Introducing: Ascender H1 Variant Orbital Airship
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- This is the newest version of the Ascender orbit airship designed to carry cargo to space. It's the final stage of ATO, the airship to orbit program. The H1 is the latest update in development of this class of vehicle and the directly result of decades of development and test flights. ATO is changing the very nature of space travel.
Check out one of our actual airships taking off.
• Launch of Giant Vee Ai...
MHD
MHD plasma engines
Hit Subscribe for the latest!
Find us on Pateron:
/ jpaerospace
Dark Sky Market for payloads to 100K, edge of space merch and more:
dark-sky-marke...
For the UFO watchers out there, this totally reminds me of the Phoenix Lights or Lubbock Lights Incidents. TY For finally telling me what they were doing!
exactly what I was about to say !!! Never knew this existed
Me to 😂
Bingo!
Did he say they were working on this design for 'many decades?'@@reliquary1267
Im a field Geologist, I spend most of my time in remote parts of the Arizona desert. Several weeks ago we saw a massive triangular shaped craft with huge red lights in the back. It was just sitting in the sky maybe 1000 ft above Quartzite Arizona for quite sometime with those rear lights turned off. When they came on the craft started slowly moving to the north east and eventually was gone. I heard stories about the Phoenix lights, saw video but wasnt there to see it first hand but it sure as heck looked like the same craft from the videos of the Phoenix lights. The thing that was concerning for my team and I is whatever that thing hovering in the sky was idk but it was hovering over thousands of campers that were out on the LTVA La Posa North BLM camping area. We were coming down La Posa rd heading east when we noticed it just sitting there all blacked out, even with the lights off you could see this massive black triangle just sitting there totally still against the night sky as it was blocking out the stars. Id imagine others have had to see it when those red lights turned on, Personally those "lights" seemed to be some sort of exhaust manifold for the craft as if the red glow was some sort of plasma discharge as it was clearly coming from rectangular ports across the back of the craft. Whatever it was, its clear our secret space programs are much further then the claimed 50yrs ahead.
I saw the V, the wing, in 1979,. At night over southern California. It looked like the wider one. Very smooth on the bottom. No lights. No sound. Very large.
Me too. Near March ARB, Riverside CA
Where at in so cal?
Great work, but I worry that you need to complete the triangle to avoid resonances that will get excited by the airflow. You show a giant tuning fork that could start ringing with both in-plane and out-of-plane resonances because the stiffnesses are too low for those long unconstrained legs. Maybe you have enough built-in damping to dissipate the incoming energy fast enough to avert trouble? Also the cargo bay as shown has sharp corners. Depending on what the actual underlying support is, that constitutes stress concentrators that you don't need to have. All interior corners in a structure should be fileted with a radius that lowers the stress concentrations that are inevitable a interior corners. I know you know all this, but just in case, it doesn't hurt to raise the question. Thanks a lot for your contributions to humanity!!!
Yes complete the triangle, fill in the center as well… also make it completely black…. Make it the size of many football fields… Fly it over metropolitan areas… make sure it’s totally silent
No air resistances at 350,000 ft?
It's amaizing what this guy is doing at the back of his tools storage :P
😅😅😅😅
Was this craft the craft seen in 1998 by thousands of people in Phoenix Arizona ?
The comment I was looking for.
No, the one in 1998 was ET and from the YahYel people. We're just copying it once again and pretend its ours.
First thing I thought of…….. how many times has this shape been reported? I know if a couple through the years….
This design is apparently no where near construction.
But of course, it a a copy of the ufo.
I'll be perfectly honest - there are obvious and gigantic impediments to this system, both physically and financially, and I have extreme doubts that you guys will be able to pull this off. Just off the top of my head, the ability of an airship to generate displacement lift at the altitudes you cite, structural integrity issues across vehicle with such large lengths, the likelihood of obtaining lauch certification for such an outside the box system, the cost of actual industrial development of the system prior to profitability, etc.
