Aerosmena seeks investors to make its cargo airship project a reality

• Venture investors risk investing in such large projects.
• Aerosmena’s long-term goal is to build a family of flying saucers for transporting payloads, ranging from 22 tonnes to 660 tonnes, and creating door-to-door logistics links.

New heavy-duty airship projects are being actively developed globally and will appear in the sky in the near future to ship hundreds of tonnes of payloads.

After nearly a decade of unfulfilled hype about flying robots dropping orders at your doorstep, a handful of companies have started commercial operations in the US, involving dozens or hundreds of deliveries a day at each location.

One Russian heavy-duty cargo airship company – Airship Initiative Design Bureaus Aerosmena (AIDBA), also known as Aerosmena – has entered the bandwagon and wants to surprise mankind with their ability to transport tens and even hundreds of tonnes of payload, and fly in winds up to 35 metres per second, and even worst on speed 100-250 kilometres per hour on the range 5,000 km and even more.

Sergei V. Bendin, CEO of AIDBA, expert chez aeronautic field, vice-chief of Moscow branch of Aeronautic Committee chez Geographical Society of Russia, told TechChannel News that transport heavy-duty airship projects are actively developed in different countries and the declared projects were Airlander – 10 (HAV), LMH – 1 (Lockheed Martin), LCA60T (Flying Whale), Varialifter, Voliris (NATAC).

AIDBA developed an independent team of engineers who previously worked in the Russian aerospace industry (design bureaus of Tupolev, Yakovlev aviation firms, and Dolgoprudnensky design bureaus of automation, specialising in aeronautical technology since 1932 and in closed aerospace organisations).

 “Developers of hi-tech airship projects are confident that such image is not an empty dream but closest perspective for regular reality,” he said.

Reliable transportation

Aerosmena’s long-term goal is to build a family of aeroplatforms for transporting payloads, ranging from 22 tonnes to 660 tonnes, and create door-to-door logistics links, including those in communities in remote regions with poor or no roads or other reliable transportation infrastructure.

A team of Russian engineers at AIDBA are already proactively offering investors to own the multifunctional thermo-ballasting heavy-payload aeroplatforms.

The largest airship of the Aerosmena project, Bendin said will be able to carry 600 tonnes of payload onboard.

The diametre of the lenticular airship will be about 220 metres and with a height of more than 50 metres, making it to cover a distance of 8000km at a speed of 250kmph non-stop.

Bendin said that 5,000 people can comfortably make an impressive transcontinental flight between Washington and Moscow, which people can only dream of today.

The Aerosmena project started in 1993 when the famous Russian project “Thermoplan” was launched by the Moscow Aviation Institute engineers’ team. The 40-metres diametre airship was manufactured in the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant.

However, Bendin said that it could not fly due to the poor design.

“During the first field test, this aircraft was deformed, and soon after the incident, this project was cancelled. However, many engineers on the project “Thermoplan” met again in 2005 under the project “Locomosky” brand to develop a heavy-airship for delivery of mini-plants for LNG to remote hydrocarbon deposits,” he said.

The Locomosky project developers finished R&D, and even tested the “UFO” model in both the TsAGI’s (Central Institute of Aerohydrodynamics in Russia) wind tunnel and using computer simulation in the MAI’s (Moscow Aviation Institute) laboratories. In 2007 and 2009, the lenticular Locomosky airship demonstrators were exhibited at the International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS.

Determination

Later in 2009, the Russian President at a special government meeting in Ulyanovsk called the Locomosky project a promising and brilliant example of innovation.

Already in 2010, the Locomosky Co has recorded bankruptcy so the project stopped again.

Meanwhile, part of the development team has continued to design under head Orfey Kozlov (who died due to Covid-19 in 2020), and the new team had named itself AIDBA in 2015,

Bendin said the strategy is to focus on the multi-functional thermo-ballasting heavy-payload aeroplatforms to provide the competitiveness of current air-transport infrastructure.

Even though, he said the startup has already attracted the attention of some potential customers who would like to purchase “flying saucers” as ready produce, but refused entirely to fund the Aerosmena project because three years of the project development they value today as a long-term investment.

“If a business angel supports the AIDBA team today, the first Aerosmena aeroplatform will be ready for operation in 2026. We are actively looking for an investor and without any investment, we could not build or present any prototype,” he said.

So far, he said that venture investors have not risked investing in such large projects.

Projects which failed to take off

In 2005, the US military, through the DARPA structure, ordered the design of airships as part of the WALRUS project.

DARPA directed special grants for airship designers from Aeros Worldwide and Lockheed Martin who could build prototypes.

But since 2009, the WALRUS program has been closed, and the company’s project participant prototypes had be allowed to be used for the commercial market as flying hotels.

However, since 2015, any data about these prototypes has disappeared from the information field.

Bendin said the single unit construction cost of the aeroplatform A20 will be between $45-50 million while the A60 could be worth $65-70 million, and A200 will cost $70-75 million.

However, with mass production, he said the costs will come down drastically.

The cost of the Lockheed C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft program with a carrying capacity of 37 tonnes was $1.4 billion. The cost of the program for the development and production of an Airbus Beluga XL aircraft with a carrying capacity of 50.5 tonnes was more than $1.1 billion.

“We plan to first finance a demonstration aeroplatform with a payload of only four tonnes and will require an investment of $15 million,” he said.

Bendin added that a future passenger version would even be capable of “round-the-world travel in luxury flying hotel conditions.”