Energy Harvesting via Ballonet Altitude Control; Airship Development in the Context of Technological Momentum

Modern day transportation for goods and travel includes planes, trains, cars, and ships. Most commonly, airplanes have been dominating the air space yet airships have seemed to fall out of favor compared to its competitors. Airships have a lot of potential in spaces for cargo transportation, travel, military, advertising, and telecommunication. However, with various challenges Airships still lag behind other modes of transportations.

To address this problem, we will develop an improved subsystem of a blimp, the ballonet. The ballonet is used to control the altitude of modern day airships. The goal of the design is to test different energy recapture techniques. The design will harvest energy during the ascent and descent of the blimp. We will design and implement a small scale model blimp with an integrated ballonet by verifying the physical viability of hypothetical analysis of energy recapture and follow the necessary procedures for conditions of net positive energy recapture.

However, the challenge of airships is socio-technical in nature. The technological development of Airships is necessary to understand for future use and understand why the perspective of Airships has declined over time. The current use of Airships has a negative outlook as safety has become the main concern with other factors that has led this technology to fall out of favor. Using technological momentum framework to investigate how the development of airships interplay with society and technology over time and how technology manifested as reverse salient.

Technological momentum discusses the idea of early life of technological systems in society that exerts more control and influence over them, but as they evolve and gain momentum, the system grows to influence society that made them better or worse. Using this framework I will analyze the early development, influence over society, and decline of momentum as well as the reverse salient of Airships. By using newspaper articles from incident events of airships, historical archives, and other related sources to understand the development of Airships and what factors have contributed to the environment of modern-day airships. Through this understanding, this research may address the decline of modern-day Airships and ease the negative perspectives with the technical approach of improving the technology. Findings show that actors who were agents in shaping the momentum of airships declined due to the negative public perception of airships, and the decrease of political and financial factors that ultimately lead airships to become obsolete today. If the reverse salients were addressed and there is social, political and financial support, airships are then able to gain momentum once again. A social need to have sustainable approaches of transportation can be done by implementing a safer, sustainable, and implementation of the technical project can bring momentum to airships.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Technical Advisor: Micheal Momot

STS Advisor: Rider Foley

Technical Team Members: Vivienne Hughes, Troy S. Meink, Ashlin Schultz,
Robert Stambaugh, Will Stevens, Richard Yau, Yining Xu