That said, it is a fascinating idea and one which - if practical - mitigates many issues with strictly chemically propulsive orbital launch rockets. I've subbed, and am adding as much reading material related to your pursuits as I can find to my backlog. I have doubts, but I also know that doubts dont make history - dreams do. I hope to be able to enjoy the ride of your team's dreams being made reality.
Bro, try not doubting please?
The less doubting the greater the progress and success
@@ultralaggerREV1that is a provably false statement. if you cant accept honesty with both optimistic and pessimistic points, then perhaps the comment section of the internet isnt the best place for you.
What is the reaction mass propellant of your thin atmosphere engines?
@@ultralaggerREV1 No, the less doubting and the more blind belief the more the rockets, planes, cars, and space blimps crash and kill people.
@@CharlesBrown-xq5ug
Voltage differentials
You can accuse me of needing a Tinfoil Hat, but a silent craft like this, massive, way wider the long, came over our camp in Green Mountain, WY. In 2015 at 1:22 in the morning going west towards Casper, WY. I ran I side and woke up both my sons and a friend from their tents and we all saw it. This explains a lot… as we had no idea what we were looking at. It did not have the lights like what was seen in Arizona… it blocked the stars and was dark or black… the moon illuminated it as it was setting to the west, the direction this thing came from.
Get your friends to comment their testimonies directly right here under your comment. You should do it.
Looks like the Phoenix lights. 🤯
that was the first thing I thought of as well
Yep me too, maybe a secret military prototype in Phoenix based on the same concept.
ruclips.net/video/w-xJATBctIA/видео.htmlsi=6RbLZTtUbofxeO7Q
Agreed.
why does this feel like pheonix?
Because physics. If you want to build something that works, you start with something that has worked in the past, and refine it. I always thought that the Phoenix craft used magnetic induction, and that it needed three repulsers in a triangular arrangement to have any control, but this is something different.
I remember contemplating something like this when I was a boy in the 70's. It made sense to me as I watched the waste of our space program. It seemed more of a military operation than exploration. Good to see smart people are on it.
I was directed here after I randomly asked reddit if an airship could be designed to take satellites into orbit. I am blown away and inspired that you not only share my mix of passionate curiosity but also have the will to enact your vision. Seeing that this video is only 2 weeks old gives me so much hope.
It'll be better at staying up there than getting back and forth.
I'm here because I was looking for: "Airship Launch of Space Launch Vehicles" by John C. Munday and Edward W. Perkins, published in 1998. ChatGPT knew, but Google didn't. And Gemini just embarrassed itself.
Beautiful current rendition. Let's fly it!
I love the idea of lighter than air craft. This is the most extraordinary project. I wish you well for H2
Love the idea and really enjoyed the video. Having worked on a hybrid airship for over three years, I can tell you the challenge is much more than just the technology. The logistics and operations are typically underappreciated by a technologist. We were looking at a 300m long ship that would have been a nightmare to maintain but yours is over three times as long with two hulls. And trans-sonic flight means there can be absolutely no holes or tears, while a smaller subsonic ship could handle this.
Why not scale up a previous lifting body design? X24B seems like a much better starting point than the tuning fork as the surface area would be a small fraction of the current design. X24B or other current or historical listing body airframe would give you a much smaller footprint along with easier to manage structural dynamics.
Suggest you consult with Dan Raymer or another aircraft design expert to study this from all aspects. It will save you a lot of time and money from going down the wrong path.
Anyway, good luck! It is easy to see how excited you are to keep going. Even if it never flies, you are having a wonderful experience that people who have not done this kind of thing may never understand.
This is really cool. I love the genuine and knowledgeable presentation.
What a great project! This concept of orbital airships could lend itself to many disc-shaped configurations.
The air density at 300,000 feet is about 1/50,000th of sea level. Is it possible to create any buoyancy at all with helium or even hydrogen gas bags in air that thin?
