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What is C.H.A.M.P.?

A big, stable, disk shaped structure built from smaller modules much lighter than air, positioned roughly 20 kilometers off the ground and tethered in place with strong cables. Abbreviation stands for Cabled High Altitude Modular Platform.



How big are we talking about?

In stratosphere, some 20 km above ground, there is a sweet spot of moderate wind averaging around 10 m/s. To stay within 10º of a chosen position in up to 50 m/s wind, our reference design shows a Helium filled disk with 140 MW of solar panels needs to be 800 m wide. A bigger unit can also make use of cheap and plentiful Methane gas. C.H.A.M.P. would be built from many hexagonal cylinders strapped together in a honeycomb pattern, with tethers from each module clustered and interwoven together to form a manageable number of streamlined stripes going all the way to the ground. A small overpressure keeps modules in shape and double envelope between lifting gas and air keeps its shape stable as the structure is lifted from ground level to the stratosphere. Armed with solar panels above and / or wireless access point beneath, it is ready to change the face of the planet!

What can it do for the Climate?

Above all clouds the Sun always shines. With low temperatures and a lot more of highly energetic UV light on hand, what better place to put electricity producing solar panels? CHAMP can generate cheap, reliable and predictable solar power anywhere on Earth using almost no land area. With technology of today, going 100% renewable is well within our grasp. The smallest stable 800 m wide unit would generate up to 140 MW of power, using commodity hardware. At only 10% average usage rate, that is enough power for about 10.000 US or close to 140.000 households in the developing world. Simple steering would increase these numbers significantly! To really make an impact larger units would have to be built with a 3.000 m wide unit reaching more than GW peak power. Kept afloat by the cheap Methane gas these units could quickly change the economics of clean power generation and dynamics of Climate change!

What can it do for the poor?

A single C.H.A.M.P. platform can provide Internet access to an area the size of France. 200 of them could cover the whole world in strong wireless signal. It is especially well suited for remote and mountain areas with no power and Internet infrastructure. Facebook's Aquila or Google's Loon projects are testing similar approaches as well as HAPS, but CHAMP is guaranteed to stay put and has non-stop power in MW range, offering clean electricity and making far cheaper client hardware possible. With enough cheap and predictable power on hand renewables can finally reach their full potential.

Sounds to good to be true?

Wander if it will stay put? Consider a tethered balloon much lighter than air. Make it twice as big and its frontal area will quadruple but its buoyancy will increase eightfold! Side winds at 20 km, peak at 50 m/s. Our calculations show a Helium filled disk shaped platform reaches stability of ±10º at 400 m radius. Still not convinced? Try yourself using our spreadsheet calculator bellow. All the formulas are there for you to doublecheck our research! Or just have a look at our simple home maid demonstration videos and see for yourself: Size matters! A 20 km cable suspended in mid air sounds threatening? A Kevlar® rope wouldn't break under its own weight until it is about 256 km long and there are already much stronger materials out there. Actually, scientists are considering carbon nanotube cables to build a space elevator which on Earth needs to be more than 36.000 km high. Now that's SF! 20 km on the other hand is very doable using current technology… And what about those 250 mph jet stream winds? C.H.A.M.P. is positioned well above them and it would only take a few hours for it to reach its target height. It can also be built anywhere, lifted to its desired height and then towed to final destination. This way, it can be lifted through the jet stream “area” where most appropriate and still be positioned where it is needed most. Even though C.H.A.M.P. uses modular design, its many modules are tied together into fewer streamlined cables / stripes so that part of the cable that faces jet stream winds does not contribute significantly to the overall drag. You can doublecheck our calculation that proves this for our reference design in the spreadsheet calculator bellow. How much would all this cost? Our modules are much smaller and actually positioned much lower then what's out there already. No exotic or overly expensive materials are needed. Now contrast that to plans for solar power plants in orbit which are also under consideration. In short, C.H.A.M.P. will not come cheap, but it is still the best option out there. And You can help us make its technology free for everyone to use!

Check our facts

Want to learn mote about the stratosphere, the strong jet stream winds or air pressure? Or suitable membrane materials? Or strength of possible cable materials Kevlar or Zylon? What about candidates for lifting gas Helium, Methane and Hydrogen? Please double check our formulas for the reference designs bellow. Some of the more interesting ones are for wind drag and membrane permeability… Feel free to comment on our work or improve it. It will all go toward the final goal: an open sourced technical blueprint on how to build an actual C.H.A.M.P. !

About us

We are a team of engineers from Croatia, homeland of Nikola Tesla. In spirit of his selfless commitment to advancement of science we have set up this Wiki where we want to share our progress toward realizing the full potential of solar power! We've been developing the C.H.A.M.P. technical solutions since our first idea in 2004 for a stable lighter than air platform positioned in the low wind area around 20 km high in the stratosphere. Seeing how others have failed to gain enough traction with similar ideas, we opted for crowdfunding to turn it into a technical blueprint free for anyone to use. This Wiki is our contribution to “State of the art” that no one can patent any more…

How can YOU help?

Play with our reference designs

A few pictures, renderings & videos

How wind speed changes with height? How air pressure and density changes with height? }} Effect of shape of an object on wind drag? PDF with formulas on permeability of Mylar… superpressure_balloons_-_mylar_hellium_permeability_and_thin_film_permeability_formulas.pdf Our Indiegogo campaign video Size matters video C.H.A.M.P. over desert C.H.A.M.P. over mountains C.H.A.M.P. over sea C.H.A.M.P. size comparison

And we saved the best for the end...