Lockheed Martin P-791 article

I just stumbled over this article about the "P-791 hybrid airship project". The P-791 is Lockheed Martins "secret" hybrid airship project that we have reported on a lot also in conjunction with the Skycat a project which is a little bit to similar to the P-791 for some. Check out the article it goes a little bit into detail on the airship and the project and the history behind and of course our regular Hindenburg disaster reference is also in it.

• P-791 hybrid airship project

There's more than one way to skin a SkyCat

Today we open our book once again and add another chapter to the never ending story about Skycat. If you don't know about the Skycat story you should catch up on what has been going on over the last year. You can read the articles labeled "Skycat" here on the Blog to get an overview. But let's quickly reiterate for those of you who kind of know the basic facts. SkyCat was a project for a hybrid airship that combines static lift with dynamic lift. The project was first started by ATG a British airship company which was based in Cardington and went into administration a few years ago. The so called father of the SkyCat, Roger Munk then bought the assets of ATG as well as the prototype SkyKitten. The new company was called SkyCat Group Limited and was founded in spring 2007. First everything looked promising, and the hopes were high that the great SkyCat program would resurrect. But fortune turne quickly for SkyCat when Roger Munk was sued by Lockheed-Martin. The dispute was probably over the undeniable similarities of the SkyCat design and the P-791 Skunkworks Airship. You can see a video of the airship here. This of course brought the SkyCat Group into administration just months after resurfacing. But this Cat really seems to have 9 lives, because shortly after Hybrid Air Vehicles(HAV) was founded now back in Cardington, and back with the SkyCats. Not much is know about the activities of Hybrid Air Vehicles, but I am sure the next months will not be without something new coming out of Cardington.
Today we want to invite you to check out the new website of HAV that gives a company profile and presents the SkyCats at http://www.skycatgroup.com/, sorry http://hybridairvehicles.net. There is many ways to skin a cat.

Video from the Airships to the Arctic Symposium

It was October 2007 that the Airships to the Arctic Symposium was held once again in Winnipeg Manitoba. We have reported about it here and here. Since we have not yet given a report about the event we will provide you with some insights this week. To start the week of, we would like to present a great Video produced by CBC Canada. This is the original link to the Real Video which we copied to YouTube to make it accessible to a wider audience. We would like to thank Paul Boldt who sent us the link to this video.

Original Video available at: http://www.cbc.ca/MRL/clips/rm-hi/north-selleck-airship071217.rm

Please check back tomorrow for our commentary coverage of the Event, written by our own Charles Luffman. Of course if you want to learn more about the Airships to the Artic Symposium follow this link.

Video footage of the Lockheed Martin / Skunkworks P-791 and the Skycat Skykitten

Thanks to our reader tryphonkorm from Greece we have some great stuff to share with you tonight. First of is a YouTube Video of the Lockheed Martin/Skunk Works P-791 this is the first video that I am aware of that made it into the public. Of course we will research the source of this video and see if we can get more information about it but it seems that by publishing and talking about it slowly more and more details surface.

In addition to this, we have to report of a live sign of the recently founded Company Hybrid Air Vehicles, the former Skycat group / ATG having the Skykitten. We also want to thank tryphonkorm for this link to a BBC Article about a passenger airship service from Cambridge to Oxford. Read the Article here "Airship may link historic cities". But if you are one of those people like me who love to see moving images this Article also features a small video report featuring footage of the Skykitten scale model of the larger Skycat. Click this link for the video page. Do you have more media, more footage or background information. Are you from Lockheed Martin or Skycat and want to share more about your projects and products then please contact us. If you have suggestions, tips, information or simply just want to share your opinion with us please leave a message in the comments or send us an email.

Lockheed announcing the P-791 offically ?

Bringing the first piece of news from the Airships to the Arctic Conference is the Winnipeg Free Press. They released an Article this Tuesday about the conference and possible announcements that might be made by Lockheed Martin about the Skunkworks P-791 project.

