JP Aerospace

[scienceguy]

Have any of you heard of these guys:

http://www.jpaerospace.com/

[mlorrey]

Have any of you heard of these guys:

http://www.jpaerospace.com/

Ya, they make balloons that go pretty high, call their flights space missions, have this idea of building humongous solar powered balloons that would get to orbit via ion engines. Its a bit of a stretch to say the least.

[zaitcev]

Have any of you heard of these guys:

http://www.jpaerospace.com/

Heard many times, they are well known. As a physist and an engineer, I consider their concept doable, maybe even sensible. But in practice they just don't have the necessary financing. The problem is, instead of getting money, they try to build a big launch system on a shoestring. This just cannot work. They will never accumulate enough funds by flying ads and pongsats.

-- Pete

[Swatch]

I actually applied for internship out there a while back, but never heard back from them.

Sounded like an interesting group and I wish them the best.

[Comga]

Have any of you heard of these guys:
http://www.jpaerospace.com/

.... As a physist and an engineer, I consider their concept doable, maybe even sensible. ....-- Pete

From one physicist and engineer to another, can you explain why you think the JPAerospace concept is "doable"?  As mlorrey said, they
"have the idea of building humongous solar powered balloons that would get to orbit via ion engines".   Even assuming near zero mass solar cells and constant sunlight (and significant funding), how can they accelerate something with enormous cross section to hypersonic speeds?   My off the cuff estimate of maximum speed would be a few meters per second at best, perhaps a fraction of a meter per second.  This would be three or four orders of magnitude below the necessary seven kilometers per second for orbit.  Wherever the atmosphere is thin enough to allow forward movement, it will be too thin to "float" the craft.

[zaitcev]

Wherever the atmosphere is thin enough to allow forward movement, it will be too thin to "float" the craft.

You're forgetting that the atmosphere can create lift. So the question is just if the vehicle is fluffy enough to dissipate the friction heat by radiation, yet strong enough to stay in one piece. Plus, of course, the question of the drag vs. the available power that you mentioned. It's not preposterous to assume to that JP people ran numbers, although I admit that I did not.
-- Pete

[kkattula]

Airships can do 80+ knots (44 m/s) near sea level, so I'm sure they can do a lot more at 60+ km.

JP claim they can float up to 60km, which seems feasible, then accelerate to orbital speed using lift to overcome gravity losses. Asumming a really good hypersonic lift to drag ratio, I still don't see where they get the power to counter the drag and keep accelerating.

I hope maybe they've found a clever way to generate massive power at high altitude using the very large airship structure. But I'm doubtful.

[Paul Adams]

Please let me know which airships can do 80+ knots at sea level, as an airship pilot I'd love to fly it as I spend much of my time around 30 - 35 knots! ;-).


Paul

Airships can do 80+ knots (44 m/s) near sea level, so I'm sure they can do a lot more at 60+ km.

JP claim they can float up to 60km, which seems feasible, then accelerate to orbital speed using lift to overcome gravity losses. Asumming a really good hypersonic lift to drag ratio, I still don't see where they get the power to counter the drag and keep accelerating.

I hope maybe they've found a clever way to generate massive power at high altitude using the very large airship structure. But I'm doubtful.

[bad_astra]

JP Aerospace was one of the frontrunners back during the CATS Prize. Paperwork was the big obstacle back then.

[nomadd22]

 Exactly how much velocity do you think a few Newtons of thrust is going to give you in the atmosphere, even at 60km? As long as you're in enough air to get lift you're going to be so far from being able to make the jump to space it's absurd. And scientist that takes this idiocy seriously should probably be practicing his Walmart greeter speech.

[kkattula]

Please let me know which airships can do 80+ knots at sea level, as an airship pilot I'd love to fly it as I spend much of my time around 30 - 35 knots! ;-).


Paul

Airships can do 80+ knots (44 m/s) near sea level, so I'm sure they can do a lot more at 60+ km.

JP claim they can float up to 60km, which seems feasible, then accelerate to orbital speed using lift to overcome gravity losses. Asumming a really good hypersonic lift to drag ratio, I still don't see where they get the power to counter the drag and keep accelerating.

I hope maybe they've found a clever way to generate massive power at high altitude using the very large airship structure. But I'm doubtful.

D-LZ 129   But you might not love to fly it. 