No. But from what I've seen they will be at very high velocities by that point and generating lift from the body of the craft. Depending of course on if those particle accelerator engines really work and aren't unfeasibly heavy.
@@danthemanzizle I worked on the design of a lifter once that used a magnetic accelerator, a rail-gun.. At the end of the day the power requirements were the killer of the whole thing... For a 1000 ton vehicle & with a muzzle velocity of 1 Km/s it would be around 5 Terawatts minimum. The only way even close to doing it would be with something like wires running from the ground. Not as bad as a space elevator but insane.
The video footage of when the balloon bursts and the experiments start to fall back to earth is so cool. Make you feel like your right there. Can you imagine what it would feel like to feel the balloon pop and feel the earth pulling you back down. The rush of the wind picking up and the atmosphere gets thicker and your speed increases. Awesome
I'd love to see a velocity vs altitude plot. It seems to me if the atmosphere is dense enough for generating useful lift it is too dense to move through at hypersonic velocities for more than a brief (
The beauty of the orbital ascender is that all velocity start and increase above 140,000 feet MSL, where the atmosphere is thin and drag is already low.
@@BloonWhisp And the lift is gone too.
@@Superkuh2>Not gone, just smaller, which for a lightweight and nearly two kilometer long vehicle is still a large enough lifting force at hyper-sonic speeds I'm assuming.
Love the Hubble telescope retrieval plan… Godspeed
Been folliwing JP's progress for years and have your book.. Love the new design. This is what we are going to need to get to become a space faring people. Thanks for all your work. Hope to see this or something better flying someday.
Are you going to release the 3d printer files of the H1?
Thank you for developing high specific impulse high thrust and light weight engines for applications in the extreme upper atmosphere.
The engines might make stationary high altitude in the rarefied atmosphere platforms feasible. This would provide low latency easy to work on communication nodes.
Mary helium could be mined from the extreme altitude part of the atmospnhere.
That's an interesting idea! Mining helium from the extreme altitude part of the atmosphere could offer a new source of this valuable resource. It's amazing to think about the innovative ways we can utilize natural elements for various applications. The possibilities are endless!
Another use would be high altitude geoengineering stations.
Events anywhere on earth could be moniterd from stationary mild weather outposts.
Thank you for your contributions towards advancing civilization.
Aloha
In a sci-fi novel this could work.
I've written a dozen spaceships, and they all could work. The real test is getting the beast off the ground.
You guys should be scooped up by a big company for sure and fully funded ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Is this an ad for hallucinogenic drugs?
No, it is a warning about...
Very interesting! I see potential. Good luck.
Have you considered using your airship/space ship to go to Venus?
The upper atmosphere of Venus is Earthlike in temperature and pressure if not in composition. The gravity is nearly 1G and an airship would be the perfect vehicle to take advantage of that habitable envelope.
Since the air on Venus is primarily CO2 nitrogen and oxygen are lifting gasses allowing the entirety of the structure to be utilized. The initial H2 or HE could be then used as industrial gasses.
I was just going to mention this. From the description, it looks like this could be an excellent Venusian Shuttle. If we are going to have a manned base floating in the upper atmosphere of Venus, perhaps this could get returning astronauts back up to orbit, where the transfer ship could then return them to Earth.
I really like this Idea
Maybe, a number of these airships can make up a space-based solar-power station!
It would be great if you could reuse it's engines after the power-station is completed.
Now I understand Arizonas governors' news conference about the Phoenix lights. He was told that it was national security stuff
How have I never heard of this, this is great
Can this designed time travel? Because it looks exactly like the ship associated with the "Phoenix Lights" UFO encounter in 1997.
If they keep working on the active drag reduction system. Plasma is the key for time travel. High amounts of electricity would be needed for time travel, but it can and eventually will be done.
One point twenty-one jiggawatts!
@@gumbyresearch Great Scot!!
