Citation:
Marin D. Guenov and Vincent Peyron, Airship-assisted space launch, Airship,
March 2004, (143), pp.14-17.
Abstract:
Introduction Being lighter-than-air, airships do not seem to be an obvious
platform choice for dropping of heavy objects. We have challenged the idea and
this paper presents the summary of a speculative concept which utilises airships
as a reusable first stage of a space launch system. The inspiration behind the
concept was that if not much cheaper, the airship-assisted space launch will be
environmentally friendlier- an argument which is likely to become even more
important with time. During the development of the concept we have used as a
base for comparison the Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL concept, which is
currently the single operational aircraft-based space launch system. Alongside
the challenges of estimating weight and cost of the very large airship required
(approximately 728,000 m 3 ), the work presented in this paper concentrates
mainly on the process of releasing the space launch vehicle from the airship.