Rocket Man Blog: It's Not Your (Great Grand) Fathers Airship (Two): "The HAA is going to be 25 times larger the Goodyear Blimp. The prototype airship will be about 500 feet long, 160 feet in diameter and have a volume of 5.2 million cubic feet
That is the length of 1 2/3 footballs fields, or almost 1/10 of a mile and a volume of almost 39 million gallons. In short, these things are going to be enormous. The reason they are going to be so big is because their mission is pretty demanding.
[S]ustained operations for one month at 65,000 feet while providing 10 kilowatts of power to a 4,000-pound payload. Additionally, the HAA prototype will demonstrate station-keeping and autonomous flight control capabilities.
The production HAA’s will probably be designed to fly at 100,000 ft and operate autonomously for a year over both the United States and hot spots like Iraq. The current plan is for them to compliment both satellite and airplane surveillance and an initial order of at least 22 units is currently projected."
That is the length of 1 2/3 footballs fields, or almost 1/10 of a mile and a volume of almost 39 million gallons. In short, these things are going to be enormous. The reason they are going to be so big is because their mission is pretty demanding.
[S]ustained operations for one month at 65,000 feet while providing 10 kilowatts of power to a 4,000-pound payload. Additionally, the HAA prototype will demonstrate station-keeping and autonomous flight control capabilities.
The production HAA’s will probably be designed to fly at 100,000 ft and operate autonomously for a year over both the United States and hot spots like Iraq. The current plan is for them to compliment both satellite and airplane surveillance and an initial order of at least 22 units is currently projected."
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