Once they hit 88 mph their golden..lol
So it is a V shape blimp with rocket engines and plasma edge... impresive. but how will it slowdown?
Maybe keep it on a 80~100KM leo and rise payloads to it then accelerate to orbital>deploy and slowdown for pick up
Turn off the plasma edge. It's so big and so light, it'll fall out of orbit on it's own just off exasphere drag.
I am amazed by the idea and effort, but how do you want to combine an inflated wing with hypersonic velocities? Does the partial pressure change so much of the equation that you can push a blimp on Mach 5+ through it?
Wouldn't it be easier to deploy a two stage system? You don't have to accelerate all the fuel and structure. Instead only part of the fuel and structure. Would make the concept lighter and more feasable in most dimensions.
6:11 I want to test this on feasability:
How many 100m are the wings supposed to be long? From what i can see it will be around 400m+ for each wing. You will need a completely new infrastructure, which would be very expensive in money, space and legal issues - i guess you want to use Helium? That will break your bank alone or are there new alternatives you secretely know of? You will need at least several b$ for this endeavour. Who should be the sponsor?
Material wise there are additional issues like simply atmosphere. Air ships still crumble on a bad day without a storm. A 400 by 200m wide one in complex form won't do better.
How does it stir through dense atmosphere? Judging from your model, there is no concept to show now.
Edit: I completely forgot to ask, which fusion reactor the Ascender should use. Joke aside, it should be a SMR or should it burn hydrogen, which was maybe used as lifting gas? For the last one authorities would have a word in this.
I’m having a very hard time thinking this will travel at hypersonic speeds. That plasma system for reducing drag was rumored to be on the B2 and supposedly it flies supersonically; contrary to its official, stated subsonic speed. Interesting concept. I hope it works.
Subbed in part b/c I feel like I've been dropped a 3rd of the way into the pages of a complicated Sci-Fi novel! A huge yet "featherweight" flying machine meant to scrape space and fill niche-missions? Sounds insane, as in insanely great 👍
Interesting idea. It would be interesting to see this on a runway. What is the planned weight, how many landing gears will it , and most importantly where would it land?
My understanding is that the ascender vehicle is too fragile to land, and needs instead to dock at a giant air-baloon station instead.
I would love to see the opinion of Isaac Arthur or Frasier Cain! Very very interesting...
You guys should collab!
I'm not saying that you're making this up. Just to be perfectly clear. As I listen to the description of this thing in the beginning of the video, I couldn't help but feel I'm watching a SciFi flick. This thing sounds insane. I hope it becomes a real thing! It would revolutionize the space industry. One thing though, what's the catch? Will it be hard to fill the thing with enough cargo to make a launch worth it?
I have thought for year, that this could be done. I didn't know until today, that it was being done. Hope you succeed!:) Don
In order for people to take you seriously you need to get a professional looking background, ya look like you're just a garage dream! 😱😁👍👍🇺🇸
The Phoenix lights was I assume a concept test for something like this . This type of vehicle is the way forward in replacing long haul airliners . SpaceX thinking of using starship the same way but this idea is a great deal safer and less expensive . I get now fabric is useable because polymer science and material science have made tightly woven fibres really strong but I believe hard case carbon fibre or similar composite would be great for carrying large loads in a stable way.
This is a fusion reactor that might generate substantial net power in space that could also drive a large space ship. A giant inflatable mylar sphere one or more kilometers in diameter. If the sphere is charged up to maybe 10,000 volts positive, it will keep electrons in orbit. If the electrons originate at a certain point, they will always come back through that point causing a buildup of negative voltage at that point. If the voltage at that point is maybe 10,000 volts and the point is far enough away from the sphere, it will trap deuterium ions within the vicinity of the point in a fusion temperature plasma. Alpha particles travelling at 30 million meters per second away from the plasma will be deflected by the sphere exerting a thrust like force on the sphere. Some electrons will eventually crash into the sphere which requires a continuous supply of electrons to the plasma.
