Back in the day, I was rather obsessed with blimps. I thought they were super cool because they’re essentially a giant balloon you could fly under. Lockheed Martin has evolved the blimp into something called the Hybrid Airship, a massive flying vessel designed to carry lots of cargo to remote locations – and where it’s going, it doesn’t need roads.
One challenge for Lockheed is how to inspect the massive envelope of the airship and repair any pinhole leaks. Originally, this involved a team outside the envelope with a bright light and a team inside the hole to patch any holes when the light shone through. Lockheed’s Skunk Works group didn’t like that approach and invented the Self-Propelled Instrument for Damage Evaluation and Repair, or SPIDER for short.
SPIDER is an autonomous robot with two halves that connect magnetically. One half rides outside the fully-inflated envelope while the other is inside. The outer half shines bright light on the envelope and when a hole is detected, the light bleeds through to the dark interior. The inner half sees that light and fixes the hole. If it detects and/or fixes a leak, it records this and sends images and report back to a central monitoring computer.
The spider bots work autonomously in packs to scour the entire airship and ready it for flight. I have no idea what the holes are patched with, probably duct tape.
NASA announced on Tuesday that the first mission for its new Space Launch System in 2018, dubbed Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), will send more than a dozen mini-satellites as well as an unmanned Orion spacecraft into deep space.
The Army has its HEL-MD (not to mention is working on GI Joe-style rifles and minesweepers); the Navy put a battleship-mounted railgun aboard the USS Ponce; and within the next five years, the Air Force expects to have laser weapons of its very own...