Like the wizards in the fictional world of the Harry Potter books who will not say the name of their nemesis out loud, company officials will not even utter the name of the project -- P-791.

But a Lockheed spokeswoman Melissa Dalton is quoted in the article saying:

the official's planned address for the conference will be about buoyant systems in general and not about the unmentionable P-791 in particular.

Read the full article on the Winnipeg Free Press Website for more details.

The Skycat puzzle continues

I think the Word SkyCat is not really derived from Sky Catamaran but more really from the Animal cause it seems that this Project has nine lives, or even more. So it was just back in May 2007 when we reported that Roger Munk's SkyCat is back with a multinational Company called the SkyCat Group Limited. But just 4 days after that we had to report that Lockheed Martin was suing Roger Munk because of Patent infringement. Only a few weeks after this on July 1st 2007 the Skycat Group went into Administration. 18 Days later that same month we reported about a new Hybrid Airship research Project at the University of Cambridge in the UK. And everything pointed to a company called Tensys who have helped to build the SkyKitten and the Lockheed Martin P-791 that looked a lot like the SkyCat.
After this it got quiet for a while, but now the SkyCat is back once again, or so it seems. We got word of a short press release by a Company called HYBRID AIR VEHICLES, we did a search for them on the Web but besides this Information from UK Data we couldn't find much. The Company Details that UK Data provides are not very broad, you would have to buy certain document to get more information. We don't know of any free way to access these documents, maybe someone from the UK knows how we could get access to those. So searching for the Company Number in the UK Companyhouse turned up this page of Company Details one thing that was most interesting was the Date of Incorporation which is according to the Companyhouse June 6th 2007 just around two weeks after the court filing of Lockheed against Roger Munk. So let's take a look at the press release, we are not going to name our source, since we didn't obtain this press release officially or got it from a source online. So we do not know how valid this information is:

HYBRID AIR VEHICLES

Hangar 2
Cardington Field
Shortstown
Bedford
MK42 0TG

STATEMENT - HYBRID AIR VEHICLES

SkyCat Group, previously owned by Italian and UK Investor Groups, has been in Administration for restructuring purposes since 25 June 2007.  The business of SkyCat, including all of the IP and assets, with technical team intact and free of any encumbrance from SkyCat Group, was acquired on 3 August 2007 by UK investors into a new company called Hybrid Air Vehicles.

Work continues at Cardington unabated, and the new company is planning to take forward the same range of Lighter than Air products as those of its predecessor, focusing on Condor in the first instance, closely followed by the SkyCat series.

21 August 2007

Note:
"Hybrid Air Vehicles is the trading name of HAP Acquisitions Limited, company number 06270723, registered office One Fleet Place, London, EC4M 7WS".

So the work continues? We will see and we hope it will. The SkyCat is a great concept that deserves success. Interestingly to get even more cross references let's take a look at this Article from Findtheneedle. The Article talks about Tensys, yes the people behind the Skykitten and guess what the Title of the Article is? "Hybrid Air Vehicle (HAV)" exactly. Notice this slight connection? So we have Roger Munk, with ATG, the SkycatGroup and now Hybrid Air Vehicles, also we have Lockheed Martin/Skunkworks with their P-791 Craft and Tensys. How about we introduce yet another player into the SkyCat puzzle. Entrance the Hybrid Aircraft Corporation. The talk about their Product the SkyCat ?!? Wait a Minute, isn't that the one the Roger Munk is Building? But they also talk about nothing other than the Skunk Works P-791 that they must have been involved with too. And to top everything of for the night they have a page about patents connected to the SkyCat and when they where filed. Some date back all the way to 1928? So if everything related to the SkyCat is prior art, why would or could Lockheed sue Roger Munk? The deeper we get into this story the more confusing it get's and to date I have not found anyone who could tell me the whole story. Who knows it? Do you have a piece to the puzzle called SkyCat? Then tell us, we want to know. Do you know Roger Munk, tell him to contact us, we would really like to talk to him. Until we don't have first hand knowledge all we can do is research and speculate, but maybe some of you, our readers, know more. It would be great if you could share your knowledge with us, either in the comments section or via email. You feedback is welcome.