If the alpha partuckes are traveling at 30 million meters per second, one gram of alpha particles per second would equal an acceleration of one meter per second per second of a 30 ton ship or about one tenth of the speed of light in one year.
The inside of the sphere would contain the space ship. The surface facing the plasma point covered in solar panels would hopefully extract enough energy to power the ship.
You should practice your idea in the real world. I like that great motivation
This thing is awesome
Hi John that was a great 👍 video of your video on obital air craft and yes 👍 it would get mistaken for a UFO pity you couldn’t go to the moon 🌙 or mars maybe David 🚀👌🇬🇧❤️👍
How can I start building my own aircraft without joining the military and without going to expensive college to do learn and to build.
If the Orbital Ascender could retreive Hubble, could it also aid in reducing Space Debris?
i have dreamed of this for 20 years. wish i could be a part of it as i have came up with many ideas myself about this concept. just saying this could be the future of transportation and even shipping freight around the world and in space with a minimal cost for upkeep and carbon footprint, clean renewable safe cheep that's what we all need.
thank you for your hard work to help save our planet.
what about space debri?
At what max altitude are you estimating that this airship should be buoyant without propulsion?
I imagine between 25 and 30 km? That would be enough to keep the hydrogen on the ship without tearing up the envelope when it reach space? I imagine it would, because the ship has to be also strong enough to keep its shape.
I love this approach, even if it is just focused on trying to maximize efficiency over propellant to orbit (which in this case is almost zero depending how much abrasion engines receive on firing) instead on total system cost.
The highest a balloon has gone is over 57 km.
cool stuff, no jokes
It seems reminiscent of a coupla bicycle mechanics who didn't listen to critics
I love it!
Maybe it was seen over Phoenix AZ , Star Trek hear we come!
damn, this is really cool. I hope this gets funded by bigger players
Oh boy here we go! Arizona lights?
You have earned a new subscriber John! ( academic background - Aerospace & Astronautical Engineering )
Can't wait to find out more!!
Sincerely - resh
The man's a menace! Just kidding, thank you.
The colloquially known TR6 Telos works the same does it not.
The foil should withstand Mach 25 at 100 km altitude for the whole thing to work. I'd say bring a smaller scale model with a rocket at 100km --- inflate it there and then test at which velocity at which altitude it breaks. At higher latitudes the speed to go with the sun for always having light is subsonic. Probably a way to skip batteries.
Hmmm...
Could this be run as a ramscoop, dipping into the atmosphere from space, inhale, climb and give the gas to an orbiting statuon?
Well, this certainly explains a number of UFO sightings in recent times.
A giant, hypersonic blimp? Add some anti-gravity drives, and it might fly. The source of di-lithium for the flux capacitors could be problematic; nearest source exists light years away.
The Phoenix lights came from earth after all
Oh look, the Alien craft that was reverse engineered is finally hitting the public.
It's a hot air balloon on steroids bro..😂
@@chriscordray8572"Weather balloon" on steroids.
So basically it's a space blimp. 🚀
If an orbital craft were large enough, could it reenter the atmosphere at a slow enough speed to not require extreme heat shielding?
That's the idea.
How are you dealing with highly reactive species found at ULEO? If this plans to spend any time at very low orbits, many types of fabric and plastic materials will be eaten away by these reactive species.
these engines remind me of star trek impluse drive
Brilliant idea. What's the estimated cost to orbit? Do you view this as competition to Elon Musk's Starship?
How do you bring it back to earth??
So that's what I saw at 3 am 10 years ago over Mount Lassen, California. I thought I was hallucinating or dreamed it because no one else was around to see it.
I would not mind if he does the math for us in a video. I watched this video and it still feels like "you gotta believe" but I think it should have that effect. I guess physics doesn't allow to scale it down to some more moderate sizes.
