French students build solar blimp
Students from French engineering schools and technical high schools have built a solar blimp that they unveiled at this years Paris Air Show. Later this summer, the students will fly the helium filled blimp over the English Chanel.
Project Sol’R was begun to show that a “complete self-sufficient airship free of CO2 emissions is not only a dream but a reality”. The project was headed by students at INSA Lyon and ESSEC Business School. The Nephelios, as the blimp has been named, flew at the Paris Air Show last month and is expected to cross the English Chanel soon, 100 years after Louis Bleriot crossed the Chanel.
Nephelios is 22 meters long (72 feet) and is composed of a nylon and polyethylene shell stretched over an aluminum frame. The blimp is 5.5 meters (18 feet) in diameter and is powered by 2.4 kilometers of flexible solar panels.
The solar panels will power a small motor that will power two big red propellers. The top speed is expected to be 25 mph, certainly not a speed demon but never the less able to cross the Chanel in less than an hour.
Lockheed Martin is working on solar airships for civilian and military uses. It’s airship will be over 500 feet in length and will carry a variety of electronic devices. Lockheed Martin’s solar air ships are being designed to fly above 60,000 feet. One of the initial focuses of Lockheed’s solar airships will be military surveillance.
Project Sol’R is focused entirely on proving the possibility of functional solar blimps. As Felix Hildenbrand, a worker on the project put it:
As we are a very peaceful people in France we could not imagine that our construction could ever have a military use,” Hildenbrand told Autopia. “In fact we don’t have any commercial interest right now. Our goal is just to show that it’s possible, and that’s what we are going to do [when we] cross the channel by the end of the summer.
As the old adage says,”everything old is new again.
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