JP Aerospace is an American company that aims to achieve affordable access to space. Their main activities include high-atmospheric lighter-than-air flights carrying cameras or miniature experiments called PongSats and minicubes. They are also engaged in an Airship to Orbit project. JP Aerospace was founded by John Marchel Powell, familiarly known as "JP", with Michael Stucky and Scott Mayo. JP Aerospace specializes in lighter-than-air flight, with the stated aim of achieving cheap access to space.Powell, John M. (2005). ''Floating to Space: The Airship to Orbit Program'', Apogee Books Space Series. An early

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...

space launch attempt using a

rockoon A rockoon (from ''rocket'' and ''balloon'') is a solid fuel sounding rocket that, rather than being immediately lit while on the ground, is first carried into the upper atmosphere by a gas-filled balloon, then separated from the balloon and ign ...

(balloon-launched high power rocket) at the

Black Rock Desert __NOTOC__ The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe eco-region) of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a s ...

in northwestern Nevada in May 1999 was unsuccessful. The event was covered by CNN. The CATS Prize expired without being awarded in November 2000. In the early 21st century they developed a V-shaped high-altitude airship under a U.S. Air Force initiative to provide the rapid launch of battlefield communication and monitoring systems.Alan Boyle (2004)
Airship groomed for flight to edge of space
''MSNBC''

Balloon flights

Since then, JP Aerospace has launched several balloons into the upper atmosphere, carrying mixed payloads for research students and media companies. Media clients have included

The Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chann ...

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

, and

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...

's 2009 television commercial '' Space Chair''. In 2011, a twin-balloon utility airship is claimed to have set an altitude record of 95,085 feet (ca. 28,982 m) on October 22, 2011. A PongSat is a small experiment housed in a

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

or ping-pong ball. A MiniCube is slightly larger. JP Aerospace claim to have carried many hundreds or thousands of student PongSat projects to a near-space environment at low cost. The flights are typically

crowdfunded Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance. In 2015, over was rais ...

. Commercial flights, typically carrying cameras, have been made for a number of media organizations.

Airships

JP Aerospace obtained a contract for development of military communication and surveillance airships designed to hover over battlefields at altitudes too high for conventional anti-aircraft systems. A prototype was completed in 2005 but was damaged while being prepared for flight and the contract was ended. Other vehicles are still under development, and JP aerospace has subsequently flown several aerostats as testbeds for ATO hardware and techniques. The JP Aerospace Twin Balloons Airship is an unmanned airship comprising two balloon envelopes side by side, with twin electric-powered propellers mounted midway along the connecting boom. On October 22, 2011 it is claimed to have flown to 95,085 feet (ca. 28,982 m), nearly 4 miles higher than any airship before.

Airship to Orbit project

JP Aerospace are developing technology intended to launch airships into orbit. The proposed system employs three separate airship stages to reach orbit. Multiple vehicles are needed because an airship made strong enough to survive the dense and turbulent lower atmosphere would be too small and heavy to lift payloads high enough. An orbital airship must be much larger and with thinner walls to maintain its

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is an upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus the pr ...

-to-

weight In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity. Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar quan ...

ratio. The three stages are; the Ascender ground launcher, the Dark Sky permanent sky station, and the Orbital Ascender spacecraft.JP Aerospace
Airship to Orbit Handout
. ''Airship to Orbit - Cheap, Bulk, Safe Access to Space'' A fourth airship design similar to the record-breaking Tandem but based on air-filled beams will be required for the assembly of Dark Sky Station. Because of the thin atmosphere at such high altitudes, to carry a useful payload very large volume and/or very strong but lightweight materials are required. The ISAS BU60-1 scientific balloon holds the world altitude record for an unmanned balloon as of 2009, at 53.0 km. The average density of BU60-1 over its gross volume was 0.00066 kg per cubic meter. To fly higher, this must be significantly improved.

Ascender

The Ascender airship would operate between the ground and the Dark Sky Station at 140,000 feet (ca. 42,672 m). A long, V-shaped planform with an

airfoil An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turbine. ...

profile would provide aerodynamic lift to supplement the airship's inherent buoyancy, with the craft driven by propellers designed to operate in a near vacuum. The Ascender would be larger than any airship yet built, but would be dwarfed by the later stages. It would be operated by a crew of three. JP aerospace has developed two large-scale test models, the Ascender 90 and the Ascender 175. The number denotes the length of the airship in feet (ca. 27.4 m and 53.3 m). More recent airships have reverted to being named in sequence.

Dark Sky Station

The Dark Sky Station would be a permanent floating structure, remaining at 140,000 feet (ca. 42,672 m). It provides an intermediate stage allowing transfer of cargo or personnel between the Ascender stage and the orbital stage. It would also serve as the construction facility for the orbital component, which would be too fragile to travel lower. The station could also be used as a relay station for telecommunications due to its high altitude.

Orbital Ascender

The Orbital Ascender airship would be the final flight stage from the station to orbit.David Kushner
Space Invaders
''IEEE Spectrum'' It would initially rise as a lighter-than-air craft from the station at 140,000 feet to 180,000 feet (ca. 42,672 m to 54,864 m). The orbiter would have to be over a mile long to gain enough buoyancy. At 180,000 ft it would accelerate forwards using lightweight, low power

ion propulsion An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. It creates thrust by accelerating ions using electricity. An ion thruster ionizes a neutral gas by extracting some electrons out of a ...

, enabling it to rise further with additional aerodynamic

lift Lift or LIFT may refer to: Physical devices * Elevator, or lift, a device used for raising and lowering people or goods ** Paternoster lift, a type of lift using a continuous chain of cars which do not stop ** Patient lift, or Hoyer lift, mobile ...

. This would be powered by solar panels which cover most of the upper surface of the airship. The V-shaped planform and

profile would allow

hypersonic In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since ind ...

flight by 200,000 feet, increasing to

orbital speed In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter or, if one body is much more mass ...

(above Mach 20).Boyle, A. “Airship groomed for flight to edge of space” nbcnews.com May 21, 2004
/ref> If hit by a meteorite or space debris, this would have little effect because the inner cells are "zero pressure balloons" saying "There is no difference in pressure to create a bursting force. All a meteorite would do is to make a hole. The gas would leak out staggeringly slowly..." (Page 112). They also say (page 109) that ""By losing velocity before it reaches the lower thicker atmosphere, the reentry temperatures are radically lower.... This makes reentry as safe as the climb to orbit". The skin would be made of nylon rip-stop polyethylene (page 111). On re-entry the orbital airship slows down at a very high altitude because it has such low mass with such a large cross section presented to the atmosphere (a low ballistic coefficient).

References

External links

JP Aerospace

Space Frontier Foundation CATS Prize

Official JP Aerospace Forum
* Stew Magnusson (2003)

''Space.com Space News, Imaginova Trade Publishing'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Jp Aerospace Space organizations Space program of the United States