E- Green Technologies has successfully inflated airship ‘Bullet 580’, 235-foot long (as long as a 23-floor skyscraper), 65-foot diameter. It promises an aerial experience for science experiment and will serve as a sky based platform to relay communications and to keep watch on oil spills, forest fires and even pirates at sea. It can be compared to a huge truck which travels in sky instead of roads. The airship could possibly be used to transport heavy equipment to remote locations. It looks very promising and is likely to change the future of air transport.
Bullet-580 was tested this week inside the Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Alabama and sits inflated there. The whole operation to inflate the airship took six hours. Initially it looked like a white skimpy thing that gradually transformed into a spaceship. Kind of like inflating a humongous balloon.
Its first mission would be to carry a NASA soil moisture sensor, which is expected to fly from Kennedy Space Center. It includes a system of bags that hold helium gas for lighter-than-air lift and an inner hull that is filled with ambient air. The bags expand as the altitude increases. The material used to build these airships is Kevlar which is ten times stronger than steel according to designers. It is estimated to haul payloads as heavy as 15,000 pounds up to 2,500 feet. In the years to come you might see more of airships than you would trucks. The top speed of these airships would be 80mph (129 km/hr) and is retailed at $8 million a piece. Bullet 580 is the first in a wave of airships in production for commercial use. Fair enough, airships are going to be yet another leaping step for mankind!