Job offering at Lockheed Martin in the lighter-than-air business

Lockheed Martin, developing the High Altitude Airship approached us asking for our help. They currently are looking to fill a position at their Akron Site. Here is the job posting that Pete Bugnatto asked us to share:

Lockheed Martin is currently seeking a business development lead that investigates, identifies, leads the creation of proposals, and captures new Lighter Than Air Systems business – primarily from military and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) customers.

This person would Bring intimate knowledge of key technical disciplines including: system engineering, material science knowledge, laser & sensor performance and trade offs, and airframe operations.

The successful candidate understands Department of Defense (DoD) requirements from to execution to delivery, works well with tri-service customers, is familiar with the DoD procurement process, and has demonstrated the ability to win key new business initiatives.

This person will be located in Akron, OH

About Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin in 1996 bought Loral Corp, formerly Goodyear Aerospace, and got the Akron Airdock and related buildings. The airdock was later acquired by the Summit County Port Authority and leased back to Lockheed Martin.

• Akron operations are part of Lockheed Martin's MS2 Defense and Surveillance Systems, which is in its Electronic Systems division.
• Akron work includes the High Altitude Airship program; an un-tethered, pilot-less airship that will fly at 65,000 feet and be capable of performing reconnaissance surveillance and communication missions; as well as aerostats; jet fighter simulations; weapons development; laser-based communications and sensor systems.
• About 500 people work at the local facilities.

If interested, please go to www.lockheedjobs.com and apply for position 19872BR

Eventhough this is in the military and defence sector, it's a very interesting job offering, where you will be able to work on something that has never been done before in the lighter than air business. Since the jobs in the lighter-than-air industry are still quite sparse we will continue to point out any job posting we can find. If you have a job posting for your company in the airship or lighter-than-air industry please don't hesitate to send it to us.

New Hybrid Airship Research Project - Memories of the Skykitten and the P-791

Chris Jisi from the Airship-list posted a link to a very interesting Article talking about a hybrid airship research Project at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Dr Fehmi Cirak, a lecturer in structural engineering at Cambridge, is leading the research. He specialises in computational research to develop models and algorithms for structures and fluids that, for this project, will simulate all the factors that affect the airship's dynamic behaviour.

'Our job will be computational modelling. In this and most other industries, people are moving away more and more from doing experiments and building prototypes. we basically want to accomplish the entire design process on the computer,' said Cirak.

Ok sounds interesting but nothing spectacular. The article continues with:

The project will use data gathered from a 40m-long prototype hybrid airship to improve the design of subsequent larger vehicles.

And further down comes an even more interesting piece:

'Imagine an inflated doughnut, with a large fan in the centre. It can either blow or suck air, allowing the vehicle to hover like a hovercraft or to grip to the ground after landing.' This means the airship can be pulled to the ground on landing or pushed away on take-off.

The only hybrid airships who have an aircusion landing system are the Skycat by Roger Munk which was never built only a small scale version called Skykitten was built, or the Skunk Works/Lockheed Martin P-791 prototype.
The Skykitten with a length of roughly 15m as far as I know could not have been the prototype they are talking about so it must be the Skunkworks P-791 which provided the data.
We will investigate this further, if you know more let us and the readers know leave your comments or send us an Email.
[Update:] Arnold Nayler from the Airship-List commented on the post by Chris Jisi with the following:

Of interest is who is financing the research? Did you note that the research is in conjunction with Tensys, who worked with ATG on SkyCat and then Lockheed Martin on the P 791 ? I am pretty certain that the funding is not from the UK so maybe it is Lockheed Martin that is behind what must be an expensive piece of work.

