This is a guest post by William Anderson who did the interview.
Eric Raymond is the head of Solar Flight, the world leader in manned solar powered aircraft.
Solar Flight's Sunship Project will be the first zeppelin-class rigid airship since 1939, the next chapter in his scalable approach which has been used successfully on Solar Flight's fixed-winged Sunseeker Aircraft.
In this interview, Eric reveals how the Sunship can be kept small using modern materials such as Vectran cables. Another intriguing aspect is the use of a rocket-fired land-anchor for use in emergency moorings. And finally, he advises any newcomers with convincing ideas to start work on their ideas rather than leave projects on paper, and to assemble a high-powered advice-network of doers and creators in the field in which the big idea is relevant.
This interview was recorded on October 14, 2009.
Thanks to Kenneth Deacon, Airship Heritage Trust, and Solar Flight for use of images in the film.
Thanks to George Raymond for setting up this contact.
Thanks to Airshipworld for publishing this interview.
Thanks most of all to Eric Raymond for the fascinating story and details.
Editors Remark: Thanks again to William for putting this great interview together. If you would like to contribute to Airshipworld please send your stuff to news@airshipworld.info
18 comments:
where can i find a detailed design report for an tethered aerostat? Can any1 help?
Hello Vikas,
maybe try the Airshipworld Mailinglist or the Colorado Airshiplist
Hi folks,
Small rigid designs are too heavy, also the envelope cross section will need to be flatter to improve the area available for solar power. Very little chance of a sensible outcome if it ever gets built.
Regards
Joe ( www.airshipblimp.com )
nice airship design. this ia a great post. thanks for sharing
wow..what an interesting airship design..keep up the good work guys..may you all have another airship design sooner..make an airship that will lead to many people in an advanced way..
Hey its really nice
Thanks for sharing this
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Interesting post!
Are there any new airship designs?
Airshipworld. You a cool site here for unfortunately, the spammers, especially Chinese ones, have found it. I hope you will catch this and delete their comments before it messes up your site too badly. I'm truly concerned. Thank you.
A rigid airship is a type of airship in which the envelope retained its shape by the use of an internal structural framework rather than by being forced into shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope as used in blimps and semi-rigid airships.
Great thought but where can we find all this ????
I would like to know what happend with the video? I can't play it and I've tried over and over again. Please try to fix it quickly. Thanks.
I hadn't seen this before. Thanks for sharing.
Cool blog! And really interesting design! I know you haven't updated in quite a while, but perhaps you would be interested in sharing it over at Glipho? We're a new social blogging site and you would be perfect there. Come have a look over at http://glipho.com and see what you think!
Thanks for you time,
All the best,
Teo
It is a pleasure going through your post. I have bookmarked you to check out new stuff from your side
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