JP Aerospace and the Airship to Orbit program

[Rakaydos]

So I just recently found that a website I thought had been defunct for a few years actually moved their updates to facebook, and the program is still alive and well. I haven't seen any sign of awareness of it here, though, so I thought I'd bring it up for discussion.

The biggest problem with space travel is taking that first step into orbit- between gravity and atmosphere, earth is one of the hardest celestial bodies in our solar system to lift off from, and one of the most expensive.

There have been various ideas for how to reduce the cost of getting to orbit, the most commonly known of which is the Clark Elevator. But JP aerospace is working on what I believe to be a much more practical option than dangling a cable from geosynch- instead of fighting atmo and gravity both, use one against the other.

The Airship to Orbit program is a tiered set of airships, each designed for a different level of the atmosphere. The Ascender takes cargo through the turbulent atmosphere near the surface to the edge of the atmosphere, almost entirely by buoyancy control- the mass of the cargo is almost irrelevant, except as it requires a larger gasbag that may be more difficult to control going through, for instance, the jet stream and other currents. Once at the edge of space (100,000 to 120,000 feet, I believe), it transfers cargo (by a dedicated high atmosphere rig they call the Dark Sky Station) to another airship- the Orbital Airship. Built at 100,000 feet and never intended to operate below that height, concerns of turbulence and gas pressure can be thrown out the window. A multi-kilometer aerodynamic lifting body filled with just enough hydrogen or helium to equalize the miniscule pressures at that altitude, the airship once again makes the mass of the cargo almost irrelevant.

When the orbital airship launches, it works something like this- it's propelled by high ISP, low thrust motors (they're testing MHD rigs now). As the airship moves, the huge gasbag interacts with the thin atmosphere, generating aerodynamic lift to carry the airship higher than buoyancy alone could manage. As the airship gets higher, the atmosphere thins, reducing drag and enabling the airship to go even faster, which loops back to more altitude and still more speed. After about a week, near orbital velocity is generating as much lift as the remaining atmosphere, and in a few more days, the airship is solidly in low earth orbit.

It's not fast, but compared to lifting into orbit aboard a stack of high explosive, it's incredibly cheap, reliable, and as reusable as a semi truck, able to conduct multiple launches and landings between routine maintenance.

That's the theory. Apparently the math checks out. All that remains are the engineering details- which the JP Aerospace team have been working out as they've got the funding to work on it. Their current projects are MHD testing, working out how the upper atmosphere rig will maneuver, and building a submarine to test life support and buoyancy control.

Oh, and while they're sending tests to the edge of space anyway, they rent advertizing space and set aside experimental payload volume to schools and colleges.

https://www.facebook.com/jpaerospace?sk=wall

http://jpaerospace.com/

Thoughts?

[Elthy]

I dont think that would work, hydrogen (or helium) loss would be a huge problem. Afaik the atoms are so small that they can escape nearly everywhere, especialy through a thin foil...

[Rakaydos]

Would that be a larger problem for a greater surface area, or greater radiation exposure? Blimps have been a thing since before WW1, and they've been working with high altitude weather baloons for most of their high altitude testing.

If it's a matter of materials, well, that's simply an engineering problem- if it requires you build it bigger, well, space is big- it's not like you need to park it anywhere.

[Elthy]

As i understand the upper airship should stay in the atmosphere for a long time. But they could lift up new hydrogen with every "launch", so that could be solved...

I dont think its that easy to "simply build it bigger" to lift heavy stuff. You have to think about stuff like load distribution and it has to be realy light...

[Rakaydos]

The structure does have to be light, but airships are one thing where the square cube law works FOR you as you scale up a vehical- by doubling the vehical's size, you square the building materials, but cube the displaced volume that floats the craft.

[Nuke]

i figure with nanotube and graphene based materials it might be possible to engineer and build the neccisary structures. hydrogen loss is manageable with regular refillings. it may be possible to replenish lost hydrogen from atmospheric compounds, though the question is if it can keep up with loss rates without being too heavy.

[Deathsoul097]

I have to say, I am dubious as to whether we could make this work, at least with modern technology. Give it ten or twenty years, and hoping Carbon Nanotubes work out better than Asbestos, this could well be a possibility. I guess it depends on what happens really. If this does work, I believe there will be three major factors that will limit or break it:

1) Depending on the cost of refilling the higher altitude balloon, the program may become defunct due to the resupply of Hydrogen/Helium being to expensive to maintain.

2) The Materials used to construct the balloons may be too costly to produce, or be to hard to maintain mechanically.

3) The materials themselves could end up being to weak or to costly to be used on a craft of such a scale at such an altitude.

(Or any combination of the three, of course.)

[Ralathon]

The main issue I see in these ideas is the sheer size of the thing and the necessity to maintain its shape. If you want the blimp to generate lift you need to keep the shape the same, so this means some kind of internal strutting. But that high up you need an absolutely staggeringly big bladder to support any amount of weight. This is the kind of combination that makes engineers cry themselves to sleep.