A quick look at the Website of Tensys shows even more evidence that there is something going on and that this is more an evolution of what has been done before. Obviously coming back to the first quote of the article, after having helped to build two prototypes, the Skykitten and the P-791 they are now looking into developing the concept furter with the help of computer simulation.

Follow up to Lockheed and Livejournal airship websites

As reported yesterday Lockheed will probably not get anymore funding for it's High Altitude Airship program, there was a comment to the post from yesterday pointing out another blog post titled "A Lesson in Defence Contracting" if you want to get some more in depth knowledge I suggest that you check it out. My question to the anonymous commenter how does your google bot work, I don't have that yet, and maybe it would help me digging out new stories. So please contact me and tell me how to set it up, thanks.
Also I want to point out two sites, the first one is a Livejournal Community called "luftschiff abteilung" (airship department) we will keep an eye on them if there is something worth mentioning you will read it here.
The second page was pointed out in a comment to the post about Historic Airship Pictures yesterday. I had written about in May already but somehow lost track of it. It's the aerocrat Livejournal a Russian blog focused on LTA. Updated very regular and a source for more information in the future.
I really want to thank everyone for their comments, they are great, so keep em coming, especially point out new sites that you discover and news Items, or at least bookmark them with del.icio.us use the tags airship or airships and it will pop up in my daily reading.

Lockheed Martins HAA (High Altitude Airship) might not get finished

There has been an article by Reuters, today, that I at first didn't want to talk about but after Thomas A.Frank at the Airship-list was the second source to talk about this I thought it's might be worth mentioning. So to the Article, it was called "U.S. cruise missile defence said possible in 14 months" It talks about Lockheed lobbying for a program to defend against missiles. Part of this system should have been the High Altitude Airship [HAA] as a surveillance platform. The article states:

...
The company had high hopes for its $148 million High Altitude Airship program, for airships priced at just under $40 million apiece that can hover and monitor a 500-square-mile area for about two months.

But the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency cut the program's budget sharply in fiscal year 2007 and requested no funding at all for 2008. Lockheed convinced lawmakers to reinstate the 2007 funds, and there is an amendment to provide a small sum in 2008, but the program's outlook is grim at this point.

Christopher Bolkcom, defence specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said cruise missiles were difficult to track and that Lockheed's forecast about deploying a wide-area defence was "optimistic."

Bolkcom said U.S. policymakers had likely done "the mental calculus that it's too expensive, too hard, on the one hand, and the threat is not big enough to justify it, on the other."
...

It's clearly understandable why Lockheed is trying to push the project and get Governmental Funding, because there is a lot of money behind it. But as the article says, the threat against the US-Coastline is probably not big enough to fund such an expensive project. As the article states further on:

...
The U.S. military has plans to protect troops, ships and overseas bases from cruise missile attacks, but it has no plan and no budget to protect the U.S. coastline, Kueter said.
...

So it seems that Lockheed is facing the same problems many Airship Development projects are facing and this problem is missing funding. The full article can be read at Reuters.com

What are your ideas and thoughts on how to finance an airship development project, what are the costly parts in an airship construction, and where can the most money be saved. How much does the helium cost, and how do you use it best? Send us your comments either by posting it in the comments section below this post or send us an email to airshipworld@gmail.com or post on the Wiki at http://airshipworld.wetpaint.com/, if you do not have an account yet, sign up here and get yourself an account.

• You can read more about Lockheed Martin in our previous posts.

Skycat group in adminsitration

Trevor Monk reported on thE Airship-list that the Skycatgroup is in administration. Which can also be read on their Website:

Steve Akers and Daniel Smith of Grant Thornton UK LLP were appointed Joint Administrators of SkyCat Group Limited on Monday 25 June 2007.

