Description:
Blimpy – a hybrid airship project demonstrator
Blimpy project combines numerous century-old ideas with the new ones on several levels – having a main focus on growing a new generation of technical engineers who would be not afraid to dream big.
Blimpy provides a platform with a challenging story behind it and is likely to encourage them to explore new technologies, philosophies, ideas and start thinking about our possibilities generally in a wider scope.
Overarching story of this particular project is to deliver a scaled down model of an Hydrogen hybrid airship, which would attract enough attention to allow a wider community to join and follow up on this concept to gradually reach a stage for launching a serious commercial start-up.
Project goals:
Envelope size: 16-24 m3
Box size: 6m x 3m x 2m
Operational time: 4 hrs
UAT beyond horizon operations
Distance covered: 40 km (return)
Utilize Hydrogen as a lifting gas
Altitude control through managed gas cells
Vectoring EDF thrusters as replacement for common rudders and elevators
Altitude and directional controls assistance through 360o EDF gimbals