![]() In Iraq and Afghanistan, the current threats to U.S. “It was basically to market that we had a technology that could go to that altitude,” Lawson says. In 2003, Colting sat inside one of his spheres with a pilot and took it to an altitude of 20,453 feet above Gull Lake in Alberta, Canada it was a record for airships. Because they don’t have noses, Colting’s spherical airships don’t have that problem. In an airship shaped like a cigar, elaborate steps have to be taken to keep the helium from accumulating in the nose and pushing that end of the craft up. It collects at the top of a container like an upside-down puddle, and it has a nasty habit of sliding around like liquid mercury. As the craft rises, the helium around the air bags expands, pressing on the bags and causing them to vent their air and shrink the expanding helium also keeps steady pressure on the ship’s hull. Modern airships accomplish the same thing by filling the void with air-filled bags, or ballonets, which can be adjusted in size by blowing air in or venting it out. Despite the empty space, airships like the Hindenburg kept their shapes with rigid supports. As an airship rises, the helium expands, so designers must leave plenty of space in the envelope, or hull. Decades of answering the question “Why spheres?” has made Colting adept at delivering an Airship 101 lesson.Īll airships, regardless of shape, get their lift by carrying a lighter-than-air gas, usually helium. To reduce atmospheric drag, most airships are shaped like cigars. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Colting persuaded Lawson to set up a company to manufacture and market his spheres for use in patrolling borders and other surveillance applications. In 1988, Colting founded 21st Century Airships in New Market, Ontario, Canada. Techsphere Systems was born the day Lawson got a call from Hokan Colting, a Swedish-born hot-air balloonist famous in the airship community for advocating spherical designs. All these scenarios envision important new missions for aviation’s historic underachievers. In the Arctic, where global warming is rendering ice roads unusable, the new vehicles would float drill equipment over the soggiest terrain. ![]() Others are working on craft that are not quite lighter than air: They would combine the lift of helium with the control capability of heavier-than-air vehicles like airplanes. Some companies are trying to develop an airship that can hover in the stratosphere for months at a time to spy on terrorist camps or spot truckloads of insurgents or cruise missiles in flight. Techsphere is one of a dozen or so companies that hope to find new applications for a technology that’s been around since the late 1700s, when the Montgolfier brothers in France made the first flights with lighter-than-air craft. (When on the ground, they can be deflated and folded up, so bad weather is no threat and storage is not a big deal.) Now the Army is funding improvements to make them potential spy platforms. Lawson is now the CEO of a small Columbus, Georgia company, Techsphere Systems International, that stitches sail material into spherical airships, which are maneuvered by swamp-boat propellers. He says he learned an important lesson about airships: “What you put on paper does not necessarily work in the real environment.” ![]() No one was hurt and Lawson did retrieve the craft, but it was a total loss. The remnants of Hurricane Opal blew through Atlanta, ripping Lawson’s lighter-than- air ship from its mooring and carrying it away. On a gloomy day in October 1995, the great nemesis of all airships rose up and dashed his spirit. ![]() “That little sucker would fly about 50 miles per hour,” Lawson recalls. His plan: Persuade Olympics officials to rent the craft for security surveillance. DURING THE PREPARATIONS for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, local entrepreneur Mike Lawson rounded up a group of investors, pooled $1 million, and bought a one-person, helium-filled airship.
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