A low cost alternative for satellites- tethered ultra-high altitude balloons

Abstract

Geostationary and geosynchronous satellites have a wide area of application in present day technology. The main drawback for the wider usage of such satellites is their high cost of launching into their orbit. As alternatives to conventional rocket launching, launching by high muzzle speed guns or by electric railguns have been proposed. However, it is hereby advocated that aerostats, stratospheric or mesospheric balloons tethered to a fixed point on the earth can also be used to fulfil the same tasks within a limited area of coverage. However, it is possible to widen the area of coverage by using a constellation of such balloons, presumably at a fraction of the cost of satellite launching. Presently, aerostats at about a few kilometers height are being used for a number of purposes, including border monitoring. The idea of tethered balloons reaching the lower parts of the stratosphere has been studied in 1960's for atmospheric research and successful results from prototype balloons have been obtained. The main problem related to high altitude aerostats has been found that extreme drifting loads are being induced by high altitude winds during the ascent (launching) and descent (recovery) phases. In the light of development of new high performance materials, as well as the development of superpressure balloons, it is now proposed to reconsider the same concept as a platform for high altitude devices used for communications, media broadcasting, environmental monitoring via optical or SAR imagery, monitoring for border security and illegal trafficking. Also, the possibility of two stage launching, ie, launching an aerostat from a high altitude airship shall be addressed. It is considered that the most convenient altitude for such aerostats is the stratopause region, with pressures at the order of 1 hPa pressure or 48 000-50 000 meters above the sea level.

Forced Convection Heat Transfer for Stratospheric Airship Involved Flight State

“…where e ∈ [2,6] and α ∈ [0 • , 20 • ]. According to the above analysis, the forced convection heat transfer for stratospheric airship involved flight state can be calculated by the following empirical correlation Nu = 0.0161KRe 0.8543 e −0.0454 (9) The correctness of Formula (9) is likewise validated, and the results are listed in Table 5.…”

“…A stratospheric airship is a type of aircraft that takes off by buoyancy. Compared with other aerostats, the stratospheric airship has its unique advantages and is widely used in civil fields such as satellite communications, meteorological measurements, and military fields such as surveillance and defense [1][2][3].…”

A method for establishing a long duration, stratospheric platform for astronomical research

“…Several papers concerning the feasibility and flight properties of a tethered aerostat at altitudes around 20 km have appeared recently. These include a study of a sea-anchored stratospheric, long duration balloon [2], the construction, launch and operation of tethered stratospheric balloons as alternatives for satellites [4,26], and investigations of the dynamic response for a high altitude tethered balloon aerostat and tether line to winds and their effects on payload pointing stability [1,18].…”

“…As is done for low altitude aerostats, most high-altitude tethered airship models have the tether attached to a ground-based winch which must be operated so as to limit the tension on the tether below its minimum breaking strength. Despite a number of articles discussing this approach [1,2,4,6,26], the only partially successful series Fig. 1 Sketch of the concept for a stratospheric, station-keeping LTA science platform using naturally occurring East-West wind shear in the lower stratosphere.…”

The design of the valve controller on stratospheric airship based on wireless sensor network

“…With the aid of stratospheric stable weather conditions and good electromagnetic characteristics, the stratosphere airship platform has broad prospects and development potential in communications, remote sensing, early warning, etc [1]- [5]. As stratospheric airship capsules are usually larger, which consist of multiple primary airbags, multiple balloonets and an empennage, so the number of valves is large and they are dispersive, far away from each other.…”