[kkattula]

Exactly how much velocity do you think a few Newtons of thrust is going to give you in the atmosphere, even at 60km? As long as you're in enough air to get lift you're going to be so far from being able to make the jump to space it's absurd. And scientist that takes this idiocy seriously should probably be practicing his Walmart greeter speech.

You're assuming that 'ion engines' refer to a device like that flown on Deep Space One. High Isp, high specific power, low mass flow.

Any device that accelerates ions is an ion engine. I suspect they're planning to ionize the surrounding air, (which apparently can greatly reduce drag too), and accelerate large masses of it backwards.

I have no idea how they plan to do it, and whether it can actually work. I'm very skeptical, but I haven't got enough information to dismiss it absolutely.

[kkattula]

Other ideas?

Generate a large electric field to react with the Earth's magnetic field?

[NUAETIUS]

Other ideas?

Generate a large electric field to react with the Earth's magnetic field?

JP Aerospace has less capital than your average Wall-Mart store near your house.  None of the New space or experimental space companies are going to be able to reinvent the wheel.  SpaceX and Orbital are trying to build the better Delta 2, Armadillo is trying to build the better DC-X, and JP Aerospace is trying to build the better weather balloon. 

If "Generating a large electric field to react with the Earth's magnetic field" was any more real than Marty Mcfly's skateboard then trust me, someone would have a Nobel Prize for building it by now.

Wish these guys luck, but honestly they look like they guys that tried to fly buy strapping wooden wings to their backs.  But you never know, bike builders build the Wright Flier.

[kevin-rf]

Wish these guys luck, but honestly they look like they guys that tried to fly buy strapping wooden wings to their backs.  But you never know, bike builders build the Wright Flier.

Yeah but red bull sponsors a contest every year for the guys strapping wings to the back, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugtag

Now if we could just get them to sponsor a contest to strap a rocket to peoples back

[R.Simko]

What an incredable idea.  Talk about thinking outside the box.  I am also concerned about them generating enough thrust to drag.  What if they use the thrust to drive the ship straight up to a hard vacuume, before they worked to achieve the foreward orbital velocity.

They need to find a way to contact Obama for financing.  Even if they never can achieve orbital velocity, this would make a great platform for climate research, micro gravity experiments, tourism and other possibilities.   It sure would beat 10 minutes in space, like some tourism companies are offerring.

[bad_astra]

As I understand it, they've had some USAF funding on some of their work. For how they manage to overcome the L/D issue, Mr Powell isn't saying, only that they have a way.

There is a LOT of archived information on JP Aerospace over at the "space fellowship" forum. It used to be the X-prize forum.

[mlorrey]

Exactly how much velocity do you think a few Newtons of thrust is going to give you in the atmosphere, even at 60km? As long as you're in enough air to get lift you're going to be so far from being able to make the jump to space it's absurd. And scientist that takes this idiocy seriously should probably be practicing his Walmart greeter speech.

You're assuming that 'ion engines' refer to a device like that flown on Deep Space One. High Isp, high specific power, low mass flow.

Any device that accelerates ions is an ion engine. I suspect they're planning to ionize the surrounding air, (which apparently can greatly reduce drag too), and accelerate large masses of it backwards.

I have no idea how they plan to do it, and whether it can actually work. I'm very skeptical, but I haven't got enough information to dismiss it absolutely.

Generally their ion engines do use the surrounding medium, aka 'lifter' type engines like those envisioned in de Seversky's "ionocraft" patents of the 1960's and popularized in videos on the internet by various folks today. These types of thrusters can lift their own mass at ground level (albiet all power generation is off-vehicle). The idea is  using microwave beams along with solar cells to power a lifter grid used for thrust rather than lift.

I agree, the drag issue is the biggest one here. Granted, inflated wire cloth rogallo wings have reentered from orbit (at 70 degree pitch), however I have serious doubts about a lifter type ion engine getting a balloon, rigid or otherwise, to go any faster than a few thousand mph at 200,000-300,000 ft altitude.

Watching their videos it is evident their operation is low budget and amateurish

[josh_simonson]

I could see how it might work in a simulation environment, as long as the ion engine can create lift the airship will rise and as the atmosphere thins friction goes down and it speeds up - however in practice they may find that the upper atmosphere isn't sufficiently uniform for it to work.  It may rise a bit, then hit a patch of denser air (or air moving in a different direction) and slow down again.  Since the ion engines have such low thrust, it wouldn't take much variation in atmospheric properties at all to prevent it from climbing past it's buoyancy limit.

[Danderman]

Updates on this site:

www.jpaerospace.com/blog