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Comments: 295 +- 19th Century Airship Technology for Port Security on Wednesday October 13 2004, @06:47PM
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samzenpus
on Wednesday October 13 2004, @06:47PM
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
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fenimor writes "Airships - known today mainly for advertising flyovers at football games - are the core of a new coastal surveillance system in development for the the U.S. Department of Defense. These
stationary platforms 25 times the size of a Goodyear blimp will be equipped with an array of cutting-edge equipment for remote sensing, communications, and risk analysis, providing surveillance coverage over a surface area of 500,000 square miles from an altitude of 70,000 feet."
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Almost as good as Anatidocphobia (Score:5, Informative)
Currently the USCG employes a pair of blimps "Fat Albert" [cruisingguide.com] on Cudjoe Key [boonedocks.net] to watch for dope smugglers, air traffic, etc.
Ob: SovietRussia: For Soviet Russia YOU spy on the blimp!
Something new to worry about.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Cheaper Solutions (Score:5, Informative)
The big problem with conventional radar is that it only works in line-of-site, but Raytheon's SWR-503 Surface Wave Radar [raytheon.ca] uses high-frequency radar waves that "wrap" around the curvature of the earth. The system has been proven to detect and track aircraft, surface vessels and icebergs out to 500 km from the shore in a sector of up to 120 degrees. Suspicious objects can be investigated by satellite, surface ship, patrol aircraft or very cheaply & covertly via unmanned drone [dreo.dnd.ca].
Canada plans to install an array of radar installations along the East Coast in order to provide a seamless picture of all maritime activity occuring in the country's economic zone. Similar research is being carried out in the US, Australia and other countries. This seems like a much more effective use of resources than a massive blimp installation
Parent
Re:Cheaper Solutions (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Cheaper Solutions (Score:3, Informative)
Manufacturers claim it can:
- AMS [amsjv.com] says that their system can track small high-speed craft [amsjv.com].
- Raytheon claims that it has proof-of-concept that their system can detect "go-fast boats, fishing boats, large support vessels, rigid hull inflatable boats, jet skis, as well
Or, you could read the article before posting (Score:3, Informative)
Duh. (Score:5, Funny)
As long as.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that satellite photo of the 9/11 ground zero area that could show vehicles and people? Think that's the best the government has
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, NORAD tracking data includes classified satellite orbits.
Think again (Score:3, Insightful)
Will Angelina Jolie be commanding one of these (Score:4, Funny)
Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:3, Funny)
Blackmail.
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the communist part...er... terrorist?
massive innefficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:massive innefficiency (Score:3, Informative)
Sell aluminum futures! (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, the tinfoil protects them from the invisible mind control lasers, but the reflected solar radiation just makes them easier to target from the air with the onboard plasma cannons.
Repairs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, what if it gets punctured or damaged while at 70,000 feet? Will there be an immediate action plan to send up a replacement? As it's unmanned, I guess this means that every little defect requires a ground-based overhaul?
Personally, I don't see it working at the moment.
Ever heard of hot spares? (Score:3, Insightful)
No problems that wouldn't be issues with any other technique in use (satellite, helicopter, airplane, etc.)
Re:Ever heard of hot spares? (Score:3, Interesting)
To reiterate my po
Re:Repairs? (Score:3, Informative)
The radiation levels up there are also substantially higher than on the ground. Domestic air crews don't fly much about 35,000 feet, but still get enough cosmic rays and other
Mr Smithers! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mr Smithers! (Score:3, Informative)
Blimps are go, sir.
Finally I can sleep soundly (Score:5, Funny)
Pentagon Hot Air (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pentagon Hot Air (Score:3, Insightful)
This money and Defense management would be much better spent infiltrating terrorists with spies, cutting their financial, political and media sponsors, and investing in democratizing the tyrannies that pressure the populations from which they recruit.
That sounds all well in good. But here's the reality of the situation:
I haven't seen this mentioned... (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Even fighter jets have trouble exceeding 50-60 thousand feet IIRC. Only specialized aircraft (Scaled's White Knight is one such example) can reach these altitudes.
Parent
Re:I haven't seen this mentioned... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ g ro und/m2-50cal.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/g ro und/m82.htm
Maximum effective range on equipment-sized targets: 1800 meters
Now, in the United States, a 50 caliber sniper rifle isn't a "conventional arm". It's a special application rifle used in the military and by a very small special core of long distance shooters.
In the Uni
Re:I haven't seen this mentioned... (Score:5, Funny)
Gravity.
It has been called an "unforgiving motherfucker" by the walker-bound elderly, but the fact is, only gravity can protect our prescious airships from the terrorists who seek to destroy our way of life.
Let's suppose you've got a nice powerful 50 cal that fires at 2000 feet per second.
physics [ucsd.edu] tells us that it'll take 2000 feet per second / 32 feet per second per second = 62.5 seconds to reach it's max height.
Then we can figure out how high that is with this equation:
distance = initial speed * time - ( 1/2 ) * acceleration * time^2
2000 * 62.5 - 0.5 * 32 * 62.5^2
125000 - 62500
== 62500
So your bullet will turn around roughly a mile short of the target.
Parent
Re:I haven't seen this mentioned... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Not completely new (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, if you check the north Florida (Jacksonville sectional) aviation chart there's an obstacle along the west coast of the state, a border observation balloon at the "bend" between the peninsula of Florida and the pan handle. It has been used for years to monitor the Florida coast against smuggling from the Gulf of Mexico.
What looks different about this program is that the "balloons" will move at a very high altitude. It's unclear to me why stationary stations aren't sufficient for border monitoring, unless you want to monitor activity by all sorts of people in the interior of the country.