The Administrators are currently assessing the position of the businesses and can be contacted at:

Grant Thornton UK LLP
Grant Thornton House
Melton Street
Euston Square
London
NW1 2EP

Tel: +44 (0)870 991 2417

The Skycatgroup just recently bought assets from the Advanced Technologgies Group, which went out of business, we have reported in may about the new Skycatgroup Website, everyone was hoping that the Skycat, a new hybrid airship concept would finally be built. But the announcement of a court filing by Lockheed Martin against Roger Munk and Skycatgroup probably put a quick end to the newly started company. Of course this is speculation, we have no contact with the Skycat group or Roger Munk and thus don't know more. I believe the Skycat is still not dead. But it doesn't seem to fly soon. If you have more infos for us, send them to us or add comments to this post. As soon as we know more, we will be posting here on the blog.

Random airship stuff (ends up in court ) [updated]

Today I was just scanning the web a little finding some interesting articles and websites that I would like to share.
First of an article about the Dynalifter by Ohio Airships which was published in Popular Mechanics check it out here. The great thing about the article are the pictures showing details of the prototype. The article is from October 2006 but still i found it very interesting. It also mentions the Lockheed Martin P-791 produced by their Skunk Works Company here is a link to a very good picture of it. Also there is an Article at Aviation Week talking about the P-791 airship. If you dig a bit deeper and read the articles then one name pops up, TCOM a manufacturer of airship envelopes, they must have built the envelope for the P-791 but they also must have built the envelope for the Spirit of Dubai at least it's pictured in on their Website. It's interesting how fast you can get around jumping from one article to the other, and finding the interconnections between all the different projects. I hope you liked my little dig through the web and found something interesting for yourself. Please share your favourite links, websites and projects with us. We need your help to bring airship news to everyone.
[Update] So as if the interconnections aren't enough the Aviation Week had also spoken about and everybody interested knows already about it. The P-791 looks an awful lot like the SkyCat designed by Roger Munk and now Lockheed Martin Corporation is trying to sue him for patent infringement. Dan Nachbar from PersonalBlimp posted this on the Airship-list. Here is the link to the Courtfiling Lockheed Martin Corporation v. Jeffery Munk et al. The Courtfiling lists as Defendant Jeffery Roger Munk, Advanced Technologies Group Ltd and Skycat (UK) Ltd, so this is against the old ATG and Roger Munk. We do not know what is going on but we will keep an eye on this, and make it as public as we can, since the Sky Kitten flew way before the P-791 I would call it prior art. But I am not a lawyer and we do not know the whole picture. If anyone has more information about this case please let us know.
Also as a reminder there is the XLTA organised by Dan Nachbar from June 1-3rd 2007 read about it in one of our previous Posts.

Ohio Akron and it's airships

When you write about airships you have to come accross Akron Ohio sooner or later. To me this happened this week, somehow this city and it's airshipindustry chased after me. First I found this picture on a website called Plan59 they are calling themselfes "the museum (and gift shop) of midcentury illustration. I don't know if they have more pictures and images of airships one might have to look through the archives. They also offer high resolution TIFF versions and a high resolution JPG, too.

But this was not by far every thing about Akron, next there was some buzz about the Dynalifter Project that drew my attention to them, right now I am trying to get an interview from Robert Rist one of the founders and Co-President of Ohio Airships, Inc. the Company behind the Dynalifter Aircraft. The Dynalifter, is not a classic airship because it needs dynamic-lift to fly and and is not able to do VTOL (vertical take off and landing) like most modern airships can. But the project aims to combine the best of both worlds, fuel efficiency of airships and speed and handling of planes. So stay tuned for more on that too.
Our last Akron encounter is with the current owner of the big hangar that is pictured above in the illustration. If you kept track Lockheed Martin is currently the owner and they are/were developing a High Altitude Airship that can stay deployed for a very long time in a high, almost geo-stational, location in the athmosphere. I will try to find out more about the project and the progress they have made if I can. If not all we have is the marketing illustrations that some of you have already read/heard about but out main goal is to satisfy the customer.

Regards,
Andreas