Frankly while v shape a.twist the idea has been around since before the first maned flight by Gagarin in the 50s ( in fact one of the first books I ever read was about a bunch of teenagers who accidentally find and fly off in one and their adventures trying to get home )
If you have to get up to about 7 kilometers per second to reach escape velocity and the solar energy system can get it up to 4 km per second in very thin air, it would not take a very big tank of liquid air to get it up the rest of the way. If the ship weighs 10 tons, and the exhaust is moving at 3000 meters per second, it would take about ten tons of liquid air. But it would take a lot less than that since the compressor on the front of the ship is still gathering air. If the air is a thousand times thinner and the ship is moving 4000 m/s it would gather maybe 4 kg of air per second or a ton about every four minutes. If for every ton, the ship goes 300 m/sec faster, it might take about an hour to get up to the escape velocity around 7 km/sec. The faster it goes, it seems like it would take less lift because the Earth is falling away faster. It does seem like it would take a lot less than ten tons of liquid air to reach escape velocity.
If the ship had huge fold out mirrored foil surfaces that folded out once the ship escaped the atmosphere, a ten kilometer area surface focusing the sun onto the high temperature concentrated focal area of solar cells, with a hundred billion watts of solar energy, it might take maybe three years to get up to one tenth the speed of light.
This looks a lot like the UFO that was seen over Phoenix back in the 90's.
2:17 See those bladders, consider a rail guns coil/s but not tethered, and rather than a single main Mass having
several of those bladders acting as the main mass by phase switching their respective electromagnetic fields,
now it won't be able to reach warp1 Err-Light Speed, but the point is, once it gets to max Velocity near to no
energy is required to maintain Max velocity..
Phoenix Triangles were colossal, slow and noiseless - not these shockwave engines 30 years later.
I dont see why it has to be so large. Multiple smaller flights could get the stuff up.
If the upper atmosphere is hot light gasses would vacuum
filled electrostaticly volumized in wing boyancy chambers be appropriate?
Aloha
great ! we can "fly" to out space and back . I hope to watch "Interstellar" on board .
Accelerating to orbit takes a week. I hope you brought more than one movie.
This is really H3 ; drops Tungsten rods,shoots satellites with LASERs, and uses Ultra sonic soundwaves to interfere with Human health
I believe the TR6 uses vacuum rather than lifting gas. It is a lot more efficient way to lighter than air craft via vacuum, and due to the fact pressure decreases as altitude increases you have no problem with flight ceiling. Although it is harder to engineer than using lifting gas it seems like a superior solution.
Clever. Needs funding.
The CARGO bay Function is good fixed however with varied CARGO....adjustable weight is likely.......nice but expensive,weighty.....and torsionally demanding....but always torsional reinforcement is always wished during weather demands or maneuvers requiring reliability and safety......as every flight and payload and route always has..temps..pressure...and weathering flex versus stern designs.
MEMBA....complex is created new...simplicity is learned by experience.
Einstein.audie Murphy's.gilda.
If you could build a flying prototype with only 2- 10 meter cubes of cargo space you would rival Elon Musk’s Starship in cargo capacity. Don’t get me wrong. I love the mile long version but in the meantime you could make money putting even small objects into orbit. 100 gallon tanks of RP1 or LOX for example. There are literally tons of cargo ready for orbit. Go get your money. Also the Space Shuttle cockpit is proven. Why reinvent that. For your manned missions.
1km wide! Could such a project be scalable to larger sizes to the point of becoming a true space "aircraft carrier"? Capable of carrying rockets or swarms of larger ships to reach space cheaply and safely?
It's basically a sci-fi ship that floats and flies into space. But without antigravity, but gas. It's incredible.
I have questions along the lines of...how long from liftoff to clearing 45000 ft. (commercial and military aviation.) How many crew, and why manned, considering the weight involved, time constraints imposed...etc.
