The vehicle’s autonomous operation extends to emergency landings. Early on, German flight authorities informed the team that it needed a way to land the airship safely, even after a system failure. The engineers devised an autonomous, GPS-guided parachute that can land the vehicle with a precision of up to 4 meters. A number of customers are now looking at the landing technology for delivering cargo, among other uses, Kröplin says.
Sanswire-TAO’s ultimate goal is to loft an airship that can ascend to the lower stratosphere, about 18 kilometers up, and fly for weeks or even months at a time, says Dan Erdberg, vice president of operations for Sanswire. The vessel to be tested in Germany next week, the STS-111, is an interim step in that flight plan. It’s designed for altitudes of 4500 to 9000 meters and for missions of up to five days. The current flight-endurance record for a UAV according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale is 30 hours, Erdberg notes.
”I think there are many people who still think this is impossible,” Kröplin concedes. ”In the field of flight-vehicle design, there are only a few ideas around, and you get educated in these ideas, and it’s not so easy to switch your brain to a totally different concept. But if we continue to have discussions and tests, eventually we can convince people.”
