lot of  extra cooling precautions ,   Helium is a very small  anti social  atom, even  with itself.  thats  why  its so    hard to  compress .  Gas  plants   use  refrigerated  water  in  the compressors  to  keep  them  from  melting  down .  Thats  how bloody  hot it  gets .  

Would it make more sense to have a quad-rotor jump-jet style platform without the blimp, but with sufficient fuel for about an hour's travel and pre-programmed GPS-assisted flight to take it somewhere local that was tsunami-proof? And the big question - would all this cost less than tsunami-proofing your house in the first place?

It  all  depends on  how much  time , time of  day , Post  quake damage,    weather,  and prior warning, and of course money ,  you  had   to  work  with . as to  what  you could actually  do  as far as  self  aerial  evac . 15 mins is  not much  warning  no mater how much  money  you had .  Barely  enough  time  to  get  a chopper (or quad rotor)  loaded up and fired up , even if you  had  a helipad on your  roof .. or even  if you  could  use it   due to  weather  during  that  time  , or  even if  the quake   itself   didn't   render it useless.  .  Its  a  helluva crap shoot to  evac  by anything  air under  these  conditions  .   If you  had  time enough,  grab  the Dirt  bike and   make your own roads through quake damage ,   traffic , yards, fields and  side walks to  safety   or  at least  a  building  that  "could"  withstand  it.  ,  ,   If  the  weather is  good  enough and you had time enough,    get  to a parking lot or  football / baseball field   with  the PPG   tandem rig   or  Hot air  balloon   and   fly out .  Or  build  to  withstand  a  torrent of   cars,   trucks n' logs and everything else ,   smashing  into   your  home at  45 mph , Hoping  you  built  high  enough and strong  to  escape it .  My  advice  ..dont live  there because its only  a matter of time , not  "if" it  will happen.