It does give them another excuse for UFO debunking though.
Airships to orbit (Score:3, Interesting)
Port security, eh? (Score:3, Funny)
They could also be good for astronomy (Score:5, Insightful)
As an aside - the article also discusses "Terahertz imaging." One terahertz corresponds to wavelength of about 0.3 mm or 300 microns - extreme IR, or short sub-millimetre, depending on your point of view.
Starcraft (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, had to be said.
And what exactly will they be able to see?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And what exactly will they be able to see?? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:And what exactly will they be able to see?? (Score:3)
The "Blimp for Security" concept is already here. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Terrorism (Score:5, Funny)
If a terrorist has the know-how to build an air rifle that has a range of 14 to 16 miles then he's probably going to be going after some other targets.
I for one welcome our new blimp-borne overlords (There! I had to say it!).
Parent
Re:Terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's start designing a really good airgun. Or actually describe something which already exists.
First let's remember that you can only accelerate something via gas pressure to the speed of the gas mollecules themselves. Any faster, and the gas will literally be left behind.
So we'll want to maximize the velocity of those mollecules. The energy of one of those little buggers depends on temperature. But that's not our ticket. Our ticket is noting that at the same energy (hence temperature) the less mass you have, the more velocity is needed to achive that energy.
Hence, you'll want a very lightweight gas. Hydrogen or helium will do just nicely. So we'll build a hydrogen gas gun.
Now to compress the helium. Well, have the airgun's barrel, which is a thin tube. We'll also have a much larger tube with a piston to compress the gas.
Think: a syringe. We push the piston in the large syringe body, to shoot a tiny sting through the tubular needle. Of course, at a much larger scale.
We'll also need to push the piston really hard, to create a lot of pressure. An explosion will do that just nicely.
It's really much like a conventional gun with a twist. Instead of the (relatively) heavy gasses from the explosion directly pushing the projectile, we compress hydrogen with them and the hydrogen pushes the projectile.
It's a very large device and very much a one shot gun, because reloading it takes ages. As such fairly useless against either ground targets or aircraft. (Against aircraft you really want something which sprays a lot of bullets.)
It also accelerates a dart to miles per second velocities. Theoretically, you could shoot at a sattellite in low orbit with it, except you would need to aim very very well. However, to punch a hole through a huge stationary blimp, it's perfect.
It's also low tech. A lot lower tech than rail guns. Any third world country could build one, if they wanted to. Heck, theoretically you could build one in your back yard. (But in practice the police would want to know about all those explosives you're buying.)
Until now, well, there was no problem for which it would be a solution. Now those blimps are just the problem for it.
Parent
Re:Hell of an air rifle.. (Score:3, Informative)
Do a blimp search at http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/query.asp and you can see that since 1962, there have only been 23 accidents in the US and only 2 of them have been fatal. These things are well nigh indestructible.
Re:Hell of an air rifle.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You *ARE* a redneck.
I'm sure they wouldn't use hydrogen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm sure they wouldn't use hydrogen (Score:5, Informative)
You're right that helium escapes into space, at the surface temperature of the Earth, helium atoms have escape velocity (or close enough to it, accounting for the Maxwellian velocity distribution). So unearthed helium eventually escapes away from the planet. Hydrogen does as well, but I believe all other gases are heavy enough to remain bound.
I work in cryogenics here in the USA, and we routinely let helium gas escape into the air (eg, when inserting a room-temperature insert into a dewar of liquid helium). In Europe, from what I understand, most labs collect this boiled-off helium gas, and somewhere else they can re-liquefy it. Don't know what Canada, South America, Asia, or other places do, though.
One of my professors was explaining why we don't recycle the helium here in the USA. He said this is because helium is typically 'mined' at the same time as companies dig for oil and natural gas. Thats where the large helium deposits are found. The market for helium is so small that petroleum companies want to just let the helium gas escape, it's not worth their time to collect/purify/sell it.
The NSF, however, doesn't want this to happen (environmental issues and maybe to capture more of the rare He3 too), and was able to influence American-based petrol companies to collect and sell the helium instead of wasting it. In exchange the oil companies need to have enough of a helium market to do this, so that's why Helium gas is typically not recycled in the USA, so the oil companies will sell it instead of let it go.
As one side note - you need to use alot of He gas to make recycling it cost effective, so only a few institutions in the USA recycle He. In Europe the density of such labs is much higher, so it's easier for Europeans to recycle this. Not sure if He is recycled in South America or Asia, though.
So unless my professor is entirely bullshitting, the problem stems not only from many labs not recycling He, but from global petrol companies letting the He gas free instead of capturing it themselves. But as to your original question, there shouldn't be significant amounts of helium used in the airships compared to global supply.
Parent
Re:Boom!? (Score:5, Interesting)
In those days, essentially all the helium in the world came from a hole in the ground outside Amarillo, Texas. It sits atop a big deposit of alpha-emitting ores, and every alpha particle sooner or later picks up two electrons, which makes it a helium atom. Helium was a big contributor to the economic development of the Texas Panhandle, which is why Amarillo is the only city with a monument to an element.
rj
Parent
Re:Weather? (Score:3, Informative)
Your big thunderheads in the Midwest "anvil" out at about 40-50,000 feet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropopause
Re:What about space? (Score:4, Informative)
I would guess that blimps could loiter overn an area for a really long time compared to sats. Plus, you could upgrade them over time, something you can't do with satellites.
Parent
Yes, that's millimeter-wave with 500-mile range (Score:3, Interesting)