BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. —A huge blimp called Cloud Lab is in the air searching for life in the clouds, and it has been hanging above Brevard County lately.
It is loaded with many experiments and a team of researchers on a mission to investigate all kinds of things, including how hurricanes form, how the climate it changing and how far up life can be found. . . . Read Complete Report
Photo: a rare sight. 6 Goodyear blimps flying in formation. SOURCE Goodyear’s Facebook page.
Blimps have been used for clandestine spying and surveillance for years. During the Civil WAR (the War of Northern Aggression), and even in the so-called “war on drugs.’ I saw one flying overhead while on a recent trip to the keys, I’m sure they were looking for drug boats. . . EDITOR
(CNN) — Don Hartsell knows his idea could be considered crazy.
“I thought this project was so large, so ambitious, that no one would take me seriously,” says the Texas resident and aircraft enthusiast. “In fact, I was concerned they would think I was insane.”
Hartsell is talking about his World Sky Race, which as conceived would be a grand global spectacle. If all goes according to plan, a fleet of airships will take off from London in 2014 and race each other around the world, watched by millions of spectators, before finishing six months later just outside of Paris.
The event is planned as a series of 18 back-to-back races that will circumnavigate the globe. Although the route isn’t finalized, the proposed path will take pilots over at least four continents and about 130 United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) World Heritage sites — among them the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty and the Palace of Versailles. . . . Read Complete Report
With the United States’ conflicts in the Arab world drawing to a close, the government is using some of the technology honed on battlefields overseas on the home front.
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. military will begin to test a 72-foot-long, unmanned surveillance blimp in southern Texas that could be used to spot drug traffickers and undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. via its border with Mexico. Read Complete Report
Photo: [June 1] “1863 Solomon Andrews flew his airship Aereon made the first of three flights over Perth Amboy, New Jersey. This was the first dirigible airship in history”. . . .Source
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL, Jul 19, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — World Surveillance Group Inc. WSGI +0.33% , a developer of lighter-than-air unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs”) and related technologies, today announced the intent to unveil its proprietary Blimp in a Box(TM) (“BIB”) system at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s (“AUVSI”) Unmanned Systems North America 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 6th – 9th. The BIB system is a compact, automated, self-contained aerostat platform that is intended to be mounted to the back of a standard vehicle. It is designed to provide real-time day/night high definition footage for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (“ISR”), detection of improvised explosive devices (“IEDs”), border security and other governmental and civilian uses . . . Read Complete Report
“The History of Ballooning, Blimps, and the Great Airships”
Over 500 scenes were gathered from old photos, vintage movie films and artwork to build a timeline of events. The documentary covers the 19th century experiments, the Civil War, the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp., WWI and WWII. Movie footage of the Gordon Bennet Balloon Races show the WJR Radio Balloon and other Michigan Balloon entries. 42 minutes plus historic previews. Available from www.michiganhistoryvideos.com
