AIRSHIP PLANS TAKE OFF FLORIDA FIRM READY TO BUILD COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE IN VALLEY.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A Florida-based communication company plans to build an airship intended to be tested as a high-altitude antenna - or low-altitude communications satellite - for high-speed Internet connections, television signals and telephone calls.

GlobeTel Communications Corp.'s Sanswire Networks is leasing part of a former bomber assembly plant in Palmdale, where the airship is to be assembled using components from an earlier, somewhat smaller prototype airship unveiled this spring in San Bernardino.

``We're going to try to start construction around July 1 to August,'' Sanswire President Bob Jones said in an interview last week.

The airship, which Sanswire calls a ``Stratellite,'' would fly at an altitude of 10 miles to 13 miles. That is much higher than jetliners or other civilian airplanes fly, and is high enough that it could send and receive broadband Internet signals, high-definition TV signals and other transmissions over thousands of square miles, the company said.

Sanswire says an airship-based network's advantage over a higher-flying satellite is that it will be low enough to allow two-way communication, without the time lag that characterizes satellite phones.

In addition, airships could be put into service more quickly than satellites, and could be landed to modify their equipment as technology improves, said Jones, a former project manager for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

Sanswire's airship will be built with a rigid frame - like the famous pre-World War II German Zeppelins - covered with a smooth outer skin and containing dozens of flexible interior compartments into which nonflammable helium would be pumped to alter its buoyancy.

Blimps, such as those used to advertise Goodyear and Fuji products, are flexible bags, without a rigid frame.

The Sanswire airship's rigid construction will allow it to go to higher altitudes than a blimp, Jones said.

The airship is to be designed to be guided either by remote control by operators on the ground, or by onboard computers, Jones said.

In the Antelope Valley, Sanswire will also be testing a Wi-Fi Internet transmitter that will eventually be put up on the airship. On the ground, the transmitter can reach 35 miles away. In the airship, it could cover 126,000 square miles, Jones said.

The airship's components are now in Palmdale at an assembly building that was once used by Rockwell International workers to build B-1B bombers and later held Lockheed Martin's X-33 space plane. Sanswire engineers who are designing the new version are working out of an office at Mojave Airport.

Eventually, 45 to 60 workers are expected to be employed on building the airship. Engineers are still working out the plans for how big the airship will be. The craft floated by tether in San Bernardino was 188 feet long, which Sanswire said made it the largest rigid airship in existence.

GlobeTel last week announced it signed an agreement with NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center for help with the airship. Dryden engineers will develop a computer simulation capability for Sanswire for a price of about $360,000.

``We have to develop a simulation that will encompass all parameters and every flight envelope the airship might encounter,'' Dryden spokesman Alan Brown said. ``It's a straight business proposition. They pay us to do a task for them that other people can't do because of our expertise.''

NASA might also help in the future by providing weather forecasts before airship tests, he said.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

no caption (airship)