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Headlines
Helium Carries World's Largest Airship - 5/21/2010
E-Green Technologies (EGT) and 21st Century Airships announced the successful inflation of the world’s largest helium airship. The 235-foot-long Bullet 580 airship was inflated inside of Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Alabama. This is the first airship developed by the company for commercial use. According to EGT, the Bullet 580 airship can support a payload of 2,000 pounds at an altitude of 20,000 feet. It is capable of speeds anywhere from a hovering stand-still up to 80 mph. At 235 feet long and 65 feet in diameter, EGT says the airship is the largest of its kind in the world. For medium altitude flights (15,000 to 20,000 feet), the Bullet 580’s inner envelopes will be filled with approximately 125,000 cubic feet of helium. A spokesperson for EGT says the company will use helium from local distributors, depending on the location for each test launch. “Airships have undergone surprisingly little evolution through history,” says EGT chairman and CEO Michael Lawson. He says EGT’s airship addresses many questions of feasibility that hindered past airship designs. “Our airships move beyond the performance limitations of traditional blimps or zeppelins such as simple construction, long flight duration, relatively efficient operation versus aircraft, potential for vast size and cargo capacity, and the ability to take-off and land vertically, combined with forward thrust in the air from engines.” In addition to the basic sight-seeing opportunities afforded by a low-speed airship, EGT says there applications for the airship as a de facto low-altitude satellite, including applications for communications, military defense and surveillance, position and navigation (GPS), weather monitoring, and geophysical surveys. Test flights for the Bullet 580 are planned for the summer. Photo by George Schellenger.
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