Lately the images and news from China earthquake has been disturbing me a lot. Feel so helpless when mankind is battered against viciousness element of nature. For such times some designers have come under one roof at the 2008 ACIDO Rocket Show. And here is one of the best entries in the “natural disaster category” that won 1st place too. Andrew Leinonen has proposes Solarial, an unmanned airship that provides mobile support for disaster relief, generating renewable energy and supplying communication links where they are needed most. It is also intended to serve as a transitionary element towards a more sustainable aerospace industry based on modern, safe and efficient lighter-than-air craft. One of the areas that Solarial differs from conventional airship design is that it uses hydrogen instead of helium which renders many advantages.
Utilizing a skin coated in thin film photovoltaics, and a reversible drive propeller/wind turbine, it delivers clean energy via tether cable. Housing a suite of telecommunications equipment, Solarial also acts as a relay station for radio and cellular telephone signals, aiding the coordination of relief operations.
From an operational standpoint, Solarial flies autonomously to its deployment location. For example, if the airships were stationed at US airbases around the world, they would be able to reach all the natural disaster hotspots in the world within two days.
Once at the site, the airship then lowers the power box (which contains anchoring mechanisms). The energy generated while the airship is aloft is then transmitted to the ground to power field hospitals, water pumping and purification, lighting, communications, and computer equipment necessary to sustain the operation.
