Aeroscraft

Aero Craft is the name of a transport airship project of the American company Aeros Corporation.

Description

The project dates back to a now discontinued DARPA research funding, which sought to promote the Walrus HULA project development and production of hybrid airships that would carry up to 1,000 tons of cargo on up to 22,000 km.

The Aeros Corporation continued after the funding is continuing its Aero craft project. Initially planned is the construction of a procedure called the ML866 model to provide 20 tons of cargo capacity. In addition, future versions ( ML868 and ML86X ) can carry up to 60 or 500 tons of cargo.

2012, the company has completed a scaled prototype. All AeroCraft airships are designed as rigid airships; They have a supporting frame on the inside of carbon fiber reinforced plastic or aluminum. Aeros chose a technically deviant action as the company Cargo Lifter AG, which followed a similar business purpose, but in 2002 was forced to declare bankruptcy.

History

Initial plans to construct an airship to transport loads, the Aeros founder Igor Pasternak Corporation was already pursuing in 1989.

Basis for the project was funded by DARPA study, as well as for the Lockheed Martin P- 791st

The public, the ML866 project was presented at the 60th Annual Meeting of the National Business Aviation Association in Atlanta in 2007. Was presented there in particular a model in 1:48 scale.

An important milestone in the development of the company reached in April 2008, when the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration conducted the type approval for the airship.

AeroCraft prototype N866 HL

Aeros has concluded with a rapid prototyping department of the U.S. Department of Defense a contract to build and test a scaled prototype of the Aero Craft. The construction of this prototype, which was co-sponsored by NASA and DARPA with $ 42.4 million, was approximately four years.

In the course of a 70 -meter-long and 16 -ton prototype called Pelican was constructed. The Pentagon defined in the contract four basic criteria which have to fulfill the airship:

• Independent of a ground crew maneuvering the airship on the ground,
• Implementation of a vertical startup,
• Nutzlastabladung without the simultaneous recording of a counter ballast,
• Various tests with the shell material of the airship.

In particular, the unloading of the payload without the simultaneous recording of an ballast is a very challenging task that has not yet been carried out in the air maritime history. In the unloading load from an airship, the problem arises that the airship is much easier with a constant buoyancy without the burden previously borne. Since an airship will hover at any time balanced, the unloading of load previously possible only with the simultaneous recording of a counterweight in the same amount. Otherwise, the airship would win uncontrolled altitude.

In conventional airships this buoyancy compensation was realized via a ballast water recovery plant, with these systems, however, have mostly not been proven in practice to be practicable. The Cargo Lifter AG stood in their development of the heavy-class CL160 airship before this problem, but did not come first basic technical ideas to solve the problem also.

Aeros has developed to address the problem of buoyancy compensation, a novel method called Rigid Aeroshell, variable - buoyancy ( RAVB ) ( German Rigid shell variable buoyancy). Here is pumped by a pump in the airship, the carrier gas helium from the carrier gas cells in pressurized containers made ​​of composite or drained from these in the lifting gas cells, depending on how much of a boost is to generate the airship. By the helium is compressed, the blimp loses its static buoyancy and sinks. This causes the landing process is initiated, and payload could be included or unloaded on the ground. In contrast, when the compressed helium is released back into the carrier gas cells, wins the airship buoyancy, that is, it is lighter than the air displaced by it and rises.

The prototype of the AeroCraft Luftschiffbau series was completed just before Christmas 2012 and completed since first rolling tests within the company's own wooden blimp hangars. Videos of these experiments have since appreciated the internet.

The first predetermined by the Pentagon central task, autonomous maneuver on the ground, was now fulfilled by the company and successfully tested. Also a first take-off and hovering the airship inside the hangar was in mid-January 2013, successfully tested several times.

The pending further tests will continue to take place exclusively inside the airship hangar. It is provided, the airship to have no more than 10 to 15 feet apart ( about 3.0 to 4.5 meters ) from the ground.

Possible tests outside the hangars are not provided for budget reasons currently. The company is seeking funding to perform this can.