Windream One, the first airship to cross the atlantic in this century

The last transatlantic flight by an airship was around 1937, the crash of the Hindenburg put a sudden end to this era. Now more than 70 years later a new project is under development, called Windream One. It is financed and sponsored by Theolia, an independent European company producing 100% clean energy from wind power sources and others, like biomass or solar energy. The project was already announced on march 20th this year but we haven't yet had a chance to report about it. Now they have reached another milestone which lead us to report about it. The project consists of a team of twenty private and university researchers, technical and financial partners, all thanks to the inspiration, knowledge and daring of the project’s pilots – the creator behind the project Stéphane Rousson, well known in the LTA (lighter than air) industry for his Zeppy Project and the navigator-adventurer Peggy Bouchet, whose project expertise and experience include rowing solo across the Atlantic. The Windream One is a dirigible that is powered by the sun through solar power the wind and the sea using a unique technology called « chien de mer » (CDM). I could not yet figure out exactly how it works, but as soon as we find out we will report on it. Stéphane has started tests with the CDM just a few days ago, as is reported by gizmag. The article also contains some pictures of the Zeppy Blimp using the CDM.
The actual crossing flight of the Windream One is scheduled for 2008, right now the team has set up a camp at a former Naval Air Station on the French Mediterranean coast. Besides technical tests, Stéphane and Peggy go through survival and flight trainings, to be prepared for the great voyage.
We will continue to report on the progress of the project, if you want even more infos right now, check out these PDFs especially the press pack is very interesting since it gives you an overview about the whole project. They are in chronoloigcal order, the last one is the newest one.

• Press release : Official Launch of the Windream One project.
• Press pack : The WINDREAM ONE project
• A New Stage for the THEOLIA-Windream One Team

Is there anything that you would like to know in particular? Anything that we should investigate? Email us or post in the comments, we will try to address your questions in our next post about the Windream One project.