Not to mention that the high ISP engine is going to eat some serious electricity, which requires a big power source that can last for days. This means either covering the entire balloon in solar panels + batteries (to last the nightside) or having some kind of nuclear reactor on board. Either of these adds another large chunk of weight further complicating the earlier problems.

You can probably make it work and the math should check out else they wouldn't be trowing money at them. But I doubt they'll be used to lift heavy payloads for quite some time.

Another thing I'm worried about is the midair docking. You have 2 vehicles with poor maneuverability and massive airbladders and you need to transport significant amounts of cargo between the 2. How are you going to pull that off?

Edited February 3, 2014 by Ralathon

[Nuke]

as i understand it this thing will get up to orbital speed without actually leaving the thin upper atmosphere. id bet its some kind of atmospheric ion propulsion, like what you see on those ionocraft lifters, or one of those air purifiers, so this would eliminate the need to carry propellant (except for the upper stage).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft

lifters in particular are very light, its just a thin corona wire in front of a piece of foil called the collector. since graphene is conductive you could probibly have a conductive (graphene) leading edge of the wing with a corona wire (nanotubes/graphene) suspended in front of it on non conductive strakes. but the high voltage power supply is going to be big and require a lot of solar panels (probibly those experimental light flexable ones that you can epoxy into its skin). you could probibly do away with the hvdc power supply with the right solar arrangement (lots of cells in series). so you can build it so that the wing/gasbag is also the engine with the power plant being on top of it in the form of membrane solar panels. one structure to do it all and it should be pretty light for its size.

now you have added dangers of having high voltages on a hydrogen blimp in an oxygen atmosphere. helium would solve this at a cost of buoyancy. then im not sure how this is going to hold its form under the drag forces (atmospheric particles hitting it at orbital velocity would probibly shred it). let alone have enough thrust to maintain positive acceleration under said drag (especially using ionocraft propulsion). build it bigger you get more drag, but more buoyancy but probibly more thrust from extra solar panel area. it would take someone with better maths work ethic than me to figure out if its viable or not.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Nuke

[DerekL1963]

There have been various ideas for how to reduce the cost of getting to orbit, the most commonly known of which is the Clark Elevator. But JP aerospace is working on what I believe to be a much more practical option than dangling a cable from geosynch- instead of fighting atmo and gravity both, use one against the other.

Making things much more complicated does not strike me as a very effective way to reduce costs. Nor does adding more things to go wrong do much in the way of minimizing risks,

It's not fast, but compared to lifting into orbit aboard a stack of high explosive, it's incredibly cheap, reliable, and as reusable as a semi truck, able to conduct multiple launches and landings between routine maintenance.

I'm always amused by how people quote ad copy as if it were Wikipedia.

That's the theory. Apparently the math checks out. All that remains are the engineering details

No, the math doesn't check out, except for in JP Aerospace's ad copy. There's a lot of "and here magic happens" steps in their plan. The devil is in those details.

[Rakaydos]

Another thing I'm worried about is the midair docking. You have 2 vehicles with poor maneuverability and massive airbladders and you need to transport significant amounts of cargo between the 2. How are you going to pull that off?

As I understand it, they intend to use smaller high atmosphere rigs, shuttling the cargo over. I could be wrong though.

http://jpaerospace.com/Tandem/tandem.html

[AngelLestat]

I always liked this idea, but never believe too much on its feasibility.

Like many of here already pointed, the material is a big problem. Maybe we need to wait 10 or 20 years more to get some composite graphene materials to do the work. The only element that can go through graphene is water.. But not hidrogen or any other element. Besides the graphene strength-weight relation is something really needed to avoid big deformation due to height pressure (and payload) using hard reirforcement sewing to mantain the aerodinamyc shape.

The payload is not inrrelevant, This is not equal to more weight --> bigger bag. There are other design issues attached.

Then atmosphere is just a tiny obstacle to get orbit.. We need speed.. A lot of it.

So I dont understand very much what kind of propulsion mechanism JP want to use to get +8000 m/s.

[Nuke]

we dont really have the materials. we have a few forms of carbon which are theoretically very good. but we are just barely starting to figure out how to manufacture products from those. so this is years down the line. it might get side stepped by fusion rockets while we are waiting for lighter stronger composites.

[Rakaydos]

http://www.jpaerospace.com/2012-3_in_review.html

Shows a bunch of stuff they've been working on. Interesting even if you're a skeptic.

[AngelLestat]

I already saw that, but what relevance has with the thing that we are discussing here?

There are hundreds of helium or hidrogen ballons sent up there to take a picture, anybody can do it (if you want risk a camera), but this is far of prove if you can reach orbit with a hidrogen ballon spacecraft with high isp engine.

Also we need take into account that the atmophere base is not static, so what happen if you have your payload in one place and the atmospheric launch base is in a very different place.

[NASAFanboy]

NASA constructed the worlds largest weather balloon, and set it loose.