What if you could incorporate this technology with the I Thin finfilm microwave Technology For orbital solar grids to microwave transfer back to earth , What if you could actually put up There are a robble grids with us by infusing the technologies in some way , Maybe send energy to it too with microwave ground stations Just food for thought , I mean, It's not like I was the 14-year-old.kid how designed the air fram for the b2
What a great solution for transporting bulk fuel to space. And hardened, thick sections of super tough long range spacecraft. So many other uses!
So wait, you’re referring to actually inducing an arc plasma on the front in order to break the shock wave formed on the leading edge and thus reducing drag?? That’s amazing! I would have never thought of that! It’s still not clear to me precisely how this would work so I’ll definitely be looking into it now. Can you tell me, would you be using like a capacitance-like device along the leading edge, using the air gap as an insulator between a pod. and neg. linear electrodes in order to generate the plasma? Also, how would you keep the plasma from eroding the material of the leading edge over time?? Or is that one of the unknowns??
Edit: I have so many questions! I really wish I woulf have followed my passions as a kid and done well enough in school to be doing exactly this right now…😔
March 13th 1997 Phoenix Arizona. Is anybody making this connection? Apparently there's a lot of educated people out there cuz I've been reading the comments and everybody has the same thought I have.
Seven pieces excellent, look into Arkbird . From Ace Combat 5. And yours will be bigger?. . Retrieveing hubble?. . .Now I'm excited. . .
I love the counter-intuitive idea of (effectively) floating to orbit, but I wonder if JP Aerospace shouldn't give more attention to what could be done in the upper atmosphere itself, particularly in the way of renewable energy. Up above the clouds and most of the atmosphere, and without needing a large ground footprint, solar power (delivered to the ground as microwaves, in the way proposed for satellite solar power) would have the great advantage of complete reliability over ground-based solar. It should also be possible to build floating wind turbines, taking advantage of differences in wind-speed at different altitudes. I lack the expertise to assess whether such ideas are actually feasible, but is anyone at JP Aerospace considering them?
so this what was responsible for all those triangular silhouettes reported as ufo sightings?
I joke but looking at the test article photos, I doubt this program is responsible since only the h1 fits the silhouette and isn't built yet. So let's get to details. What's the payload capacity projected to be? What materials are being used to prevent over expansion in the upper atmosphere and beyond? I would assume some outer shell made of a non-stretch fabric goes around the material that holds the air to keep the shape you want? You said the frame is inflatable, how is that expected to hold it's shape while carrying weight in different areas?
You don't mention how long you can run the hybrid rocket / plasma engines. How much fuel can you bring with ? How much fuel do the engines use per hour? Radiative heat will be an issue also. Can you run the hybrid engines in plasma mode only?
Thank you for developing high specific impulse high thrust and light weight engines for applications in the extreme upper atmosphere.
Thin atmosphere aerospace is an exciting field which should be pioneered by the broad stroke creative enthusiasm of many people first.
The engines might make stationary high altitude in the rarefied atmosphere platforms feasible. This would provide low latency easy to work on communication nodes.
Maybe helium could be mined from the extreme altitude part of the atmospnhere.
Another use would be high altitude geoengineering stations.
Events anywhere on earth could be moniterd from stationary mild weather outposts.
Thank you for your contributions towards advancing civilization.
Aloha
I saw a different unit fly over Oklahoma a few years back. Its a hard sided blimp isn't it. Atmospheric lift and buoyancy. Definitely a test unit what we saw flying over Oklahoma years ago.
a lighter-than-air craft built to make the leap from relatively slow progression lifting through upper atmosphere, to orbital velocity, represents a staggering acceleration in a short distance. even rockets with their most powerful sprint nearly vertical, start accelerating on the ground and do not cease acceleration until they are in orbit. and this craft made of fabric is expected to accomplish this in about 10 miles?
you do know orbit is not simply a matter of attaining height, it's a matter of velocity.
if this type of hybrid airship-spaceplane lift body was feasible, it would have already been done in the 1970's. Any space agency with competent physicists wouldn't let this design launch out of a brainstorm session, it would not even warrant a model