It flew up to 1,000KM before popping.

And thus, it is possible.

[Nibb31]

NASA constructed the worlds largest weather balloon, and set it loose.

It flew up to 1,000KM before popping.

And thus, it is possible.

Citation needed.

The current record seems to be 53km for a balloon launched in Japan. Not NASA, and not 1,000km. That would be twice the altitude of the ISS!

And of course, reaching orbit is about speed, not altitude. Unless you accelerate your balloon to 27000km/h, it will only come down, and none of these high-altitude balloons have enough payload to carry a rocket with 7500m/s of delta-V.

Edited February 11, 2014 by Nibb31

[Top8]

There is an interesting twist on their idea of dark sky stations: they may be economically viable for low altitude sats. A system of their stations and supply ships could be very interesting.

[Rakaydos]

Seems to be split, 2/3 toward revenue production, 1/3 toward R+D. The MHD thruster tests are pretty at least... and what's that, "Active Drag Reduction"? What's that about?

[Wahgineer]

So, this entire proposal is a super massive, super complicated form of the Rockoon?

[Rakaydos]

So, this entire proposal is a super massive, super complicated form of the Rockoon?

Kinda. Except they're trying to skip the solid rocket entirely with the final step, but even if that doesnt work, they can use the same low and mid level stuff they're working on on regular Rockoons.

[Rakaydos]

They FINALLY revised their explanetory PDF packet.

http://www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf

Now I'm curious what "Projected energy active Drag Reduction" means.

[dalekduster]

Now I'm curious what "Projected energy active Drag Reduction" means.

It seems to me that whatever could reduce drag would also reduce lift, and would also require more energy from somewhere. However, even if the final stage orbital ascender can achieve a true air speed that is a significant fraction of orbital velocity before it hits a "max q" barrier, it could be useful as a rocketoon solution. At 250,000 feet a true air speed of 3km/s or ~10000km/h would probably give you a heat stress < mach 4 at sea level, I think. That may be achievable, in which case the orbital ascender could be used as a sub-orbital rendezvous platform. A rocket powered craft can aerobrake down from orbit, pick up fuel and payload and accelerate back into orbit. Aerobrake will be relatively easy for a small light craft that only descends with at most the same payload it takes up, ie no fuel. In the case of a missed rendezvous, it could drop its payload and have enough shielding to fully deorbit for a surface landing.

I think at 250,000ft and 3k/ms, delta v budget for orbit would be about 5km/s. In that case a 1 ton craft with fuel and almost 1 ton payload would weigh about 6 tons fully fueled. This assumes LH2/L0X rocket with Isp 450, which is maybe a bit ambitious, but BlueOrigin are already done serious and successful research into affordable multiple firing LH2/LOX rockets, which should give an Isp well over 400 at 250,000 feet and higher. Hence, it seems that the maths might just stack up if the logistics can be realistically made to pay.

The thing is, that current research into flyback boosters and air launch rockets tends to suggest that it should be easier to make these systems work and be much cheaper than previous generation launch systems. That may be true but a viable space economy will require a lot of "dumb mass", much of which will be in the form of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon etc (probably at least 75%). Sending thousands of tons of that up to orbit from the surface, using rockets or even using skytrams or ram accelerators involves a certain amount of "violence" that tends to preclude 100% re-usability of these systems. Using airships to get to 250,000 ft and 3km/s doesn't seem like much of a gain for the logistical headache involved, but on reflection, I think it could be well worth it., and perhaps the only economically viable solution available any time soon. For a pipeline to space that can continually supply thousands of tons per year or more there is the possibility to harvest water and volatiles from the stratosphere and miss out the lower steps of the pipeline.

[Streetwind]

Great to see that there's already a thread on this, even though it's old. But fear not, this act of necromancy actually bears content!

John Powell of JP Aerospace did an interview on TMRO this past weekend (interview segment or full episode). I had never heard of this company before, and I really enjoyed learning about it. Crazy far out of the box thinking in everythng they do. Even if it ends up not working, I am already entertained and inspired by the mere thought of it.

For example, he described their engines as "chemical-electric hybrid linear accelerators". Wut? It's an engine with a solid fuel, and a liquid oxidizer, and an elongated electric plasma acceleration stage after the combustion chamber. Around 1000s specific impulse, but with much better thrust output than pure electric engines. How cool is that? It's the kind of mad scientist engineering that makes me grin really wide. And they're doing it in a shed, with material from the hardware store. Like, they built a miniature hypersonic wind tunnel out of a vacuum pump and some PVC tubes. It's the best kind of ingenuity. (That youtube channel has other videos of their goings-on, too.)

I really wish them the best of luck in their future endeavours!

Edited November 22, 2016 by Streetwind

[Jonfliesgoats]

1000km across the earth, not vertically.

On 2/11/2014 at 9:49 AM, NASAFanboy said:

NASA constructed the worlds largest weather balloon, and set it loose.

It flew up to 1,000KM before popping.

And thus, it is possible.